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Georgia
is the largest state east of the Mississippi River. Its territory extends
from the Sea Islands on the Atlantic shore to the forested mountains of
the southern Appalachians. Georgia shares borders with five states, bounded
on the east by South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Alabama,
on the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, and on the south by Florida.
A distinctive feature of Georgia is the paradox of old and new--often
side by side. The forces generating change throughout the American South
can readily be seen in Georgia. The state has experienced major population
and economic growth in recent years. During the 1980s it was among the
leading population-growth states of the United States, and Atlanta emerged
as the major urban center of the southeastern United States.
LAND AND RESOURCES
Five physiographic regions are identifiable within Georgia: the Cumberland
Plateau, Blue Ridge Mountains, Ridge and Valley Region, Piedmont Plateau,
and Coastal Plain. Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain in the northwest
corner of Georgia are remnants of the modest synclinal structure associated
with the Cumberland Plateau. The surface elevations of these plateau remnants
are 450 to 550 m (1,475 to 1,800 ft). The Blue Ridge Mountains extend
into northern Georgia from adjacent Tennessee and North Carolina; the
highest elevations in the state are found there. The narrow valleys and
forested mountains are a major recreational resource. Springer Mountain
(1,164 m/3,820 ft) is the southwestern terminus of the Appalachian Trail.
The Ridge and Valley region extends across northwestern Georgia from Alabama
to Tennessee. A group of low and open valleys 150 to 250 m (500 to 820
ft) above sea level are separated by ridges that extend 200 to 250 m (655
to 820 ft) above the valley floors. These three mountain provinces--the
Cumberland Plateau, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Ridge and Valley area--as
a group account for about 15 percent of Georgia's land area.
The Piedmont is the rolling upland plain south of the mountains. The northern
margin of the Piedmont has an average elevation of 360 m (1,180 ft). The
Piedmont's southern margin, which follows a line from Columbus to Augusta,
is at an elevation of 150 m (500 ft). Local relief on the Piedmont is
normally not more than 30 to 60 m (100 to 200 ft), but several monadnocks
exist with elevations that make them distinctive on the rolling Piedmont
surface, such as Mount Yonah at 967 m (3,173 ft).
The fall line is associated with the point at which the unconsolidated
materials of marine origin forming the Coastal Plain overlap with the
geologically older rocks of the Piedmont. In Georgia the fall line extends
through the cities of Macon, Columbus, Milledgeville, and Augusta. The
border area is marked by low hills--the Sand Hills--that contrast with
the low relief of the Coastal Plain. The outer, or Atlantic, edge of the
Coastal Plain is composed of offshore islands--including St. Simons, Jekyll,
St. Catherines, Sapelo, and Cumberland--and tidal marshes and low marine
terraces. One such poorly drained terrace is occupied by the Okefenokee
Swamp, a national wildlife refuge.
Soils
The soils of Georgia are varied, depending upon topographic character,
drainage, and the underlying parent material. The slopes of the three
mountain regions prohibit their soils from being used for cropland agriculture.
The valley soils of the Ridge and Valley region, which are formed from
limestone, are highly productive, however. Piedmont soils range from sandy
loams to clay, but the rolling character of the Piedmont, in combination
with the practice of intensive row cropping, has contributed to extensive
and severe erosion damage. During the past five decades much of Georgia's
Piedmont region has been converted to grassland or forest, and the potential
for continued resource destruction has been greatly reduced. The soils
of the Coastal Plain are light, deep, and sandy.
Climate
A humid subtropical climate with mild winters and hot moist summers is
characteristic of most of Georgia. The average annual precipitation varies
from about 1,015 mm (40 in) in central Georgia to more than 1,900 mm (75
in) in northeast Georgia. One of two annual precipitation maxima occurs
in February or March, when between 100 and 150 mm (4 and 6 in) of rain
may be expected because of the high seasonal incidence of cyclonic activity
over the southeastern United States. The second maximum occurs in June
and July, when precipitation from thunderstorm activity may bring 100
to 180 mm (4 to 7 in) monthly.
The number of summer days when the temperature exceeds 32 degrees C (90
degrees F) are numerous, but in the mountain areas and the hilly Piedmont
cool evenings bring welcome relief. Winters are mild, but significant
variation occurs from south to north in Georgia. Snow cover lasting more
than one or two days or exceeding 50 mm (2 in) occurs only in the mountainous
fringe of north Georgia. The great day-to-day variability in winter weather
is caused by the interaction of polar and subtropical air masses. Atlanta's
extreme low temperatures are rarely below - 10 degrees C (14 degrees F).
Vegetation and Animal Life
Forest, Georgia's most common landscape component, covers about 65 percent
of the state; forest area has increased by more than 10,000 sq km (3,860
sq mi) since the 1930s. Complexes of longleaf and slash pines cover most
of the Coastal Plain, and loblolly and shortleaf pines forest the Piedmont.
A forest of oak and pine is dominant on the upper Piedmont, changing to
oak and hickory forest in the mountains. The declining acreage for cropland
has allowed extensive forest regrowth of pine.
Georgia has a thriving wildlife population. Bears are limited mainly to
the mountain regions and Okefenokee Swamp, but deer, squirrel, raccoon,
and bobcat are numerous throughout the state in a habitat enhanced by
the extensive forest and grassland. Many of the rivers, reservoirs, and
coastal bays and thousands of farm ponds are available for recreational
purposes. Lake Sidney Lanier, northeast of Atlanta, is the largest body
of water in the state of Georgia. Bass, crappie, bream, and catfish are
the principal freshwater fish sought by fishing enthusiasts.
Drainage
Most of Georgia's major river systems have headwaters in the uplands of
north Georgia. The Savannah River follows much of Georgia's eastern boundary,
and the Altamaha system drains eastern Georgia to the Atlantic. The Okefenokee
Swamp and Flint rivers join the Appalachicola after draining much of western
Georgia. Numerous dams have been constructed for power, flood control,
and recreational purposes. Large areas of the Coastal Plain experience
poor drainage, and rivers crossing this area are generally sluggish. The
humid climate and limited use of water resources in south Georgia, however,
furnish a basis for substantial future agricultural and industrial growth.
In southwestern Georgia aquifers underlay the soil and make irrigation
possible.
PEOPLE
Georgia's resident population was 6,478,216 at the time of the 1990 census,
having grown by more than a million people since 1980. Although Georgia's
overall population density is somewhat higher than the national average,
there is considerable variation within the state, and density is lower
in most areas of the south Georgia plains and the northern mountains.
Population growth is increasingly accentuating the regional differences,
as most growth occurs in north Georgia--in the Atlanta and southeastern
coastal zone areas.
Atlanta, Georgia's capital and largest city, functions as a wholesale
and retail center and as the southeastern regional commercial center.
Growth in the Atlanta area has been rapid for several decades. Nearly
45 percent of the state's total population lives within Atlanta's metropolitan
area. Augusta, Columbus, and Macon--the fall line cities--each has a metropolitan
population of more than 200,000, as does historic Savannah, Georgia's
oldest city and a major Atlantic port. Albany, Athens, Gainesville, Rome,
Valdosta, and Waycross are smaller cities that serve as regional centers.
Among Georgia's rural population about 40 percent is not economically
involved in farming; many work in factories.
Many of Georgia's early settlers came from Virginia and the Carolinas,
bringing with them the plantation concept and slaves and thereby establishing
early a demographic pattern that included large numbers of blacks as well
as whites. In 1990 there were 1,746,565 African Americans in Georgia,
comprising 27 percent of the total population. The Baptists constitute
the largest religious denomination in Georgia; Methodists, Presbyterians,
and Roman Catholics are other religious groups with significant memberships.
Education
A system of statewide elementary and high schools is supported with state
and local tax funds. Beginning in 1985 the state required that high school
students pass a standardized test of minimum skills in order to graduate.
Public higher education is organized as the University System of Georgia
and includes junior colleges, 4-year colleges, and universities. (See
Georgia, state universities and colleges of.)
Tourism and Recreation
Tourism is a major economic activity. Georgia has numerous historic sites:
Savannah, an early settlement center and a planned city built to exacting
specifications; Atlanta and environs, the site of major Civil War battles;
and the coastal zone with its relics of former plantation systems. Automobile
traffic that crosses the state en route to Florida adds to the tourism
income. The mountains and the Sea Islands are contrasting environments
for the many summer vacationers from Georgia and surrounding states. Georgia
has many state-supervised recreation areas.
Georgia's growth and progress in the past two decades are nowhere seen
more sharply than in Atlanta and its environs. The city now has a symphony
orchestra; boasts professional baseball, football, and basketball teams;
and has become a major convention and culture center. Atlanta's location
at the junction of several interstate highways at the southern end of
the Appalachians makes it a crossroads city, benefiting from exchange
and interaction with other regions. The folk art and culture of the mountain
people have fostered crafts fairs and handwork exhibits, often in conjunction
with music festivals.
