Editing West Point, Georgia (section)

==History==
The city's present name comes from its being near the westernmost point of the [[Chattahoochee River]], where the river turns from its southwesterly flow from the [[Appalachian Mountains]] to due south – for all practical purposes – and forms the boundary with [[Alabama]]. The large nearby reservoir, [[West Point Lake]], was created by the [[United States Army Corps of Engineers|Army Corps of Engineers]] by the building of the West Point Dam, for water storage and hydroelectric power generation. The reservoir stores water which can be released during dry seasons, in order to maintain the water level of the navigable [[inland waterway]] from [[Columbus, Georgia]], south to the [[Gulf of Mexico]].

During the late spring of 2003, there was a flood caused by extremely heavy rainfall and thunderstorms upstream of the West Point Dam; the weather caused the water level in the reservoir to come close to overflowing the top of the dam. There were allegations of poor forecasting by the Corps of Engineers of the reservoir's water levels.{{Citation needed|date=May 2017}} The flood water would have overflowed the dam had a large amount of water not been released through the [[spillway]] of the dam. Whereas this prevented the catastrophic failure of the West Point Dam, the city endured a flood much more severe than any other in the time since the dam had been built.
 
In the mid-19th century, the Atlanta & LaGrange Railroad was established and soon renamed the [[Atlanta and West Point Railroad|Atlanta & West Point Railroad]], using the name of West Point; the city of [[East Point, Georgia|East Point, Fulton County, Georgia]], received its name for being at the northeastern end of this railroad line. The rail line linked [[metropolitan Atlanta]] with the lower reaches of the Chattahoochee River, with Columbus, and with [[Montgomery, Alabama]], via the [[Montgomery and West Point Railroad|Montgomery & West Point Railroad]].

Passenger service between Atlanta and Montgomery continued, on the "[[West Point Route]]", until approximately the beginning of the [[Amtrak]] era, or more than 100 years (circa 1855&ndash;circa 1970). The Montgomery-to-West Point rail line was completed in 1851, three years before the West Point-to-Atlanta segment. Rail operations were seriously disrupted during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] (1861–65), as Southern rail lines were subject to [[Union Army]] attacks.

Toward the end of the war, West Point was the scene of the [[Battle of West Point]] (April 16, 1865, seven days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox).