Sweetwater Creek State Park is a 2,549 acre (10.32 km2) Georgia state park in east Douglas County, 15 miles (24 km) from downtown Atlanta. The park is named after Sweetwater Creek which runs through it. Cherokee people were forcibly removed from the area and it eventually became home to the New Manchester Manufacturing Company and mill town of New Manchester. During the American Civil War the textile mill and general store were burned down by the Union Army and the women and children taken away and eventually sent to Louisville, Kentucky and Indiana as refugees.