Etowah Mounds, near Cartersville in northwestern Georgia, are remnants
of prehistoric Indian constructions. To the west President Franklin D.
Roosevelt's Little White House in Warm Springs is now a national shrine.
Tybee Lighthouse, still standing at the mouth of the Savannah River, was
originally built in 1736 by James Oglethorpe; its replacement was reconstructed
after the Civil War in 1867. Stone Mountain, with its Confederate memorial,
is east of Atlanta.
Georgia's communications needs are served by daily and weekly newspapers.
Numerous television and radio stations broadcast from within the state.
ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
Manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade account for the largest segments
of nonfarm employment in Georgia. Although agriculture no longer dominates
employment in Georgia, many workers still are engaged in industries related
to farming and farm products. Poultry production is a major industry,
with most processing plants centered near Gainesville in north Georgia.
The mean per capita income in Georgia is somewhat below the national average.
Agriculture
Although greatly reduced as a source of employment, agriculture has undergone
a major transformation. Georgia agriculture is modern and mechanized,
and the former strong economic dependence upon cotton has been replaced
with a diversified agricultural economy based upon the production of soybeans,
corn, peanuts, tobacco, poultry, cattle, and horticultural and orchard
crops. Much of Georgia's crop production is concentrated on the Inner
Coastal Plain.
The Piedmont, once an established farming region, is now characterized
by farmers who operate small part-time cattle farms but who earn most
of their income from employment in towns and cities.
Forestry
The extensive pine forests of the state are the basis for an important
sector of the economy. Sawtimber and pulpwood for paper manufacturing
are produced in large quantity. Georgia's forests are also noted as sources
of tars and resins.
Mining
Although Georgia does not have a major mineral base, it ranks among the
leading U.S. states in the value of its nonfuel mineral production. Granite
and marble are quarried throughout the state. Kaolin, a fine-grained clay
found in central Georgia, is a major export.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing in the South was a minor economic activity until well after
the Civil War. In the late 19th century, however, new attitudes toward
economic development, a surplus of agricultural labor, and cotton and
power resources lured textile manufacturers from New England to the Piedmont.
Poor and landless white tenants have taken advantage of this employment
opportunity, but the surplus black agricultural laborers have joined the
steady migrant stream to the North.
In the post-World War II years Georgia has undergone an economic revolution.
Textile manufacturing continues, particularly the carpet industry of northwest
Georgia, and apparel manufacturing has become a leading Georgia industry,
primarily located in the many small towns and cities of rural areas. Other
industries include transportation equipment (automobiles and aircraft),
pulp and paper, food processing, and electrical machinery.
Transportation
The first settlements in the state developed along the waterways leading
from the coast; after a decline, water transport is again gaining importance.
Railroad and truck transportation serve the bulk of the state's transit
needs. Airlines, primarily in the Atlanta area, provide access to all
major national cities.
Energy
The Tennessee Valley Authority power system does not serve the state,
so Georgia must import fuel. Its proximity to the Appalachian coal field
is advantageous. Hydroelectric plants along rivers contribute to the power
needs of Georgia. Coal provides about 80 percent of the state's net generation
of electric energy.
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Georgia's tenth state constitution became effective in 1983 and provides
for a government composed of legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
The executive branch is headed by a governor who holds office for a 4-year
term. Other elected officers include a lieutenant governor, attorney general,
comptroller general, commissioner of agriculture, commissioner of labor,
secretary of state, and state superintendent of schools.
Legislative power is granted to a General Assembly that is composed of
the Senate and House of Representatives. The judicial system includes
a supreme court, a court of appeals, and superior courts. Local government
is vested in cities and counties. Georgia is divided into 159 counties,
most of which are governed by boards of commissioners.
From 1917 to 1962, Georgia's General Assembly members were elected through
a county-unit primary system that allocated legislative seats on the basis
of county population size. The least populous counties were represented
by one legislator, while the eight most urban counties were allotted three
representatives. This system gave the rural areas of the state an inordinately
great opportunity to control legislation. In 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court
declared the county-unit system to be unconstitutional. Since that decision,
seats have been apportioned solely on the basis of population, independent
of the number per county.
Georgia has been a Democratic state since the period following Reconstruction.
Local and state politics remain overwhelmingly Democratic, but on the
national level extremely liberal Democrats have been rejected by the basically
conservative Georgia voters.
