Big Spring Park
Cedartown, Polk County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
Big Spring Park. Asa Prior, born in Virginia about 1785, pioneered into this valley and purchased a large tract of land including this spring and Cedar Creek in 1834. In 1852 he deeded the spring and 10 adjacent acres to the City of Cedartown. Another pioneer, Mr. Walthall, established the Walthall Indian Trading Post near the spring. Peace-loving Cherokees gathered here. Indian young people danced their corn dance under the cedar trees. The Cedar Valley Garden Club beautified this park. A shrine was dedicated to the memory of Sen. William Julius Harris, whose funeral was held in the park, April 21, 1932. 115-6 Georgia Historical Commission 1955
Erected by Georgia Historical Commission
The Story
Asa Prior, a Virginia-born pioneer, settled this valley and in 1834 bought a tract that included this spring, deeding the spring and ten acres to Cedartown in 1852. Nearby stood Walthall's Indian trading post, where Cherokees gathered and their young people danced the corn dance beneath the cedars. The park was later beautified by a garden club and made the site of a memorial shrine to Senator William Julius Harris.
Why it matters
Big Spring Park layers the region's history in one place — a Cherokee gathering ground and trading post giving way to a pioneer's homestead and, in time, a civic park, tracing the transformation of the Georgia frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Big Spring Park sits in a corner of northwest Georgia that was, within living memory of its first white settlers, Cherokee country. For generations this well-watered valley — with its reliable spring and the flow of Cedar Creek — was part of the homeland of the Cherokee people, who farmed, gathered, and held their ceremonies across these hills long before any deed was recorded.
The early 1800s brought enormous pressure onto that homeland. Georgia and the federal government pushed relentlessly to open Cherokee lands to white settlement, a campaign that intensified after gold was discovered in the north Georgia mountains and that culminated in the forced removal of the Cherokee in the late 1830s along the route remembered as the Trail of Tears. The pioneer purchases and homesteads that followed took shape in the shadow of that displacement.
So the ground around this spring holds two overlapping eras: an older Native American world centered on gathering places like this one, and the incoming frontier world of Virginia- and Carolina-born settlers who bought land, cleared fields, and founded towns. The marker's mix of themes — Native American history and westward expansion — is not an accident. It's the honest layering of what happened here.
People & events
The marker gathers several strands of that history around one spring. It remembers Asa Prior, born in Virginia around 1785, who pushed into this valley as a pioneer and in 1834 purchased a large tract that included the spring and Cedar Creek. In 1852 he made a lasting civic gift, deeding the spring and ten surrounding acres to the young city of Cedartown — an act that turned a natural water source into public ground still enjoyed today.
Before and alongside the pioneers, the spring was a gathering place. The marker recalls a trading post established nearby by a settler named Walthall, one of the frontier trading posts where Native people and newcomers met to exchange goods. And it preserves a gentler memory: that peace-loving Cherokees gathered here, and that their young people danced the corn dance beneath the cedar trees — an echo of the Green Corn traditions long central to Cherokee life, tied to the harvest and to renewal.
The park's later life is here too. A local garden club took the site in hand and beautified it, and a shrine was dedicated to the memory of United States Senator William Julius Harris, whose funeral was held in the park in the spring of 1932. In a single small park, the marker threads together a Native gathering ground, a pioneer's homestead and gift, a civic beautification, and a statesman's memorial.
Its place in the American story
This one spring compresses a story that played out across the whole American frontier. A place valued first by Native peoples becomes a trading crossroads, then a settler's property, then a public park and civic shrine — each layer laid over the last. That sequence, repeated in thousands of valleys, is essentially how the map of the Deep South was remade in the early nineteenth century.
What makes the site especially telling is that it doesn't hide the transition. The marker keeps the Cherokee gatherings and the corn dance in the same breath as the pioneer purchase, acknowledging that westward expansion and Native displacement were two sides of one event. The peace-loving character it ascribes to those gatherings sits in poignant contrast to the removal that would ultimately empty this country of its first inhabitants.
The act at the center of the story — a settler deeding a spring to his town so it would remain common ground — reflects a very American civic instinct: the impulse to convert private good fortune into shared public space. That a garden club later tended it and a community honored a senator there only deepens the sense of a place continually reclaimed for public memory.
If you visit
Big Spring Park is exactly what its name promises: a park built around a spring, in the town of Cedartown. Go find the water first. A dependable spring was the reason people of every era were drawn to this spot, and standing beside it is the quickest way to understand why the valley mattered — to the Cherokee who gathered here and to the pioneer who bought the land around it.
Then look up at the cedars the town is named for and let the marker's images settle: young people dancing beneath these trees, a trading post nearby, a garden club later planting and tending the grounds. It's a layered place, and reading it slowly lets each era surface in turn rather than blur together.
For a road trip through northwest Georgia, this is a restful and thought-provoking stop — a green public square with an unusually deep story for its size. Bring the marker's timeline with you as you walk the grounds, and you'll see how one small park manages to hold a Native gathering ground, a frontier homestead, and a civic memorial all at once.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Asa Prior
- · William Julius Harris
Themes & tags
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