Kennesaw: Big Shanty, the Great Locomotive Chase, and a Gun Law

Railroad workers building the Western and Atlantic Railroad threw up shanties along a high ridge here in the eighteen forties, and the place earned the unglamorous name Big Shanty. During the Civil War, Union spies stole a locomotive called The General right from the breakfast table at the Lacy Hotel here on April twelve, eighteen sixty-two, racing north in what became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Confederate soldiers ran after them on foot, then by handcar, then by another engine, eventually recapturing the train. The town was renamed Kennesaw in eighteen eighty-seven after the Cherokee mountain looming above, incorporated in eighteen eighty-seven, and in nineteen eighty-two made national headlines by passing an ordinance requiring every household to own a firearm, a law that still stands today.