Biohazard Cleanup Near Meadowview LaFayette, GA

LaFayette is a city in Walker County in northwest Georgia, and it is the county seat and largest city of Walker County — it is not the Lafayette of Louisiana or Indiana.

LaFayette was founded in 1835 as Chattooga, the seat of newly formed Walker County, and was renamed LaFayette in 1836 after Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

Walker County, created on December 18, 1833 from land formerly belonging to the Cherokee Indian Nation, was named for former United States senator Freeman Walker and had 67,654 residents in the 2020 census.

The 2020 census counted 6,888 people in LaFayette, down from 7,121 in 2010, with about 2,792 households in the city.

In 1864 the city became the site of the Battle of LaFayette during the Atlanta campaign of the American Civil War.

Chattooga Academy, completed in 1836 on land donated by Spencer Stewart Marsh, is believed to be Georgia's oldest remaining brick schoolhouse and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Chattooga Academy served as Confederate General Braxton Bragg's headquarters from September 10 to 17, 1863, ahead of the Battle of Chickamauga, and was later renamed John B. Gordon Hall for the former student who became a Confederate general, U.S. senator and Georgia governor.

The neighboring Marsh-Warthen House, a Greek Revival house built about 1836 by Spencer Stewart Marsh, remained in the same family for more than 150 years and is now open as a historic house museum owned by Walker County.

The Marsh House and Chattooga Academy now stand together in Joe Stock Memorial Park on North Main Street in LaFayette.

LaFayette covers about 8.1 square miles of land at an elevation of about 810 feet in the Appalachian foothills of northwest Georgia.