Sandtown, formerly called Buzzard's Roost, was one of the largest
Native villages in the area where Atlanta would develop. After the
Trail of Tears and the government of
Georgia divided the territory into counties, Sandtown ended up in
Campbell County, which was later absorbed into
Fulton County in 1932 along with
Milton County. The road now known as
Cascade was originally an Indian trail known as the Sandtown Road and ran from the village on the
Chattahoochee River near
Utoy Creek east through what became
Five Points then to the vicinity of
Decatur. This was the oldest settled area in current Fulton County. Atlanta's first doctor, Joshua Gilbert, lived along the Sandtown Road near the present-day Cascade Nature Preserve. The
Union Army used his home as a hospital during the
Battle of Utoy Creek. During the
American Civil War there were two roads to Sandtown (the current Cascade and Campbelltown roads), which were prominent locations of Union Army operations during the
Siege of Atlanta. The Battle of Utoy Creek was fought along the Sandtown (Cascade) Road in Cascade Heights from 1–7 August 1864. Major General
William T. Sherman's headquarters was along the southern Sandtown (Campbellton) Road on August 26, 1864. In 2006, Sandtown applied for annexation to the city of Atlanta. Atlanta put Sandtown's application on hold. In 2007, a vote in unincorporated southern Fulton County, including Sandtown, on whether to form a new city of
South Fulton, Georgia, resulted against such a formation, although the merger still occurred a decade later, in 2017. ==Transportation==