Fort Payne

History

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was the site of Willstown, an important town of the Lower Cherokee. They had moved south along the Tennessee River and into what became Alabama in an effort to escape European-American pressure. For a time this was the home of Sequoyah, a silversmith who by 1821 created the Cherokee syllabary, one of the few writing systems created by an individual from a pre-literate culture. In Alabama, his people soon started publishing the first newspaper in Cherokee and English, The Cherokee Phoenix. During the 1830s prior to Indian removal, the US Army under command of Major John Payne built a fort near Willstown to intern Cherokee from Alabama until they were forcibly removed to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their forced exile became known as the Trail of Tears. Only a chimney of Fort Payne still stands in the downtown of the city that developed around it. Although European Americans had pressed for Indian removal in the Southeast because they wanted land to cultivate, by the 1860s, the city of Fort Payne and the surrounding area were only sparsely settled. Development of cotton plantations and larger settlements had taken place in the uplands region known as the Black Belt. With no strategic targets nearby, during the Civil War only minor skirmishes between Union and Confederate forces took place here. About the time of the Second Battle of Chattanooga, a large Union force briefly entered the county, but it did not engage substantial Confederate forces. In 1878 the city Fort Payne was designated as the county seat, and in 1889 it was incorporated as a town. The community of Lebanon had served as the DeKalb county seat since 1850. With the completion of rail lines between Birmingham and Chattanooga that went through Fort…

Geography

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.64%, is water. The city center lies in a narrow valley on Big Wills Creek in the Cumberland Plateau region immediately west of Lookout Mountain, with Sand Mountain at a distance to the west. The city limits reach to the east and south so that more than half of the city's area is now located on Lookout Mountain. Drainage is through Big Wills Creek to the Coosa River. A magnitude 4.9 earthquake occurred here in 2003. Fort Payne is notable for a subtropical climate. Winters usually feature measurable, though infrequent, snow. Cloudmont Ski Resort on Lookout Mountain generates man-made snow as winter temperatures permit. The area is subject to occasional tornadoes. The city's northern side was struck by F3 and F4 tornadoes February 29, 1952 and May 19, 1973, respectively, both of which caused considerable damage. Exactly ten years later, a tornado struck the city again. In the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1994, an F3 tornado passed just west of the city Occasionally, a hurricane that has made landfall in the Gulf of Mexico will reach Fort Payne as a tropical storm or tropical depression. However, in 1995 the eye of Hurricane Opal reached Fort Payne with hurricane-force winds. The 1993 Storm of the Century dumped more than of snow on Fort Payne, immobilizing the city and the surrounding area for days. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfa". (Humid Subtropical Climate).

Largest nearby schools

• Plainview School
  Other · Rainsville · 1,264 students · 16.9:1 ratio
• Fort Payne High School
  High · Fort Payne · 1,058 students · 17.1:1 ratio
• Wills Valley Elementary School
  Elementary · Fort Payne · 808 students · 16.2:1 ratio
• Fort Payne Middle School
  Middle · Fort Payne · 787 students · 16.1:1 ratio
• Little Ridge Intermediate School
  Elementary · Fort Payne · 721 students · 16.8:1 ratio
• Valley Head High School
  Other · Valley Head · 486 students · 13.9:1 ratio
• Ruhuma Junior High School
  Elementary · Ft Payne · 165 students · 13.8:1 ratio
• Williams Avenue Elementary School
  Other · Fort Payne · 141 students · 20.1:1 ratio