Historic Sites in Clay County

The history of Clay County

Clay County was created on February 16, 1854, from parts of Early and Randolph counties and named for Henry Clay, the Kentucky senator and national statesman. Its county seat, Fort Gaines, grew from a frontier post established in 1816 and named for General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, who built it under Andrew Jackson's direction to protect white settlers during the Creek Indian Wars. The Muscogee (Creek) people held this stretch of the Chattahoochee River valley until they were forced out in the removals of the 1830s. White planters then developed the land for cotton, relying on the labor of enslaved African Americans. Fort Gaines prospered as a river town, once called the Queen City of the Chattahoochee, until railroads built in the 1850s drew trade away from river commerce. The site served again as a Confederate fort in 1863. After the Civil War, farming remained central to the local economy, supplemented by timber harvesting. The completion of the Walter F. George Lock and Dam in 1963 created a 45,180-acre reservoir along the county's western edge, where George T. Bagby State Park and Lodge now stands. In Fort Gaines, Frontier Village gathers a collection of historic log structures.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org