Editing Fort Payne, Alabama (section)

==History==
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was the site of [[Willstown (Cherokee town)|Willstown]], an important town of the Lower Cherokee. They had moved south along the [[Tennessee River]] and into what became Alabama in an effort to escape European-American pressure.

For a time this was the home of [[Sequoyah]], a silversmith who by 1821 created the Cherokee [[syllabary]], one of the few writing systems created by an individual from a pre-literate culture.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/science/23cherokee.html?ref=science | title=Carvings From Cherokee Script's Dawn | work=New York Times | date=June 22, 2009 | access-date=June 23, 2009 | author=Wilford, John Noble}}</ref> In Alabama, his people soon started publishing the first newspaper in Cherokee and English, ''[[Cherokee Phoenix|The Cherokee Phoenix]]''.<ref name="nyt"/>

This settlement was commonly called Willstown after its headman, Will Weber, who had striking red hair. He was the son of Cherokee and German parents and raised as Cherokee.

[[John Norton (Mohawk chief)|John Norton]], a man born in Scotland about 1770 to Scottish and Cherokee parents, visited this area and other parts of the Cherokee homeland in 1809-1810. He had come to North America as a [[British Army|British soldier]] and became close to [[Mohawk people]] at the Grand River Reserve in Ontario, where he served as an interpreter.<ref>*Taylor, Alan, ''The Divided Ground, Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution'', 2006, {{ISBN|0-679-45471-3}}, pp.6-7</ref>

During the 1830s prior to [[Indian removal]], the [[United States Army|US Army]] under command of Major John Payne built a fort near Willstown to intern Cherokee from Alabama until they were forcibly [[Indian Removal|removed]] to [[Indian Territory]] (now [[Oklahoma]]). Their forced exile became known as the [[Trail of Tears]]. Only a chimney of Fort Payne still stands in the downtown of the city that developed around it.

===19th-20th century growth===
[[Image:DeKalb Hotel.jpg|thumb|The DeKalb Hotel, built in the Boom in 1889, burned 1918]]

Although European Americans had pressed for Indian removal in the Southeast because they wanted land to cultivate, by the 1860s, the city of Fort Payne and the surrounding area were only sparsely settled. Development of cotton plantations and larger settlements had taken place in the uplands region known as the Black Belt. With no strategic targets nearby, during the Civil War only minor skirmishes between [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] and [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] forces took place here. About the time of the [[Second Battle of Chattanooga]], a large Union force briefly entered the county, but it did not engage substantial Confederate forces.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Civil War Skirmishes |work=Landmarks of DeKalb County |date=March 18, 2016 |url=http://www.landmarksdekalbal.org/articles/CivilWarSkirmishes.html }}</ref><ref name="landmarksdekalbal.org">{{Cite web | title=History of DeKalb County |work=Landmarks of DeKalb |date=November 23, 2015 |url=http://www.landmarksdekalbal.org/history/DeKalbHistory.html }}</ref>

In 1878 the city Fort Payne was designated as the county seat, and in 1889 it was incorporated as a town. The community of [[Lebanon, Alabama|Lebanon]] had served as the DeKalb county seat since 1850. With the completion of rail lines between [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]] and [[Chattanooga, Tennessee|Chattanooga]] that went through Fort Payne, the city's growth was stimulated by connection to this new transportation route. County sentiment had supported having the seat in a community served by the railroad, seen as key to the future.<ref name="landmarksdekalbal.org"/>

In the late 1880s, Fort Payne's growth was stimulated after the discovery of coal and iron deposits, needed to support industrialization. Investors and especially workers from [[New England]] and the North flooded into the region for new jobs. This period is called the "Boom Days", or simply the "Boom".

