Trenton, GA

Between Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain, Trenton is the seat of Dade County and the only incorporated municipality in the county. The city grew from Salem, a community settled around 1830 and renamed Trenton in 1840. U.S. 11 and Georgia 136 run through the center, while Interstate 59 passes just west on the route toward Chattanooga. The 2020 Census counted 2,195 people, but the county-seat role gives Trenton a bigger civic footprint than that number suggests.

ATTRDwayneP / CC BY-SA 3.0

The old courthouse sits at the heart of town. Dade County's present courthouse was completed in 1926, listed on the National Register in 1980, and restored as a courthouse and museum. Just beyond the city, Cloudland Canyon was once called Sitton Gulch or Trenton Gulf before the state acquired the land in 1939 and made it a park. That pairing gives Trenton its local shape: courthouse-town duties in the valley, with a deep canyon and Appalachian ridges rising nearby. Dade County's history also includes coal and iron mining, the Civil War's disruption, and the long period when the county could be reached by road only through Tennessee or Alabama.