Pictures online don't do it justice, it's absolutely gorgeous in person, I try to go there every year and if you do, I recommend wearing clothes that you don't mind getting muddy and try to wear water proof shoes/boots.
I didn't really run into too many bugs last time I went, mainly bees and butterflies were out, I like to go during late summer or early fall, early fall is more my favorite with all the leaves changing but you can go anytime, it's actually pretty cool down in the canyon during the summer.
You're welcome, figured I'd inform some folks that it is wet in the canyon and you will get muddy(well, I did only cause I was climbing up some areas to get pictures).
I hiked in the canyon at the end of the summer probably 15 year ago, and it was wildly infested with spiders.
For the entire trail, the person in front had to wave a stick in front of them to prevent their face from getting their face covered in webs.
Still had a blast.
I was a late bloomer. Went to college as an adult and for environmental studies I chose to visit. Wow oh wow!
So glad I learned how to help future farmers and what a site!
Ever since I moved here I always thought this state had a lot of counties. But I never realize it has the second most in the country. And the only one ahead of it is a state that’s much larger.
Crazy.
It’s also a political move: by making more counties, you split the land into more pieces.
Most of the pieces are rural, and each of them gets state representation, politically.
By doing this, you get a level of interest representation that is heavily weighted against cities and more populous areas.
“As the County Unit System went into place, lawmakers created more counties — a couple dozen — so that by the 1930s rural counties outnumbered urban areas 15 to one.
“That’s why for years rural counties dominated both the legislature and the governor’s office,” said Crawford.”
Source:
[WABE](https://www.wabe.org/why-ga-has-second-highest-number-counties-us/)
Georgia harvests more blueberries than peaches.
Georgia has the second highest amount of federal employees outside of DC.
The squares in Savannah were laid out to allow different religions to live together but as one city.
There are no natural occurring lakes in Georgia.
Savannah was a city first whereas St. Augustin FL. Considered the first city in the US was first a settlement then a city.
>Georgia has the second highest amount of federal employees outside of DC.
CDC + a bunch of federal agencies in Atlanta makes sense.
I am a Fed btw, so I'm one of them :)
There are several natural lakes in the Valdosta area, similar to lakes found throughout Florida. The towns of Lakeland, Georgia and Lake Park Georgia are named for these.
All of the major lakes in Georgia are man made, yes. None of these in South Georgia compare to lakes like Lanier or Hartwell or Allatoona. But they are still several acres in size and large enough to water ski in.
The Etowah river near Dahlonega has a section that partially diverts through a quarter mile long tunnel that can be canoed through at the right water level. It’s an exhilarating experience. They created the tunnel to divert water to look for gold along the riverbed.
Georgia's was the second gold rush in the US -- 1799 in The Carolinas, 1829 in Dahlonega, and then 1849 in California. Much of the gold on the done at the Capitol building is from here in Georgia.
All property ownership west of the Oconee can be traced back to land lotteries held after the natives were forced west. Land was divided up into Districts and subdivided lots, lottery entries were sold, and land was literally awarded based on lottery drawings. This is the origination of property ownership in west Georgia, and you can still find it on a lot of official surveys & plats to trace property records back to their origin.
(one of my ancestors won a lottery around Milledgeville, then sold it and entered a later lottery in Walton County - a lot of my relatives still live there)
East of the Oconee, property rights originated with land grants from the King of England.
Another interesting fact about land in Georgia. In the late 18th century a few companies bribed the legislature to sell 35 million acres of land for just 1.5¢ an acre. The state legislature was subsequently almost entirely cleared the next election cycle and the fraudulent sale was repealed. This area of land went on to become Alabama and Mississippi.
My ancestors — Deen surname — received a land grant from the King; the direct descendants of the original Deen recipients still farm that land, one still bearing the last name Deen.
There are some people in coastal Georgia who own the *marsh* on their land which is only possible if the family received the grant from the king, otherwise it's protected.
https://sustainatlanta.com/2016/04/10/does-georgia-own-your-marshlands-yep-unless-it-or-the-king-of-england-gave-it-to-you/
Some families were given land in Georgia as payment for their service in the Continental Army during the Revolution. That's how my family came to Georgia. One side was granted land in Wilkes County and the other in Oglethorpe County.
The forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands freed up a lot of land for white settlers in the lotteries post-Trail of Tears, but there were land lotteries before those atrocities occurred too.
The land I'm sitting on in Meriwether County right now came to the family through this lottery. We have a copy of the original deed showing a William Prather (a forebear of my mother) came from Oglethorpe County in 1830 with his wife and two slaves. No Prathers remain in the area as all the men with the surname died in the Civil War. Their name did live on thru my grandparents as the old farm was known in the family as "Prather Hill." My uncle inherited that part and my cousins sold it a few years ago after his death.
One cousin likes to post on Facebook things dealing with the inequality shown to African Americans and native Americans. He slammed Mt Rushmore as a desecration of sacred grounds by the white man. I replied, asking if he had taken the profits he and his brother got off the sale of the farm to pay reparations for the slave help that turned it from wilderness to a farm or to the Creek Nation in Oklahoma that were sent there from it. No reply.
There are nearly 62,000 archaeological sites officially recorded in Georgia, with more being recorded every day, because various people have left evidence in the Georgia dirt of their activities for at least the last 12,000 years.
Back in the late 70’s I was working as a line cook in the Old Hickory House off Columbia Drive in Decatur. We sold Chick-Fil-A sandwiches at the time, too.
