After the opening of Cherokee territory in the early nineteenth century, settlers moved into northwestern Cobb County, but Acworth grew with the construction of the Western & Atlantic Railroad in the early 1840s. First a watering stop called Northcutt Station for station agent Alexander Northcutt, the village was renamed Acworth by railroad civil engineer Joseph Gregg after his hometown in New Hampshire. A U.S. Post Office was established in 1844, and the community flourished along the railroad with a depot; in 1860 it was incorporated as a city extending one half mile in all directions from the depot. Acworth's first direct experience of the Civil War came on April 12, 1862, when Andrew's Raiders stole the locomotive General and three freight cars in Big Shanty; Conductor William Fuller, crewman Anthony Murphy, and Engineer Jeff Cain of Acworth pursued them, and at Acworth found crossties piled on the tracks and the telegraph line cut. Local citizens supplied guns, Acworth residents Steve Stokely and Campbell Smith joined the chase, and Fuller and his party commandeered the Yonah and later the Texas, pursuing for 87 miles before the stolen train was captured near Ringgold, ending the Great Locomotive Chase. The Western & Atlantic Railroad remained a vital Confederate transportation link during the war, but Union forces captured Acworth, and on June 6, 1864, General William Sherman wrote that he was on the railroad at Acworth and in full possession to within six miles of Marietta. Union forces occupied the city, and on November 13, 1864, Major James Connolly wrote that soldiers had burned the village without orders, leaving what had been a thriving railroad village a heap of ruins. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the town rebuilt rapidly and became a thriving commercial center with a bank, dry goods store, general merchandise store, cotton buyer, doctor, blacksmith, wagon maker, woodworker, watchmaker, jeweler, livery stable, and tannery. The Litchfield House hotel was established, and in 1872 the Atlanta Herald called it the best hotel on the road from New York to New Orleans. The railroad continued to drive Acworth's growth, and in the summer of 1893 a new depot was built; on August 24 the Marietta Daily Journal reported that the depot was completed and the people of Acworth were proud of it. The depot served Acworth into the twentieth century, but as automobiles, freight trucks, and roads reduced the railroad's local role, passenger and freight service declined in the 1960s. In 1970 the State of Georgia, owner of the Western & Atlantic Railroad, declared the depot surplus and unserviceable, and it was sold at auction and removed from the site.