Many of the notable historic buildings in Fort Payne date from this period of economic growth and prosperity, including the state's oldest standing theater, the [[Fort Payne Opera House]]; the former factory of the Hardware Manufacturing Company (today known as the [[W. B. Davis Hosiery Mill|W. B. Davis Mill Building]], now the location of the [[Fort Payne Depot Museum]], and formerly the passenger station for the present-day [[Norfolk Southern Railway]]. Following the decline of passenger traffic in the mid-20th century as people took to automobiles, today the depot serves as a museum of local history.<ref name="tourdekalb.com">{{Cite web |title=History of DeKalb County |publisher=DeKalb County Tourist Association |url=http://www.tourdekalb.com/history.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081121010642/http://www.tourdekalb.com/history.shtml |archive-date=November 21, 2008 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The iron and coal deposits were much smaller than expected. Many of the promoters left the region for [[Birmingham, Alabama]], which became the state's major industrial city. Fort Payne suffered a period of economic decline. In 1907, the W.B. Davis Hosiery Mill began operations, processing area cotton to produce socks and hosiery. [[Hosiery]] manufacture has led the economy in Fort Payne.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Fort Payne |work=Landmarks of DeKalb Communities |date=March 15, 2016 |url=http://www.landmarksdekalbal.org/communities/FortPayne4.html }}</ref> At the beginning of the 21st century, the hosiery industry in Fort Payne employed over 7,000 people in more than 100 mills. It produced more than half of the socks made in the United States and claimed to be the "Sock Capital of the World."

Beginning in the 1990s, the [[North American Free Trade Agreement]] and the [[Central American Free Trade Agreement]] lowered [[tariff]]s on textile products imported into the United States, resulting in large increases in sock imports. By the early 2000s a very large, highly-efficient centre for sock production had grown up around [[Datang, Zhuji]] in [[Zhejiang Province]], China. Raw materials and hosiery machines were also manufactured at Datang. While in Fort Payne a company might have to wait two months for a replacement part for a hosiery machine to arrive from Italy, a manufacturer in Datang would have to wait half an hour for the part to arrive from a local company.

American multinational retail corporations began to source hosiery products from Datang. The American companies’ strict negotiating positions required the Datang producers to accept as little as 3% profit. As American retail corporations began to source their products from China, Datang became the new "Sock Capital of the World."<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/cyxw/2022-01-11/doc-ikyakumx9737863.shtml | title=这个号称"国际袜都"的小镇，现在怎么样了？ | date=January 11, 2022 }}</ref> Many businesses in Fort Payne accused foreign manufacturers, particularly those from [[China]], of engaging in [[Dumping (pricing policy)|dumping]] of socks below cost to force American companies out of the sock business. By 2005, hosiery mill employment in Fort Payne had declined to around 5,500, and several mills had closed. In late 2005, the federal government gained an agreement with the Chinese government to slow the schedule for the removal of tariffs, delaying their full removal until 2008.<ref>{{cite news |title=Government Acts to Help Textile Mills |newspaper=[[The Gadsden Times]] |page=B1 |date=November 9, 2005 |url=http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20051109/NEWS/511090350 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title='Sock Capital of the World' Fights Back |newspaper=[[The Huntsville Times]] |page=B2 |date=September 1, 2004}}</ref> The hosiery industry continues to have a foothold in the community, diversifying from athletic socks to boutique designs such as [https://zkano.com/ Zkano], and other specialty and medical socks.

In the 1990s, facing the international threat to their manufacturing, business and civic leaders in Fort Payne began to take steps to diversify the city's economy. Several new commercial and industrial projects were developed. The largest was the 2006 construction of a distribution center for [[The Children's Place]] stores, a facility that employed 600 people in its first phase of operation.<ref>{{Cite news |title=New Retail Distribution Center in DeKalb Will Employ up to 600 Workers |newspaper=[[The Gadsden Times]] |page=A1 |date=September 27, 2006 |url=http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20060927/NEWS/609270333 }}</ref>

Other large corporations represented in Fort Payne include [[Heil Environmental Industries]] (a division of Dover Industries, manufacturing sanitation trucks); Vulcraft (a division of [[Nucor]] Corporation, manufacturing steel roofing systems); and [https://www.gametime.com/ Game Time] (a division of Playcore, manufacturing commercial playground equipment).