Among the notable landmarks are the Wetumpka crater and the Jasmine Hill Gardens, with a full-sized replica of the Temple of Hera of Olympia, Greece.

In 2022, the city received worldwide ridicule after jailing two elderly women attempting to feed and neuter stray cats The placename Wetumpka is derived from the Muscogee Creek Native American language phrase we-wau tum-cau meaning "rumbling waters", believed to be a description of the sound of the nearby Coosa River at the rapids of the Devil's Staircase.

After moving the 1702 settlement of Mobile to Mobile Bay in 1711, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville sent an expedition up the Alabama River to establish a fort in the interior of the colony, known as La Louisiane or New France, to stop the encroachment of British colonists and to foster trade and goodwill with the Creek.

After Britain was defeated in the American Revolutionary War, it ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to the United States in 1783.

Between 1800 and 1812, European-American pioneers began to arrive, many with enslaved African-American laborers, and encroach on the lands of the Southeast Indian tribes.

In addition, in 1811, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh of the upper Northwest appealed to the Creek to join his Western Confederacy to try to drive out and exterminate the European settlers west of the Appalachians.

Upon receiving the news of the massacre at Fort Mims, whose refugees included many Lower Creek, American settlers appealed for government help.

General Andrew Jackson led a militia with members from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia and attacked the Creek in Alabama.

After the war, many of Jackson's Tennessee militia returned home, collected their families and belongings, and brought them back to settle near the fort.

From the scattered fields and large plantations worked by slave labor in the interior, cotton was carted overland to Wetumpka.

At the fall line of the Coosa River, the port shipped out cotton bales by steamboats which went downriver to the markets at Mobile for sale.

The western section in Autauga County was residential, with houses and churches laid out on a grid pattern of streets.

By 1845, the cotton planters in the interior Black Belt had become some of the wealthiest in the country, and power was shifting toward the southern and central part of the state.

Neither city had a majority of support; representatives from north Alabama, enraged that the capital was being moved from Tuscaloosa, were indifferent to either site.

Though their civic pride was wounded by losing the capital to Montgomery, Wetumpka's planters and merchants continued to flourish throughout the antebellum period.

They promoted a plan to build a lock and dam so that boats would be able to pass above the Fall Line and travel up the Coosa as far as Rome, Georgia.

One famous resident was William Lowndes Yancey, a firebrand newspaper editor and statesman who was an influential advocate of states' rights, slavery, and Southern secession.

No Union troops entered the area until early 1865, and they were driven to reach Montgomery to punish the former Confederate capital before the war ended.

City Judge Jeff Courtney sentenced Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, each to two years of unsupervised probation and 10 days in jail.

After sentencing the women appealed to the Elmore County Circuit Court, at which point the city decided to no longer pursuing criminal charges.

[10] The arrests generated worldwide media coverage and opposition[10] and resulted in Wetumpka being called a "national laughing stock.

"[11] Roberts and Alston were later named "community heroes" by The Montgomery Advertiser for helping feral cats in Wetumpka.

The city is situated astride the Fall Line, where the Appalachian foothills give way to the flat Gulf Coastal Plain.

[29] The series follows the efforts of Ben and Erin Napier of HGTV's Home Town (set in Laurel, Mississippi) to help revitalize Wetumpka by renovating 12 buildings and public spaces.

[34][35] In 2002, Auburn University researchers published evidence and established the site as an internationally recognized impact crater.

[36] This outdoor museum was built in the 1930s on the estate of the Fitzpatrick family, who spent many years in Greece collecting replicas of ancient statuary to adorn their formal gardens at Jasmine Hill.

The race, a modified triathlon, starts at the Swayback Bridge Trail with a cross country run, a mountain bike leg, and paddling on the Coosa River to finish at Goldstar Park in downtown Wetumpka.

The city hosts the annual Coosa River Whitewater Festival, and was the site of the 2005 U.S. Freestyle Kayaking Nationals.

[38] The Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama, have built a casino on land abutting the city.

[43] In 2022, the Wetumpka Police Department handcuffed and arrested a group of elderly ladies for feeding stray cats in a city park.