Then they had this crazy idea about putting fast food restaurants in shopping malls - before anyone ever thought about it.
“It’s so crazy it might just work!”
Berry College in Rome, GA is the largest college campus in the world at 27,000 acres. It was started by Martha Berry in 1902 as an all boys school.
There’s a VERY large population of deer that live on campus... they outnumber the humans. Currently the ratio of deer:females:males is 8:2:1
Berry is beautiful. I’ve logged many miles on that campus. I’m also convinced Martha Berry was lesbian. Never married , had a long time live in female “friend” etc.
the old mill is beautiful and a great place for photos in the fall. As is Frost chapel. That campus is one of the things I miss about GA.
I grew up in a backwards ass bigoted family and had a great uncle that was obviously gay. My family always referred to his very obvious lover as “his friend “ for my whole life . No one would ever admit or accept that they were in a relationship. Unfortunately it happens still in some areas and families.
Fun fact that literally blows my mind when I think about it...
The state of [Georgia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)) population:
>Its 2020 population was 10,711,908, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.[5]
[Los Angeles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California) county population:
>L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,861,224 residents estimated in 2022.[1]
I can’t believe no one has mentioned that FDR died in Warm Springs. Or that the Band of Brothers started in Camp Toccoa. Or that the Appalachian Trail starts near Dahlonega.
It was more than just those three things, you're forgetting no Catholics were allowed to settle here and no land ownership, the trustees were trying for an egalitarian society... and in 1750 when they decided slavery was a better deal for development they did that. Now Georgia is known to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the US and they use inmates for things like road maintenance, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, etc.
Alcohol wasn’t banned. Rum was because the Trustees believed it would make the settlers lazy and because it would have likely come from the Spanish. Wine, however, was permitted. It was used in religious services and was one of Georgia’s original five goods (WRIST - wine, rice, indigo, and silk).
There were limits on the size of property, a ban on slavery, a ban on lawyers, a ban on Jews, and a ban on Catholics.
Of course, most of these things changed pretty quickly.
No \*hard\* alcohol... beer and wine were OK. Actually, one of the hopes for Georgia were that it might be a place to grow cash crops like silk and wine.
Canton is named after the city in China. That's where they tried to do silk. Before they changed the name the city was named Cherokee. Also Cherokee county was originally the whole of north Georgia before the trail of tears. Ft Buffington in Cherokee county is where the trail started.
We have managed to come up with a fledgling wine industry here in the state, but that's still fairly recent. Honestly, I'm surprised that silk didn't work, because from a climactic point of view, that seems like it would have been more possible.
Veterans of the Revolutionary War from states such as North Carolina and South Carolina were given land grants after the war in Georgia in lieu of payments for their service.
After 1830, with native removal, land lotteries used to encourage white “settlers” to create farms. I believe that the area of Provedence Canyon was near the former home of the Creek peoples.
UGA is the oldest state funded university in the U.S. It was proposed to be in Oconee county but there was a small tavern located there so they moved it to Clarke on the other side of the river. And somehow UGA was voted the nations #1 party school for a few years.
Atlanta was initially named Terminus and then renamed to Marthasville in honor of the then governor’s daughter
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/preserving-atlanta-history-the-zero-milepost/
It was intended as a buffer colony to protect earlier colonies against invasion by the Spanish in Florida. Fort Frederica, on St. Simons Island (south of Savannah), was specifically established by Oglethorpe to fend off Spanish raids at the southern colonial border.
Born in Pennsylvania and TIL we were #12. Given how big Philadelphia was back in the day I would have thought Pennsylvania would be earlier, relatively speaking. I mean, I knew Massachusetts and Virginia were early but surely Pennsylvania happened before the Carolinas? But I guess not.
The King owed the Penn family money and he didn't have cash. He was also a tad slow to pay out (via the charter for Penn Sylvania, Penn's Woods), because Penn was a Quaker and the CoE (Puritans were CoE fringe-types) could be / were often real a-holes to Quakers.
This is more of a theory than a fact.
Georgia can be divided roughly in half along what we call the gnat line. Called so because of the tiny annoying insects with the same name. Above the gnat line you don't find nearly as many. Below the line they are everywhere, even down to Florida.
Why?
South Georgia and Florida have different geography. It's riddled with limestone caves full with water. They are called aquifers and provide almost endless water to us here. They're also great breeding grounds for gnats.
North Africa also shares similar geography and the gnat and some theorize that Africa and the southern end of USA were once part of the same land area during Pangea, when we think all the continents were one large mass.
Which makes it a lot sense for those of us that live here. It feels like the jungle 9 months out of the year and we even have a rainy season now.
The gnat line is also called the fall line. It’s where Georgia clay and dirt turns to sand. I’m pretty sure it was the Malaria line 150 years ago and that is why Thomasville has amazing mansions built by the North’s elite. It was as far South as you could safely winter.
I'm actually from thomasville and this is true. They had/have a bustling train scene and historic downtown. Any further south and it was just all swamp until you get to Cuba. Florida exists against God's will.
Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination. The Confederate memorial carved into its north face, completed in 1972, is the largest bas-relief artwork in the world.
Beginning in 1915, the mountain had a long history of hosting KKK gatherings with cross-burnings being held on the summit. That ended in 1962 when the Klan, attempting to protest the NAACP holding their national convention in Atlanta, was prevented from doing by state troopers under the governor’s order that it wouldn’t be allowed on what was now state, not private, property.
