A combination of the Old South and the New, Georgia
is a land of gracious historic plantations and contemporary high-rise office buildings.
It's the home of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind and Ted
Turner's Cable News Network. Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta.
The Girl Scouts began in
Savannah.
When the Spanish arrived around 1840, they found a native civilization with
a well-developed agricultural system. They took control and forced Catholicism
on the Creek, Cherokee, and other native tribes. The Spanish's presence waned
as the English encroached from the north, but both nations proved devastating
on the Indians, many of whom were enslaved, died of disease, or were ultimately
forced out of the state and into the Midwest.
The British's presence wasn't formalized until General James Oglethorpe
established a colony at Savannah in
1733 and named it for King George II of England.
Oglethorpe created a colony in the hopes of giving a new chance to the
impoverished of England
by offering immigrants small farms that could produce crops for the good of the
home country. Oglethorpe even banned slavery in order to discourage large,
plantation-style farms and instead create self-reliance in the previously
indebted.
Economic competition during the 1800s and the Civil War changed any utopian
tendencies, especially after Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's famous
March to the Sea left much of the state in ashes. Reconstruction began after
the war ended in 1865. The road to recovery was slow and often painful, but the
state has become a Southern success story.
Today, Georgia
maintains many of the traditions of the past while celebrating the promise of
the future. Stretching some 315 miles from north to south, it's the largest
state east of the Mississippi River. In population, it
ranks 10th among U.S.
states. Atlanta, the capital,
offers a full vacation's worth of attractions and activities and is essentially
the "capital of the South." And the rest of Georgia
is within an easy day's drive of Atlanta.
Heading north from Atlanta, you
can visit the Historic High Country and the Northeast
Georgia Mountains.
To the south, you can trace the Presidential Pathways, visit the Historic
Heartland and experience the Classic South. Still farther south are the regions
called Plantation Trace and Magnolia Midlands. Finally, there's the
Colonial
Coast where Georgia
began. All the travel regions are filled with historic sites, beautiful
gardens, outdoor recreation, and friendly people waiting to provide
opportunities for you to experience the Georgia
of today and yesterday.
