Now to the good stuff. Atlanta is well known for being the city in which the civil rights movement was birthed. The reason this is the case is because Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the movement and he was born here in Atlanta. But he wasn’t the only one as many civil rights groups and movements were started in Atlanta. If you want more information on the civil rights movement, you can go see the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, which will give you all the information you could ever ask for about the Nobel Peace Prize winning leader. Not only is a great place to learn about a very important part of our country’s growth, you can see it for free because they don’t charge to go see it.

Something that a lot of people might not know about Atlanta is that there is a trail that goes all the way from Atlanta to Alabama and it is called the Silver Comet Trail. On this trail, you can get around how ever you’d like including horseback, in-line skating, riding a bike or a skateboard. This path is fully paved and it was formed on top of old railroad tracks. The trail is 61.5 miles long and it travel under mountains and over railroad trestles. It starts in Smyrna, Georgia at the Mavell Road Trailhead and ends at the state line of Alabama and Georgia. Once you hit the state line and enter Alabama, you can take the Chief Ladiga Trail and it goes for another 33 miles.

I don’t know if this is a fun fact but Atlanta was the only city in North America that was actually burned down as an act of war. On his way to the ocean, General Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground during the Civil War (or the War Between the States, as some of the older generations would say). This happened in November of 1864 and when the city surrendered to General Sherman, there were only around 400 structures even standing. However, the will of the people and the energy in the city had Atlanta on the rise in a short period and because Atlanta rose from the ashes like a phoenix, it ended up being the symbol of the city.