Georgia

California didn't have America's first major gold rush. Georgia did.

In 1828, a hunter named Benjamin Parks tripped over a gold-filled rock in the north Georgia mountains near Dahlonega. Within a year, 15,000 miners flooded into Cherokee land.

The Cherokee had built a written language, published their own newspaper, and governed themselves from their capital at New Echota. None of it mattered. The gold rush gave Georgia and the federal government the excuse they wanted.

In 1838, the U.S. Army forced more than 15,000 Cherokee to walk over a thousand miles to Oklahoma. At least 4,000 died on the journey. It became known as the Trail of Tears.

Georgia was the last of the original 13 colonies, founded in 1733 by James Oglethorpe in Savannah. Before Europeans arrived, the Creek, Cherokee, and other Native peoples had lived across this land for thousands of years.

Cotton and slavery built the state's plantation economy, and Georgia became the fifth state to join the Confederacy in 1861.

The Civil War hit Georgia hard. In 1864, Union General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta and burned much of the city. Then he marched 285 miles to Savannah with 62,000 troops, destroying railroads, farms, and factories along the way. He offered Savannah to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.

A century later, Atlanta became the heart of the civil rights movement. A young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., born in Atlanta in 1929, served as co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church alongside his father and led the movement from the city. His work helped end legal segregation and push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.

You can walk through King's childhood home and Ebenezer Baptist Church at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta. Down in Savannah, stroll through the oak-shaded squares of the historic district and try the shrimp and grits at a riverfront restaurant.

Up in Dahlonega, you can still pan for gold where the rush started. And if you want quiet, paddle through the Okefenokee Swamp in south Georgia, 400,000 acres of black water, cypress trees, and alligators that Native peoples called "land of the trembling earth."