Fort Payne, Alabama

Fort Payne, Alabama
City
Aerial view of Fort Payne (Lookout Mountain in background)
Nickname(s): Official Sock Capital of the World
Location in DeKalb County and the state of Alabama
Coordinates: 34°27′13″N 85°42′23″W / 34.45361°N 85.70639°W / 34.45361; -85.70639
Country	United States
State	Alabama
County	DeKalb
Government
• Type	Mayor-Council (5 members)
Area
• Total	55.8 sq mi (144.6 km2)
• Land	55.5 sq mi (143.7 km2)
• Water	0.3 sq mi (0.9 km2)
Elevation	906 ft (276 m)
Population (2010)
• Total	14,012
• Density	253/sq mi (97.5/km2)
Time zone	Central (CST) (UTC-6)
• Summer (DST)	CDT (UTC-5)
ZIP code	35967-35968
Area code(s)	256
FIPS code	01-27616
GNIS feature ID	0150235
Website	www.fortpayne.org

Fort Payne is a city in and county seat of DeKalb County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census, the population was 14,012.

In the 19th century, the site of Fort Payne was the location of Willstown, an important village of the Cherokee people. For a time it was the home of Sequoyah, a silversmith who invented the Cherokee syllabary, enabling reading and writing in the language. The settlement was commonly called Willstown, after its headman, a red-headed mixed-race man named Will. According to Major John Norton, a more accurate transliteration would have been Titsohili. The son of a Cherokee adoptee of the Mohawk people, Norton grew up among Native Americans and traveled extensively throughout the region in the early 19th century. He stayed at Willstown several times.

During the 1830s prior to Indian removal, the US Army under command of Major John Payne built a fort here that was used to intern Cherokees until relocation to Oklahoma. Their forced exile became known as the Trail of Tears.

By the 1860s, Fort Payne and the surrounding area were still sparsely settled. It had no strategic targets and was the scene of only minor skirmishes between Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. 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 Fort Payne became the county seat, and in 1889 it was incorporated as a town. The community of Lebanon had served as the county seat since 1850. With the completion of rail lines between Birmingham and Chattanooga, Fort Payne began to grow, as it was on the rail line. County sentiment supported having the seat in a community served by the railroad.