Tallapoosa was a place of great ceremonial importance to the Indians. Here in 1826 settlers discovered "Charles Town," an Indian Village named for one of their great warriors. Several Indian trails intersected here and the Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee tribes frequently assembled here in a grove of "Seven Chestnuts" to trade or make war. A local farmer, William Owens, found gold here in 1842, and some 100,000 pennyweights were mined. Tallapoosaachieved international renown in 1890 when Gen. Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts and other notables including two United States Treasurers — A.U. Wyman and James W. Hyatt — organized the Georgia Alabama Investment and Development Co., to build a new city along the tracks of the Georgia Pacific Railroad, which had been built in 1882. The new city of Tallapoosa attracted some 15,000 investors, 3,000 new inhabitants and a billion dollars incapitalization. It was a city "built as if by magic," Henry W. Grady said, "one which challenged the attention and admiration of the world."
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