Marietta History
By Becky Paden
This year, 2009, Marietta, Georgia, is celebrating its 175th birthday as a community. Different events throughout the year will mark the city's milestone. In reviewing Marietta's significance as a part of Georgia's history, we can understand how the area has progressed from a very small village to a city of 65,000 citizens today.
Marietta's colorful history began in the early 1830s when the area was the home of Cherokee Indians. With the arrival of white settlers, Native Americans who lived peacefully in scattered farm communities and villages soon were embroiled in conflict with the newcomers. By 1839 only a few Cherokees remained after Federal troops removed the tribe for resettlement in the west.
The state of Georgia divided the Indian Territory in 1832, establishing Cobb County and two years later Marietta as the county seat. The village's first structures were crude log buildings on dirt streets near the current city Square. A one-room log courthouse was built in 1834 with taverns, a drug store and various businesses soon following.
Marietta's growth was spurred in the 1840s with the completion of the first leg of the Western & Atlantic Railroad. The railroad's arrival transformed the frontier village into a town of 1,500 citizens. By the 1850s, Marietta became a popular resort site with a park, impressive houses, natural springs and three hotels attracting summer visitors from southern coastal areas. In 1851, the state of Georgia established the Georgia Military Institute near the town Square, where 200 cadets were educated and trained for military service, and Marietta received its city charter in 1852.
By 1860, Marietta's population was almost 2,700 but the wave of prosperity waned with the beginning of the Civil War. Marietta was a strategic point for both Confederate and Union forces, serving as a hospital and supply depot. After heavy fighting on the town's outskirts in 1864, Federal troops occupied Marietta until the fall, when they set fire to county buildings. The flames spread destruction to more than 100 houses and other buildings. War and Reconstruction left the town in desperate condition with widespread hunger and poverty. Some men found work helping build the Marietta National Cemetery, and the repaired railroad allowed trains to resume their routes through Marietta. Residents gradually rebuilt and repaired homes, businesses and industries and restored their government. By the turn of the century, the town underwent a modest revival. Electricity was installed in 1889 and soon water and telephone systems made life more confortable.
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Marietta men again left to fight. In the 1930s as Marietta and Cobb residents celebrated their centennial, the area was in the midst of the Great Depression that enveloped the entire nation. Despite the lean years, Marietta got a new movie theater--the Strand--in 1935. Moderate growth came after the Depression years, but when the United States entered World War II, that event set the stage for unprecedented change.
Marietta was selected as the site for an enormous B-29 airplane manufacturing plant. Newcomers poured in to work in the factory, creating large demand for new housing. The growth continued in post-war Marietta with the reopening of the Bell Bomber Plant in 1951 during the Korean conflict.
The once quaint, small town experienced a phenomenal boom in housing, industry and business during the 1980s and 1990s. Today Marietta has a population of over 60,000. A thriving Marietta contains 1,280 land acres, or 22 square miles, and anchors a strong sense of community identity for the county as a whole.