Place name
Early
explanation recorded 1799
City of Atlanta
General area only

Chattahoochee: 'marked stone'

The river's name is Muscogee. Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins recorded in 1799 that 'chat-to' meant stone and 'ho-che' meant marked or flowered.

See it on the map All Early records

The record

The New Georgia Encyclopedia cites Hawkins's 1799 explanation and describes the river as a food source, a transportation artery and part of the spirit world for the Muscogee, whose towns lined the valley below Atlanta. The sources used here do not say which marked or 'flowered' rocks gave the river its name, and this map does not guess. From 1821 until the Cherokee removal the river was also a boundary, with Georgia on the east bank and Cherokee country on much of the west bank (see the boundary item).

Today: The river forms Atlanta's western edge.