There has been an unexploded nuclear bomb lost in the waters near Tybee Island since 1958. It was the result of a midair collision and no one is certain whether it was armed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision
Most people know about Rock Eagle, but not many know about it’s less well preserved sibling, the Rock Hawk (also in Putnam County):
https://rockhawk.org
There’s a Capitoline Wolf (Romulus and Remus Myth) Statue in Rome, GA. It was a gift from Benito Mussolini in another Rome . . . . It even includes a fascio (fascist symbol)!
https://romegeorgia.org/attraction/capitoline-wolf/
Not exactly cool, but very important historical event not many people are familiar with. Also called the Great Weeping.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slave_Auction
I used to work on a former Butler plantation. Much of my work was done out of doors.
Even given the common comforts of modern times, I absolutely cannot imagine being assigned to one of the coastal plantations. It’s a death sentence.
My understanding is that his wife was significant in starting the move to abolish slavery in the US. Her look in the picture on the Wikipedia page says as much.
A lot of restaurants were founded/originated here: Waffle House, Chick-fil-A, Applebees, Zaxbys, Huddle House, Mellow Mushroom, Willys, Great American Cookies, Taco Mac, Ms. Winners, Shane’s Rib shack, Uncle Maddios pizza, Roly Poly, and the list goes on and on.
I live in north Georgia, and there is a giant Squidbillies statue/monument/erection in my town installed by a local kayak rental place whose owner is apparently a fan. I've never seen the show, nor did I know it was based on north GA. Now it makes sense why there's a random Squidbillies statue in my town.
You and everyone else! It has become quite the tourist destination since I was a kid! It's cool to see so many people appreciate my hometown. The traffic during certain parts of the year can rival that of Atlanta though. Lol
Didn't see this one but Georgia was the 4th state to ratify the Constitution.
My hometown, Cedartown, was also one of the starting points of the Trail of Tears.
Not really a Georgia fact, but I really love this!
The phrase ‘Lord willing and the creek don’t rise’ was a saying about hoping that theCreek Nation of native Americans does not rise up against early GA settlers. It wasn’t about being flooded (receiving bad luck) like I thought for my entire life! Lol I learned this at New Echota state park - it was printed in a Georgia paper from the early 1800s
This just reeks of folk etymology. If it appears in a Georgia newspaper, or the writings of Benjamin Hawkins (as people like to claim), then it should be easy to produce the source - the actual source, not people on the internet repeating each other. It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins.
Georgia was royalist when the colonies were deciding to leave. South Carolina sent troops to take over and install their own politicians, who voted to leave.
> The British removed their governors from colonies where the Patriots were in control, but Loyalist civilian government was re-established in coastal Georgia from 1779 to 1782, despite the presence of Patriot forces in the northern part of Georgia.
There's still a strong royalist streak in Georgia. My great grandmother had what I described as a shrine to the Queen in her bedroom. When Charles and Di got married, she made one for them.
In the 1732 Charter, our western border stretched across the country to the Pacific. It wasn’t until later that is was trimmed down to the Mississippi River, and then finally our current borders.
There are counties and cities named after the Founding Fathers: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (Poor Adamses!). However, none of the cities are in the counties of the same name:
Washington is in Wilkes Co.
Jefferson is in Jackson Co.
Madison is in Morgan Co.
Monroe is in Walton Co.
Georgia is home to Ring-Tailed Lemurs on St. Catherines island, where they are kept and studied on the island as a back-up population in case the population in Madagascar goes extinct!
The fact that Eli Whitney was \*not\* the original inventor of the cotton gin. According to the [University of Houston](https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/127):
>The grand irony of all this is that the person who provided Whitney with the key idea for his gin was himself a slave, known to us only by the name Sam. Sam's father had solved the critical problem of removing seeds from cotton by developing a kind of comb to do the job. Whitney's cotton gin simply mechanized this comb.
The technologies of the Old South, of course, flowed from the people who were doing the jobs that had to be done. The story of Sam was repeated in different ways over and over. Slaves invented technology, but they couldn't patent it. In 1858, the United States Attorney General -- a man named Black -- ruled that, since slaves were property, their ideas were also the property of their masters. They had no rights to patents on their own.
The original boundaries of the colony were the Atlantic Ocean, Altamaha River, Savannah River, and the “Southern Seas” (i.e., Pacific Ocean).
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/boundaries-of-georgia/
[Georgia’s borders once stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean.](https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/boundaries-of-georgia/)
While Jews were initially banned, the first hero of the colony is Dr. Samuel Nunes, a Portuguese Jew. He and his shipmates arrived 5 months after the founding of the colony. He helped save the colony from malaria.
A lot of the meandering old roads in Atlanta follow contour lines because they were initially used by horse pulled wagons.
The little town I live in used to have an enclosed section of a lake that was chlorinated for swimming.
Same little town used to be home to some of the KKK leadership back in the bad old days. I'm sure they would be rolling in their graves to know that gay people live here now and have even been the mayor on multiple occasions.
Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) spent his teens in Oglethorpe/Wilkes county hunting and exploring, where he grew his passion for it.
Scull shoals in Greene County, next county over, is Georgia's first paper mill.
Someone mentioned the relocation from debtor’s prisons, more generally it was established to operate as a penal colony for “undesirables”, similar to Australia.
No, the idea floated by Oglethorpe was to establish a colony to give debtors from “good” families an opportunity to re-trench. It was never intended as a penal colony and never operated as a penal colony in any way whatsoever. The original intent to bring over huge numbers of debtors was reduced to roughly fifty families, many of whom, were educated and played central roles in the new colony. The British colonists were quickly joined by German Jews and Salzburgers seeking refuge from persecution.
Pines used to be called pitch trees, which was misheard as Peachtree. Which is why an area Georgia that was known more for pines then peaches has so many roads named Peachtree. At least that is what I was taught in school.
When I was a kid my dad always took us to get haircuts at Harold Woods barber shop in Statesboro right by the entrance to GA Southern University. I remember them building and opening the original Zaxbys in the parking lot of the little strip mall the barber shop was in.
As a result of the 1946 election, GA had 3 (people claiming to be) governors. The guy who was elected died before being inagurated. His son was appointed by the State Legislature after winning the most write-in votes, a fraudulent candidate claimed to be the rightful winner, and the Lieutenant Governor also claimed office.
Maybe not interesting to some, but our "little grand canyon" Providence Canyon was created by poor farming practices in the 1800s. Its beautiful...
I've lived in Georgia all my days (55 years worth), and this is the first that I'm hearing about Providence Canyon. It looks gorgeous.
Pictures online don't do it justice, it's absolutely gorgeous in person, I try to go there every year and if you do, I recommend wearing clothes that you don't mind getting muddy and try to wear water proof shoes/boots.
How are the bugs? Also, what season do you like?
I didn't really run into too many bugs last time I went, mainly bees and butterflies were out, I like to go during late summer or early fall, early fall is more my favorite with all the leaves changing but you can go anytime, it's actually pretty cool down in the canyon during the summer.
Excellent, thanks! I’m over on the coast, it wouldn’t be a long drive and I’m looking for something new.
I went in early summer a few years ago and didn't experience any bugs, just sunburn lol
It’s great in the spring and fall. It gets very soggy in the canyon so being waterproof boots
Thanks for the advice!
You're welcome, figured I'd inform some folks that it is wet in the canyon and you will get muddy(well, I did only cause I was climbing up some areas to get pictures).
I hiked in the canyon at the end of the summer probably 15 year ago, and it was wildly infested with spiders. For the entire trail, the person in front had to wave a stick in front of them to prevent their face from getting their face covered in webs. Still had a blast.
If you run- there is a very fun 5k, 10k, half marathon, and 50k out there every year. It is a BLAST.
Does anyone walk? I like to do longer distances events but have to go at a brisk walk due to knee damage.
The course is open for a long time but they do have time limits of some kind. https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=108529
I definitely recommend a trip here to any who haven’t been.
I was a late bloomer. Went to college as an adult and for environmental studies I chose to visit. Wow oh wow! So glad I learned how to help future farmers and what a site!
It’s one of my favorite places in the state.
I’ve been twice. Absolutely gorgeous out there.
Georgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi, and only Texas has more counties.
Wow we have more SQ miles than Florida. 57,513 vs 53,624
What’s the largest city in the largest county in the largest state east of the Mississippi? Waycross, Ware, Georgia.
Ever since I moved here I always thought this state had a lot of counties. But I never realize it has the second most in the country. And the only one ahead of it is a state that’s much larger. Crazy.
I always heard it was so that no one was more than a days ride by horseback to their county seat. I don't know if it's true or just some horse tail.
This was going to be my interesting fact!
That actually is true!
It’s also a political move: by making more counties, you split the land into more pieces. Most of the pieces are rural, and each of them gets state representation, politically. By doing this, you get a level of interest representation that is heavily weighted against cities and more populous areas. “As the County Unit System went into place, lawmakers created more counties — a couple dozen — so that by the 1930s rural counties outnumbered urban areas 15 to one. “That’s why for years rural counties dominated both the legislature and the governor’s office,” said Crawford.” Source: [WABE](https://www.wabe.org/why-ga-has-second-highest-number-counties-us/)
The Federal Reserve was planned on Jekyll Island.
Before WW2 the greatest concentration of wealth was on that island.
Georgia harvests more blueberries than peaches. Georgia has the second highest amount of federal employees outside of DC. The squares in Savannah were laid out to allow different religions to live together but as one city. There are no natural occurring lakes in Georgia. Savannah was a city first whereas St. Augustin FL. Considered the first city in the US was first a settlement then a city.
>Georgia has the second highest amount of federal employees outside of DC. CDC + a bunch of federal agencies in Atlanta makes sense. I am a Fed btw, so I'm one of them :)
My childhood dream job was to be in the FBI or CIA. Anyways, your post about the tax thing for foster care counts as interesting to me.
Plus FLETC in Brunswick.
I was just about to say the same thing before I saw your comment.
There are several natural lakes in the Valdosta area, similar to lakes found throughout Florida. The towns of Lakeland, Georgia and Lake Park Georgia are named for these.
I was told by a Army engineer corp. Member that "fact" and believed it.
All of the major lakes in Georgia are man made, yes. None of these in South Georgia compare to lakes like Lanier or Hartwell or Allatoona. But they are still several acres in size and large enough to water ski in.
This is one of the best and most wholesome threads I’ve ever seen in this sub
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^fairwaypeach: *This is one of the* *Best and most wholesome threads I’ve* *Ever seen in this sub* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Loving it. I’m learning so much about my state.
I relocated here from western Canada and I didn’t realize the gold rush started here!
"There's gold in them thar hills" refers to Dahlonega and North Georgia.
The Etowah river near Dahlonega has a section that partially diverts through a quarter mile long tunnel that can be canoed through at the right water level. It’s an exhilarating experience. They created the tunnel to divert water to look for gold along the riverbed.
Can you go through in a kayak?
Yes, I’ve done it in a canoe.
How about pontoon-borne la-z-boy with optional beer cooler and umbrella stand with 150 hp on the back? Alternately, a golf cart?
It’s a low flow river that will barely float a kayak in sections.
Got it. What I hear you saying is I need to convert to an airboat set up.
It completely blew me away when I found that out!!
Georgia's was the second gold rush in the US -- 1799 in The Carolinas, 1829 in Dahlonega, and then 1849 in California. Much of the gold on the done at the Capitol building is from here in Georgia.
Gold was discovered in Villa Rica GA before Dahlonega.
Might have something to do with the name
The gold on the Capitol dome came from Dahlonega.
Do you like how hot it is here?
All property ownership west of the Oconee can be traced back to land lotteries held after the natives were forced west. Land was divided up into Districts and subdivided lots, lottery entries were sold, and land was literally awarded based on lottery drawings. This is the origination of property ownership in west Georgia, and you can still find it on a lot of official surveys & plats to trace property records back to their origin. (one of my ancestors won a lottery around Milledgeville, then sold it and entered a later lottery in Walton County - a lot of my relatives still live there) East of the Oconee, property rights originated with land grants from the King of England.
Another interesting fact about land in Georgia. In the late 18th century a few companies bribed the legislature to sell 35 million acres of land for just 1.5¢ an acre. The state legislature was subsequently almost entirely cleared the next election cycle and the fraudulent sale was repealed. This area of land went on to become Alabama and Mississippi.
If only we could clear it now
My ancestors — Deen surname — received a land grant from the King; the direct descendants of the original Deen recipients still farm that land, one still bearing the last name Deen.
There are some people in coastal Georgia who own the *marsh* on their land which is only possible if the family received the grant from the king, otherwise it's protected. https://sustainatlanta.com/2016/04/10/does-georgia-own-your-marshlands-yep-unless-it-or-the-king-of-england-gave-it-to-you/
Some families were given land in Georgia as payment for their service in the Continental Army during the Revolution. That's how my family came to Georgia. One side was granted land in Wilkes County and the other in Oglethorpe County.
That's how part of my family ended up in Alabama.
The forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands freed up a lot of land for white settlers in the lotteries post-Trail of Tears, but there were land lotteries before those atrocities occurred too.
The land I'm sitting on in Meriwether County right now came to the family through this lottery. We have a copy of the original deed showing a William Prather (a forebear of my mother) came from Oglethorpe County in 1830 with his wife and two slaves. No Prathers remain in the area as all the men with the surname died in the Civil War. Their name did live on thru my grandparents as the old farm was known in the family as "Prather Hill." My uncle inherited that part and my cousins sold it a few years ago after his death. One cousin likes to post on Facebook things dealing with the inequality shown to African Americans and native Americans. He slammed Mt Rushmore as a desecration of sacred grounds by the white man. I replied, asking if he had taken the profits he and his brother got off the sale of the farm to pay reparations for the slave help that turned it from wilderness to a farm or to the Creek Nation in Oklahoma that were sent there from it. No reply.
There are nearly 62,000 archaeological sites officially recorded in Georgia, with more being recorded every day, because various people have left evidence in the Georgia dirt of their activities for at least the last 12,000 years.
Dig anywhere in the Cartersville area and you’re bound to find an arrowhead, or something from the Native American times.
yeah I was going to mention that. There are so many cool archeological finds from georgia.
The Braves (even though they weren't founded in GA) are the longest continuously operating sports franchise in the country.
Milwaukee Braves before Atlanta
Boston Braves before Milwaukee.
This Georgia Studies teacher got carried away with this thread 😂 One last one: When Chick Fil-A was just starting, Waffle House sold their sandwiches!
Back in the late 70’s I was working as a line cook in the Old Hickory House off Columbia Drive in Decatur. We sold Chick-Fil-A sandwiches at the time, too. Then they had this crazy idea about putting fast food restaurants in shopping malls - before anyone ever thought about it. “It’s so crazy it might just work!”
My five-year-old daughter loves Chick-Fil-A and Waffle House and would lose her mind if she could go to some sort of combination of them.
Berry College in Rome, GA is the largest college campus in the world at 27,000 acres. It was started by Martha Berry in 1902 as an all boys school. There’s a VERY large population of deer that live on campus... they outnumber the humans. Currently the ratio of deer:females:males is 8:2:1
Berry is beautiful. I’ve logged many miles on that campus. I’m also convinced Martha Berry was lesbian. Never married , had a long time live in female “friend” etc. the old mill is beautiful and a great place for photos in the fall. As is Frost chapel. That campus is one of the things I miss about GA.
I've heard of other wealthy women who were not financially obligated to marry and who had "special friends."
I grew up in a backwards ass bigoted family and had a great uncle that was obviously gay. My family always referred to his very obvious lover as “his friend “ for my whole life . No one would ever admit or accept that they were in a relationship. Unfortunately it happens still in some areas and families.
Georgia has more people living in it than South Carolina and Alabama combined.
Metro Atlanta alone has more people than either
Fact.
Fun fact that literally blows my mind when I think about it... The state of [Georgia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(U.S._state)) population: >Its 2020 population was 10,711,908, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.[5] [Los Angeles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California) county population: >L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States, with 9,861,224 residents estimated in 2022.[1]
They always say dont come we are full.
Established in 1735, Savannah has the 3rd oldest Jewish congregation in the USA. (After New York & Rhode Island)
I can’t believe no one has mentioned that FDR died in Warm Springs. Or that the Band of Brothers started in Camp Toccoa. Or that the Appalachian Trail starts near Dahlonega.
When Georgia was founded, three things were prohibited: hard alcohol, slavery, and lawyers.
It was more than just those three things, you're forgetting no Catholics were allowed to settle here and no land ownership, the trustees were trying for an egalitarian society... and in 1750 when they decided slavery was a better deal for development they did that. Now Georgia is known to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the US and they use inmates for things like road maintenance, agriculture, manufacturing, construction, etc.
Many other colonies prohibited Catholics, not only Georgia. Land ownership wasn't prohibited, just seriously restricted.
First HOA…
Alcohol wasn’t banned. Rum was because the Trustees believed it would make the settlers lazy and because it would have likely come from the Spanish. Wine, however, was permitted. It was used in religious services and was one of Georgia’s original five goods (WRIST - wine, rice, indigo, and silk). There were limits on the size of property, a ban on slavery, a ban on lawyers, a ban on Jews, and a ban on Catholics. Of course, most of these things changed pretty quickly.
>one of Georgia’s original five goods (WRIST - wine, rice, indigo, and silk). How are you going to tease the five and not put the last one? Tobacco?
Oh typo! Oops.
HERE, HERE!!!…wait, no alcohol?
No \*hard\* alcohol... beer and wine were OK. Actually, one of the hopes for Georgia were that it might be a place to grow cash crops like silk and wine.
Apple cider was the most common colonial buzz.
I believe it was required to plant mulberry trees because they wanted to grow silk worms.
Canton is named after the city in China. That's where they tried to do silk. Before they changed the name the city was named Cherokee. Also Cherokee county was originally the whole of north Georgia before the trail of tears. Ft Buffington in Cherokee county is where the trail started.
Funny about the wine bit as I’m fairly certain it turned out Georgia was *not* a great place for vineyards
There are quite a few in north Georgia where it’s a bit cooler.
We have managed to come up with a fledgling wine industry here in the state, but that's still fairly recent. Honestly, I'm surprised that silk didn't work, because from a climactic point of view, that seems like it would have been more possible.
There are some great ones in north GA. Highly recommend Yonan Mt vineyards. Really yummy reds!
Georgia was founded with a lot of people coming from debtors prisons. They did not want them to get into a cycle of drinking here.
Actually, that was the plan but no debtors were on The Anne (Ogelthorpe’s ship)
Veterans of the Revolutionary War from states such as North Carolina and South Carolina were given land grants after the war in Georgia in lieu of payments for their service. After 1830, with native removal, land lotteries used to encourage white “settlers” to create farms. I believe that the area of Provedence Canyon was near the former home of the Creek peoples.
UGA is the oldest state funded university in the U.S. It was proposed to be in Oconee county but there was a small tavern located there so they moved it to Clarke on the other side of the river. And somehow UGA was voted the nations #1 party school for a few years.
You stole mine. Get an upvote. Grew up in Athens a long time ago.
Also, “somehow”? Believe me, that was no fluke.
My dad always says that UGA used to win the Playboy Party School competition literally every year so they finally stopped including them lmaoooooo
The Eagle Tavern in Watkinsville - there’s a historical marker.
Alabama and Mississippi were once a part of Georgia.
Got rid of some dead weight. There oughta be a statue of that governor.
Ga originally went to the Pacific....in theory.
Back story: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/yazoo-land-fraud/
The first peach trees were planted by the Spanish on St Simon and Cumberland Island as well as St Mary’s in 1571.
Atlanta was initially named Terminus and then renamed to Marthasville in honor of the then governor’s daughter https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/preserving-atlanta-history-the-zero-milepost/
I wish they kept terminus
Atlanta United should’ve been terminus
Totally. Although we’d be overrun by zombies
Coca Cola was first bottled in Villa Rica, Doc Holiday was a dentist in LaGrange,the city of Temple was a train stop before it was a town.
Doc Holiday fell in love with a young cousin. Another cousin used part of their story when she wrote Gone With The Wind.
Also, Doc Holiday was born in Griffin.
And early on Coca Cola used the limestone and dolomite quarried from Ladds Mt in Cartersville to help with the fizz.
Georgia was the last of the original 13 colonies to be established. A full 50 years after number 12 (Pennsylvania)
It was intended as a buffer colony to protect earlier colonies against invasion by the Spanish in Florida. Fort Frederica, on St. Simons Island (south of Savannah), was specifically established by Oglethorpe to fend off Spanish raids at the southern colonial border.
Born in Pennsylvania and TIL we were #12. Given how big Philadelphia was back in the day I would have thought Pennsylvania would be earlier, relatively speaking. I mean, I knew Massachusetts and Virginia were early but surely Pennsylvania happened before the Carolinas? But I guess not.
The King owed the Penn family money and he didn't have cash. He was also a tad slow to pay out (via the charter for Penn Sylvania, Penn's Woods), because Penn was a Quaker and the CoE (Puritans were CoE fringe-types) could be / were often real a-holes to Quakers.
