A village has been in the gap of Ringgold for over 2000 years. Evidence of the early Indian societies can still be found on our mountains, fields, and along our creeks. It was the crossroad between the "Old Spanish Trail" going south to Florida and the Alabama road going to East Tennessee and to points north. It was also the gateway to one of the major transportation corridors in the country. The gaps in the mountains in Ringgold, Dalton, and Altoona provide a passageway that is the shortest distance in the nation between the Mississippi Valley and the East Coast. This was as important to the early Indians as it has been to the advances in transportation over the last 200 years.

In 1800 Northwest Georgia was Cherokee Territory. Early maps designate the village as Dogwood, Crossroads, or Taylor's after our local chief Richard Taylor. Taylor was prominent among the Cherokees having served as an officer with Andrew Jackson at Horseshoe Bend, made several trips to Washington on their behalf, and led one of the contingents of a thousand on the "Trail of Tears".

In 1803 the Federal Government surveyed a road through Cherokee Territory to Nashville, thus connecting Tennessee and Kentucky with roads leading to Athens, Augusta, and the port of Savannah. This was the I-75 of its day. Great herds of cattle and horses, droves of pigs, wagons filled with produce and whiskey, and stages pulled by 6 and 8 horses used the road for 50 years. Sections of the old road can be seen today.

The Western and Atlantic Railroad arrived in 1850 making the Federal Road obsolete. Ringgold became a railroad boomtown complete with entrepreneurs, prospectors, saloons, and great plans for the future. All of this came to a halt with the advent of the Civil War.

The "Great Locomotive Chase" ended just north of town when the engine "General" ran out of steam. The Confederates used Ringgold as a hospital base with over 2000 hospital beds in five locations. Union forces first gutted the town in September 1863 when they arrived looking for Bragg's Confederate Army, then located at Lafayette. Hundreds of wounded were brought to the railroad from the Chickamauga battlefield. After their defeat at Missionary Ridge, the Confederate Army retreated south through the gap. General Patrick Cleburne was ordered into the gap and managed to hold off the Union forces until the Confederates could get organized in Tunnel Hill and Dalton.

After the battle the Union burned the town, private residences and all. When the Indians left in 1838, the area was virgin forest. When the Union left twenty-five years later the area was completely burned wasteland. What the Confederates hadn't eaten the Union burned. The war put our area into a depression that lasted until I-75 was constructed almost a hundred years later.

In the 1920's the demand for a National north-south route brought the Dixie Highway, running from Michigan to Miami. In our area much of it was placed on top of the Federal Road. Highway 41 was paved from Chicago to Miami with much of it being placed on top of the Federal Road as well. In 1960 I-75 was built and it was only then that our area returned to prosperity.

Today Ringgold once again is a thriving place with an interesting history spanning over 200 years. Come see for yourself. Visit our visitor information center at Caffeine Addicts in the downtown square.