Bartow County is located in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 108,901, up from 100,157 in 2010. The county seat is Cartersville.
Traditionally considered part of northwest Georgia, Bartow County is now included in the Atlanta metropolitan area, mainly in the southeastern part near Cartersville, which has become an exurb more than from downtown Atlanta on I-75. It has a sole commissioner government, and is the largest county by population of the few remaining in Georgia with a sole commissioner.
History
Bartow County was created from the Cherokee lands of the Cherokee County territory on December 3, 1832, and named Cass County, after General Lewis Cass (1782–1866), Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, Minister to France and Secretary of State under President James Buchanan, who was instrumental in the removal of Native Americans from the area. However, the county was renamed on December 6, 1861, in honor of Francis S. Bartow, because of Cass's support of the Union, even though Bartow never visited in the county, living away near Savannah all of his life. Cass had supported the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the right of each state to determine its own laws independently of the Federal government, the platform of conservative Southerners who removed his name.
The American Civil War first entered Bartow County on April 12, 1862, in the form of “The Great Locomotive Chase”: As a result of the Western & Atlantic Railroad’s (W&A RR) strategic war time value, Union soldiers boarded boarded and stole a train named "The General". Their plan was to take the stolen train north toward Chattanooga, Tennessee, destroying bridges, parts of the railroad, and telegraph lines along the way.
The Raiders were unable to cause sufficient destruction to the railroad to make pursuit impossible, and William Fuller, the conductor of the stolen train, eventually caught up with the raiders just north of Ringgold Georgia.
The first county seat was at Cassville, but after the burning of the county courthouse and the Sherman Occupation, the seat moved to Cartersville, where it remains.
Bartow County was profoundly affected by the Civil War: an estimated one out of three Bartow County soldiers died during the war as a result of wounds received, diseases caught, and, in one case, as a result of a train accident. At the end of the Civil War, many residents were financially insolvent, the county seat was "in ruins", the transportation networks were severely damaged, and the citizens were starving due to several consecutive years of crop failures.
Prior to the Civil War, Bartow County's social order, and that of the South as a whole, was dominated by "a sense of white intra-class unity that rested upon a shared notion of racial supremacy." Post-Civil War, during Reconstruction, that world-view was challenged, creating a period of racial tension. When the state of Georgia allocated $200,000 to purchase and transport corn into North GA, local officials solely distributed the corn to white families. And when black families petitioned Bartow County for better educational and vocational opportunities, some local whites responded with violence, including but not limited to Ku Klux Klan activity.
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and or 2.2% is water.
The bulk of Bartow County is located in the Etowah River sub-basin of the ACT River Basin (Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin). The northeastern portion of the county around Rydal is located in the Coosawattee River sub-basin of the same ACT River Basin, while an even smaller northwestern section around Adairsville is located in the Oostanaula River sub-basin of the larger ACT River Basin.
The Etowah is mostly part of Lake Allatoona in southeast Bartow and southwest Cherokee counties, with the Allatoona Dam near Cartersville also impounding Allatoona Creek into northwest Cobb county. The peninsula between the two major arms of the lake is home to Red Top Mountain State Park, east-southeast of Cartersville and just southeast of the dam.