Why you'd want to live in Cartersville

Cartersville was first known as Birmingham to its original English settlers. The town was incorporated as Cartersville in 1854. The present name is for Col. Farish Carter of Milledgeville, the owner of a large plantation. Cartersville was the long-time home of Amos Akerman, U.S. Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant; in that office he spearheaded the federal prosecution of members of the Ku Klux Klan and was one of the most important and courageous public servants of the Reconstruction era. Cartersville was designated the seat of Bartow County in 1867 following the destruction of Cassville by Sherman in the American Civil War. Cartersville was incorporated as a city in 1872. Cartersville is located in south-central Bartow County, 42 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta and 76 miles southeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Etowah River flows through a broad valley south of the downtown, leading west to Rome, where it forms the Coosa River, a tributary of the Alabama River. The city limits extend eastward, upriver, as far as Allatoona Dam, which forms Lake Allatoona, a large U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reservoir. Red Top Mountain State Park sits on a peninsula in the lake, just outside the city limits. Nancy Creek also flows in the vicinity. The highest point in the city is 1,562 feet at the summit of Pine Mountain.