Settlers came into the area in the 1840s. Daniel Hoke Jr. was among the settlers, who came in 1850 and built a trading post and a blacksmith shop near the site of the bluff. The town was renamed "Hoke's Bluff" after him in 1853 by W.B. Wynne, a friend of Hoke. The town was raided and pillaged during the Civil War by raiding parties of both sides of the Union and the Confederacy. John Henry Wisdom, who became the "Paul Revere of the Confederacy" after making his famous ride from Gadsden to Rome during the Civil War, was a resident of Hokes Bluff.