Why You Should Visit Kennesaw

Your first indoor destination should be the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. The General locomotive is on display here, made famous from an attempted raid by Union spies during the Civil War. A band of raiders nearly got the General to Chattanooga and intended to use the engine to damage a vital link to Atlanta. They were caught 87 miles later. Among the other great exhibits are a Merci Boxcar, gifted to America from France in thanks for the nation’s participation in World War II, the Glover Machine Works exhibit designed to explain steam locomotive building, and an extensive railroads display intended to educate the public on how the train served the South and North very differently.

If you’d like to spend more of your vacation outdoors, you may enjoy roaming the Smith-Gilbert Gardens, with its 3,000 species of plants. There you’ll stroll by a bonsai exhibit, perennial, conifer, and rose gardens, talk a walk through woods and meadows, enjoy a Japanese Maple Grove, and take in stately historic houses along the way.