The town of Marietta, Georgia had modest beginnings as a small group of homes located near an Indian trail at the base of Kennesaw Mountain. However, it started to flourish only after becoming a stop on the railway which connected the Chattahoochee to the Tennessee River. Thanks to this railway, many wealthy plantation owners discovered Marietta and saw the potential waiting to be unlocked. At this time, John Glover--who went on to become Marietta's first mayor--moved to Marietta and aided in the town's development.

While Marietta had a start not unlike many other towns in the South, its life was by no means a quiet one. In 1885, fire ripped through and destroyed three blocks of Marietta's burgeoning downtown area. That, unfortunately, was not the only catastrophe to befall the town. At the start of Sherman's March to the Sea, downtown Marietta burned once again, this time at the hands of Sherman's "Merchant of Terror" Hugh Kirkpatrick.

Two fires were not enough to stop the development of Marietta. During the town's reconstruction, a pair of now-historic cemeteries was created: a National Cemetery and Confederate Cemetery. The latter graveyard was built as a resting place for bodies Marietta residents didn't want buried alongside Yankees. Today, both are popular Marietta attractions for residents and tourists of the city.

Since its humble beginnings, Marietta has prospered quite well. It's now one of Atlanta's largest suburbs and over 60,000 people call it home. Thankfully, the town's rich past is still very important to those living in Marietta. Many historic buildings are integral parts of the city's downtown square, and serve its people and visitors just as well as they did over one hundred years ago.