Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Tallapoosa, GA

Tallapoosa is a city in Haralson County in northwest Georgia, nicknamed "The Dogwood City."

The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Tallapoosa as a town in 1860, and the community lends its name to the Tallapoosa River.

The name Tallapoosa is derived from the Creek words "Talwa," meaning town, and "Puse," meaning grandmother, reflecting the matrilineal culture of the Creek and nearby Cherokee peoples.

Tallapoosa was a location of tribal meetings held by the Creek Indians and a central point of trade between Creek territory to the south and Cherokee territory in the Appalachian mountains to the north, a meeting place marked today by the "Seven Chestnuts" historic marker.

The community was once known by the far less dignified name "Possum Snout" — also rendered "Opossum Snout" in an 1891 painting of the area by artist Lyell E. Carr.

Tallapoosa today hosts an annual New Year's Eve Possum Drop, billed as one of the largest New Year's Eve celebrations in Georgia and a playful nod to its old Possum Snout name.

In the late 1880s Northern investors and the building of a railway transformed Tallapoosa from an isolated village of about 100 people into a booming resort and development town promoted in The New York Times in 1887 as a "Yankee City Under a Southern Sun," with a Lithia Springs Hotel neighborhood built around its mineral springs.

The 2020 census counted 3,227 people in Tallapoosa, with 1,283 households, 789 families and 1,441 housing units in the city.

Tallapoosa covers about 10 square miles at an elevation of about 1,138 feet, making it one of the larger small cities by land area in Haralson County.

U.S. Route 78 runs through Tallapoosa as Atlanta Street and Georgia State Route 100 runs north to Cedartown and south to Bowdon, while Interstate 20 passes about 5 miles south of the city center at Exit 5.