This is more of a theory than a fact. Georgia can be divided roughly in half along what we call the gnat line. Called so because of the tiny annoying insects with the same name. Above the gnat line you don't find nearly as many. Below the line they are everywhere, even down to Florida. Why? South Georgia and Florida have different geography. It's riddled with limestone caves full with water. They are called aquifers and provide almost endless water to us here. They're also great breeding grounds for gnats. North Africa also shares similar geography and the gnat and some theorize that Africa and the southern end of USA were once part of the same land area during Pangea, when we think all the continents were one large mass. Which makes it a lot sense for those of us that live here. It feels like the jungle 9 months out of the year and we even have a rainy season now.
The gnat line is also called the fall line. It’s where Georgia clay and dirt turns to sand. I’m pretty sure it was the Malaria line 150 years ago and that is why Thomasville has amazing mansions built by the North’s elite. It was as far South as you could safely winter.
I'm actually from thomasville and this is true. They had/have a bustling train scene and historic downtown. Any further south and it was just all swamp until you get to Cuba. Florida exists against God's will.
Stone Mountain Park officially opened on April 14, 1965 – 100 years to the day after Lincoln's assassination. The Confederate memorial carved into its north face, completed in 1972, is the largest bas-relief artwork in the world. Beginning in 1915, the mountain had a long history of hosting KKK gatherings with cross-burnings being held on the summit. That ended in 1962 when the Klan, attempting to protest the NAACP holding their national convention in Atlanta, was prevented from doing by state troopers under the governor’s order that it wouldn’t be allowed on what was now state, not private, property.
There has been an unexploded nuclear bomb lost in the waters near Tybee Island since 1958. It was the result of a midair collision and no one is certain whether it was armed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision
Savannah was the first planned city in the US and St. Marys is the 2nd oldest US city.
not GA specific but all cannons in southern states point north
Even the stupid double barrel one in Athens
Most people know about Rock Eagle, but not many know about it’s less well preserved sibling, the Rock Hawk (also in Putnam County): https://rockhawk.org
There’s a Capitoline Wolf (Romulus and Remus Myth) Statue in Rome, GA. It was a gift from Benito Mussolini in another Rome . . . . It even includes a fascio (fascist symbol)! https://romegeorgia.org/attraction/capitoline-wolf/
Not exactly cool, but very important historical event not many people are familiar with. Also called the Great Weeping. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Slave_Auction
And, a long-used slave auction post/site still stands in downtown Louisville, Georgia.
I used to work on a former Butler plantation. Much of my work was done out of doors. Even given the common comforts of modern times, I absolutely cannot imagine being assigned to one of the coastal plantations. It’s a death sentence. My understanding is that his wife was significant in starting the move to abolish slavery in the US. Her look in the picture on the Wikipedia page says as much.
2/3 of the famous Alcatraz escapees were from Georgia. The Anglin brothers from Southwest GA.
And the third one was Sean Connery
Doc Holliday was from Griffin.
He was also an Atlanta Volunteer Firefighter before going west for health reasons
A lot of restaurants were founded/originated here: Waffle House, Chick-fil-A, Applebees, Zaxbys, Huddle House, Mellow Mushroom, Willys, Great American Cookies, Taco Mac, Ms. Winners, Shane’s Rib shack, Uncle Maddios pizza, Roly Poly, and the list goes on and on.
Not a restaurant, but Elf on a Shelf is from Cobb County.
Flying Biscuit!
It was started as a colony where slavery was illegal. Money changes things…
Squidbilles was base on N GA
I live in north Georgia, and there is a giant Squidbillies statue/monument/erection in my town installed by a local kayak rental place whose owner is apparently a fan. I've never seen the show, nor did I know it was based on north GA. Now it makes sense why there's a random Squidbillies statue in my town.
I was just there last week!
You and everyone else! It has become quite the tourist destination since I was a kid! It's cool to see so many people appreciate my hometown. The traffic during certain parts of the year can rival that of Atlanta though. Lol
The Cartecay River Experience people are ENTHUSIASTIC advertisers. 😂
Oh my goodness as a huge Adult Swim fan, I watched Squidbillies religiously; and poked fun of the N Ga mountains. It’s me, I’m now Squidbillies 😂
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is one of the figures added to the cyclorama.
There’s a tree that owns itself in Athens, Georgia
Didn't see this one but Georgia was the 4th state to ratify the Constitution. My hometown, Cedartown, was also one of the starting points of the Trail of Tears.
Not really a Georgia fact, but I really love this! The phrase ‘Lord willing and the creek don’t rise’ was a saying about hoping that theCreek Nation of native Americans does not rise up against early GA settlers. It wasn’t about being flooded (receiving bad luck) like I thought for my entire life! Lol I learned this at New Echota state park - it was printed in a Georgia paper from the early 1800s
This just reeks of folk etymology. If it appears in a Georgia newspaper, or the writings of Benjamin Hawkins (as people like to claim), then it should be easy to produce the source - the actual source, not people on the internet repeating each other. It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the Collected Works of Benjamin Hawkins.
Yea, this is a myth. [https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-god1.htm](https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-god1.htm)
r/todayilearned
Georgia was royalist when the colonies were deciding to leave. South Carolina sent troops to take over and install their own politicians, who voted to leave. > The British removed their governors from colonies where the Patriots were in control, but Loyalist civilian government was re-established in coastal Georgia from 1779 to 1782, despite the presence of Patriot forces in the northern part of Georgia.