Former governor Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, was president of the United
States from 1977 to 1981. Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich, a Republican
elected in 1978, became Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives in
1995.
HISTORY
The earliest known inhabitants of present-day Georgia are thought to have
been Mound Builders, predecessors of the Cherokee and Creek Indians inhabiting
the area at the time of European arrival. Hernando de Soto crossed Georgia
in 1539-40, vainly searching for precious metals and gems, but he established
no settlements on the mainland.
Savannah, the first European settlement in Georgia, was established in
1733 by James Oglethorpe--a British general and member of parliament--for
economic and philanthropic reasons. King George II of England granted
a charter to Oglethorpe in order to provide a new home for the poor of
England, as well as an outpost against attacks from Spanish Florida. In
1752 the trustees turned over control of the colony to the royal government.
Georgia became actively involved in the American Revolution in 1778 when
the British captured Savannah. This seizure was followed by the eventual
British seizure of all Georgia except for Wilkes County.
Settlement had first expanded along the coastal zone and Sea Islands.
Interior settlement occurred later, between 1770 and 1840, when settlers
moved southwestward from Virginia and the Carolinas. That it took nearly
seven decades after 1770 to complete the settling process of the state
was in no small part due to the resistance of the Creek and Cherokee Indians.
In a series of land cessions, the Creeks were pushed westward from river
to river, until by 1826 all Creek Indian lands had been seized. During
the following 12 years the Cherokee Indians of north Georgia--an Indian
nation remarkably advanced and rapidly acculturating--were also deprived
of their territory. In 1838 the federal government forcibly removed the
Cherokee people to lands in western territory, an exodus that would come
to be known as the "trail of tears." Portions of Georgia, such as the
Pine Barrens of southeast Georgia and the southwest, remained sparsely
populated until well after the Civil War. Along the coast and on the Sea
Islands a black culture known locally as "Gullah" developed among the
slaves tending the cotton and rice fields.
The advance of settlement between 1780 and 1840 was encouraged by improved
cotton-ginning technology and the increased markets for cotton in Europe.
The corollary of this was an intense demand for land, for slaves, and
for the removal of Indians. The expansion of the planter system not only
set distinctive demographic patterns but established a social, economic,
and political structure that prevailed in the state well into the 20th
century.
The Civil War was a period of disruption and destruction in Georgia. The
Union army of General William Tecumseh Sherman crossed the state in 1864.
After burning Atlanta in November of that year, he and his 60,000 men
moved eastward, reaching Savannah in 29 days and leaving devastation in
their wake. During Reconstruction the Georgia legislature's refusal to
ratify the Fourteenth Amendment placed the state under military rule.
Georgia was readmitted to the Union in 1870.
Although slavery was declared illegal, planters and former slaves adopted
a tenancy system that kept many blacks and whites in poverty until the
system's demise after World War II. In addition, few late 19th-century
European immigrants coming to the United States settled in Georgia, leaving
the prevailing social system undisturbed.
The decade of the 1920s was significant in Georgia's history because of
the rapidity with which agriculture declined in the state. Boll weevil
infestations during the period virtually destroyed the cotton crops, forcing
workers off the land. The out-migration from the farms and from the state
as a whole exceeded any movement into Georgia, but the population continued
to increase because of a high birthrate. The great northward migration
during this century, however, reduced the black population from the 47
percent of 1900 to 27 percent in 1990.
The post-World War II era has been one of economic development and new
social attitudes--amounting to an economic and social revolution. Business
has greatly expanded, and many new jobs have been attracted to Georgia,
especially to the Atlanta area. In 1990, Atlanta was chosen to host the
1996 Olympic Games.
The civil rights movement and its achievements in the 1960s have particularly
altered urban life in Georgia. Blacks have united to become a political
force in Georgia's cities. Indeed, black mayors have dominated the Atlanta
political scene since the early 1980s.
James S. Fisher
Bibliography: Bartley, Numan V., The Creation of Modern Georgia, 2d ed.
(1990); Coleman, Kenneth, A History of Georgia, 2d ed. (1990); Doster,
G. L., From Abbeville to Zebulon (1991); Garrison, Webb B., Oglethorpe's
Folly: The Birth of Georgia (1982); Hepburn, Mary A., Local Government
in Georgia, 2d ed. (1991); Hodler, T. W., and Schretter, H. A., The Atlas
of Georgia, ed. by Rebecca McCarthy (1986); Saye, Albert B., Constitutional
History of Georgia, 1732-1968, rev. ed. (1970).
(c) 1996 Grolier, Inc.
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