In August 1844, Norcross settled in Marthasville, Georgia, then the terminus of the Georgia Railroad. He became a sawmill operator and dry goods merchant. His sawmill mostly produced railroad ties and string timbers for construction of the railroad. Norcross described the excitement attendant to the arrival of the first trains at the station in 1845: I recalled very well the first train of cars over the Georgia Railroad. It was on the 15th of September, 1845. The train came in about dark. Judge King was on board and a great many others. There were a great many people out, and there was a good deal of excitement. There was a well in the square here, and such was the excitement, and it being dark, a man fell into the well and was drowned. Judge King came very near falling in there, also. It was dark, and he was just on the brink of stepping in when someone caught him and saved him. I suppose there were about twenty families here at the time. Poor workers and settlers used the leavings of the mill as timbers for shanties; this area became known as Slabtown. Dominated by railway workers and their tastes, it was considered a center of vice: brothels, saloons, and gambling. This area was cleared in 1902 by disguised paramilitary known as White Caps. The site was later redeveloped for Grady Memorial Hospital. In 1845 the railroad terminus of Marthasville was renamed as Atlanta (it was chartered in December 1847). Norcross commented that many decisions were made in haste: "[t]he reason why the streets are so crooked is that every man built on his land just to suit himself." In 1849 Norcross co-founded the Daily Intelligencer newspaper. In 1851 Norcross was among two dozen founders of the Atlanta National Bank. These men believed a growing town needed its own bank. But the first charter Bank of Atlanta was unsuccessful. Given regional economic instability, there had been a bank "run" in 1845; after another occurred in October 1855, the director closed this bank. On March 6, 1856, Norcross and others incorporated the Bank of Fulton; this second bank of Atlanta had greater success. Norcross owned the 1894 landmark Norcross Building at Five Points in what became Downtown Atlanta. It was destroyed by fire in 1902. Political and civic life Norcross unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 1848, in the town's first election,