Geography and Industry

The southern tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains rises in Georgia's northwestern sector, and forms one of the state's three geographic regions. These mountains are part of the Appalachian chain, and run all the way north into West Virginia!

Georgia's two other regions are the hilly Piedmont, which slopes down from the Blue Ridge across the central part of the state, and the southeastern coastal plain, which includes the large Okefenokee Swamp. Georgia also shares the Sea Islands with South Carolina, its neighbor to the north.

Georgia's rivers help form most of its borders with the states that surround it. The Savannah River runs along Georgia's border with South Carolina. The Chattahoochie in the west forms part of Georgia's boundary with Alabama, and the St. Mary's in the south is the marker for part of the Georgia-Florida border.

Georgia has the southern end of the Appalachian Trail in its northwestern section, and as a result, has many places within its borders to hike and camp. Many Georgians also love to hunt and fish. Along Georgia's coastline, surf fishing is incredibly popular. Places such as Warm Springs, the Sea Islands, and the Civil War battlefield national monuments at Chickamauga and Kennesaw Mountain draw millions of tourists every year.

Cotton used to be the “king” crop in Georgia, but that hasn't been true for decades. These days, the top products are peanuts, lumber, tobacco, and corn. The state is covered in pine forests, and because of its warm climate and long growing season, these trees can be grown quickly and harvested more often than in other timber-producing states.

History

Did you know that Georgia began as a prison? It's true! When Georgia was founded as a British royal colony in 1733, it was illegal to owe money that you couldn't pay. People often went to jail until they could pay their debts. Georgia's founder James Oglethorpe thought that one way to help people in this position was to offer to send them to a colony in America, rather than send them to a jail in England, where they couldn't pay off their debt because they weren't free to work. And so Georgia (named for George II, the English king at the time) was born.

Before European settlement, Native American tribes such as the Cherokee (who lived in the Blue Ridge mountains of the northwest) and the Muskogean-speaking Creek (who lived in the river valleys of the west) lived in Georgia. Other, smaller Musk-ogean-speaking tribes lived along Georgia's swampy southeastern coast.

As the Georgia frontier advanced inland, it ran into the lands of the Cherokees beginning shortly before the American Revolution. At first the Cherokee fought the settlers moving into their land. Then they had a brilliant idea.

The Cherokee began to adopt the ways of the European settlers. They dressed like their white neighbors, settled down to raise cotton and tobacco, even owned black slaves and used them for labor on Cherokee plantations!

This accommodation of American settlers did not help the Cherokee in the long run, though. By the early 1830s, gold had been discovered on Cherokee land, and most of them were forced to give up their homes in Georgia and move west to a reservation set aside for them in distant Oklahoma.

Whereas Georgia escaped the American Revolution without having a major battle fought within its borders, the Civil War that came ninety years later utterly destroyed most of the property in the state. Union general William Tecumseh Sherman led a large army southeast from Tennessee and through the heart of Georgia, all the way to the sea. Sherman's troops seized all farm supplies (including grain) and most of the farm animals of the people who lived in their path.

What they didn't take, Sherman's army burned. This included the large and prosperous city of Atlanta. Sherman became so hated in Georgia that for generations after the war, if you toasted General Sherman anywhere in Georgia, you were literally asking for a fight!