The City of Powder Springs was incorporated as Springville in 1838 in the lands of two Cherokee Indian chiefs, Chief Nose and Chief Ana Kanasta (Sweetwater). Gold had been discovered in Georgia ten years earlier, and the first area settlers came to find gold. They found little in the mines at Lost Mountain and off Brownsville Road. It was at about this same time that the Cherokee Indians were forced off their land and marched to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears.”