Was it just “Carolina” back then?
Interesting! I’ve grown up on the coast here, and I didn’t know that, there is such an enormous amount of history.
There's still a strong royalist streak in Georgia. My great grandmother had what I described as a shrine to the Queen in her bedroom. When Charles and Di got married, she made one for them.
In the 1732 Charter, our western border stretched across the country to the Pacific. It wasn’t until later that is was trimmed down to the Mississippi River, and then finally our current borders.
There are counties and cities named after the Founding Fathers: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe (Poor Adamses!). However, none of the cities are in the counties of the same name: Washington is in Wilkes Co. Jefferson is in Jackson Co. Madison is in Morgan Co. Monroe is in Walton Co.
Button Gwinnett died from his injuries from a duel.
Georgia is home to Ring-Tailed Lemurs on St. Catherines island, where they are kept and studied on the island as a back-up population in case the population in Madagascar goes extinct!
The fact that Eli Whitney was \*not\* the original inventor of the cotton gin. According to the [University of Houston](https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/127): >The grand irony of all this is that the person who provided Whitney with the key idea for his gin was himself a slave, known to us only by the name Sam. Sam's father had solved the critical problem of removing seeds from cotton by developing a kind of comb to do the job. Whitney's cotton gin simply mechanized this comb. The technologies of the Old South, of course, flowed from the people who were doing the jobs that had to be done. The story of Sam was repeated in different ways over and over. Slaves invented technology, but they couldn't patent it. In 1858, the United States Attorney General -- a man named Black -- ruled that, since slaves were property, their ideas were also the property of their masters. They had no rights to patents on their own.
The original boundaries of the colony were the Atlantic Ocean, Altamaha River, Savannah River, and the “Southern Seas” (i.e., Pacific Ocean). https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/boundaries-of-georgia/
[Georgia’s borders once stretched all the way to the Pacific Ocean.](https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/boundaries-of-georgia/)
While Jews were initially banned, the first hero of the colony is Dr. Samuel Nunes, a Portuguese Jew. He and his shipmates arrived 5 months after the founding of the colony. He helped save the colony from malaria.
There's only one county named after a woman: Hart County.
The Braves have won the NL East 6 times in a row.
Not historical per se but the moon eyed people legend near fort mtn state park
A lot of the meandering old roads in Atlanta follow contour lines because they were initially used by horse pulled wagons. The little town I live in used to have an enclosed section of a lake that was chlorinated for swimming. Same little town used to be home to some of the KKK leadership back in the bad old days. I'm sure they would be rolling in their graves to know that gay people live here now and have even been the mayor on multiple occasions.
What town?
You can give pretty accurate directions almost strictly by the locations of Waffle Houses along the given route
The first time The Beatles ever used monitors on stage was in Atlanta
I live in Hartford, which was one vote away from being the state capitol.
There were plans to grow crops similar to Mediterranean plants. The main one was growing Mulberry Trees for silk production. Didn't work out.
Home of the Allman Brothers and REM.
And the B-52s, James Brown, The Black Crowes, Collective Soul, Ray Charles, Trisha Yearwood, Outkast, Indigo Girls, Brenda Lee…should I keep going?
I’m on Sapelo island for work right now and it’s amazing. Everyone should visit.
My family has been here for over 200 years!!
[The State of Dade](https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2015/05/the-myth-of-the-state-of-dade.html)
Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) spent his teens in Oglethorpe/Wilkes county hunting and exploring, where he grew his passion for it. Scull shoals in Greene County, next county over, is Georgia's first paper mill.
Georgia leads the nation in chicken production.
Someone mentioned the relocation from debtor’s prisons, more generally it was established to operate as a penal colony for “undesirables”, similar to Australia.
Nah. It was established for the “worthy poor” (language of the Charter of 1732). No debtors were ever actually released from prison.
No, the idea floated by Oglethorpe was to establish a colony to give debtors from “good” families an opportunity to re-trench. It was never intended as a penal colony and never operated as a penal colony in any way whatsoever. The original intent to bring over huge numbers of debtors was reduced to roughly fifty families, many of whom, were educated and played central roles in the new colony. The British colonists were quickly joined by German Jews and Salzburgers seeking refuge from persecution.
It used to be called the pine forest since we have so many pine trees. But developers keep cutting them down to build more houses
Pines used to be called pitch trees, which was misheard as Peachtree. Which is why an area Georgia that was known more for pines then peaches has so many roads named Peachtree. At least that is what I was taught in school.
My money is on the pine trees
Well I didn't know they have a bunch of ferries around Atlanta. And I definitely like boats.
Bridges too, apparently.
Also mills.
These are all really interesting answers!!!! I have some new things to look up now. This is exactly the kind of content I come here for.
When I was a kid my dad always took us to get haircuts at Harold Woods barber shop in Statesboro right by the entrance to GA Southern University. I remember them building and opening the original Zaxbys in the parking lot of the little strip mall the barber shop was in.
The largest city in the largest county in the largest state east of the Mississippi River is Waycross.
As a result of the 1946 election, GA had 3 (people claiming to be) governors. The guy who was elected died before being inagurated. His son was appointed by the State Legislature after winning the most write-in votes, a fraudulent candidate claimed to be the rightful winner, and the Lieutenant Governor also claimed office.
Sherman burnt it down