of their homelands, to the west and south. The Cherokee Indians called the mountains of north Georgia their "Enchanted Land" until their own forced removal in 1838. Industrialization By the time the last Cherokees were removed from the land, work was underway for a railroad, the Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A), to join the Tennessee River with the Georgia Railroad then under construction. In 1847, Dalton was defined as a mile radius from the city center, the Western and Atlantic Depot. The final segment of this pivotal railway was completed in Tunnel Hill, Whitfield County in 1850. A second railroad, East Tennessee and Georgia, was completed in 1852. Catherine Evans Whitener's revitalization of the pre-Civil War-era craft of candlewicking gave rise to a cottage chenille bedspread industry. Homes along U.S. Highway 41 displayed brightly patterned homemade bedspreads on front yard clotheslines in hopes of luring tourists into a purchase. The stretch of highway passing through Whitfield County became known colloquially as "Peacock Alley" in reference to one of the most common patterns depicted on the bedspreads. The bedspread business boomed to a multimillion-dollar industry by the 1950s, and from this early origin, the carpet tufting industry grew in Dalton after Glenn Looper developed an adaptation that allowed the mechanism used to tuft yarn into muslin or cotton for bedspreads to tuft into jute, shifting the nation's carpet manufacturers from woven wool products in the northeast to tufted synthetic carpets in northwest Georgia. Today, carpet mills remain the region's major employers and economic drivers. Dalton was named for Tristram Dalton of Massachusetts. Civil War During the Civil War, the city of Dalton saw its first action during the Great Locomotive Chase, on April 12, 1862. More than a year later, on September 18–20, 1863, massive Union and Confederate forces battled a few miles west of Dalton at the Battle of Chickamauga, and later during the Chattanooga campaign. The war came to Whitfield County in the spring of 1864. The First Battle of Dalton included the battle of Rocky Face Ridge and Dug Gap began on May 7, 1864, and ended when General Johnston completed his withdrawal from Dalton on May 12. The Second Battle of Dalton occurred August 14–15, 1864. In John Bell Hood's Tennessee campaign, Joseph Wheeler's cavalry attacked a Union blockhouse in Tilton before passing through Dalton and heading west. The U.S. government recently declared Dalton and Whitfield County