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State of Georgia
  • The area we now call Georgia has been inhabited at least 10,000 years. The earliest known residents, the Paleo and Archaic people of B.C. 10,000 to B.C. 1,000, left little evidence of their communities beyond pottery fragments and spear points. Several burial mounds remain from the times of the Woodland people, who lived here between B.C. 1000 and A.D. 700. Larger mounds, such as those at Etowah near Cartersville, were constructed by the Mississippians of A.D. 700 to A.D. 1500. Cherokees and Creeks followed the earlier groups, the former living primarily north of the Chattahoochee River and the latter residing along streams to the south.
  • The first Europeans in Georgia were Spanish soldiers under the command of Hernando de Soto. De Soto and his men traveled across much of the state in 1540, but their exact route is not known.
  • Georgia, the last of the original 13 colonies to be established, was intended to be a buffer between South Carolina and Spain's colony of Florida. It was named in honor of King George II who was persuaded by General James Oglethorpe to allow the creation of a colony.
  • On July 4, 1776, Georgia joined the other American colonies in adopting the Declaration of Independence. Early the following year, the provisional state legislature approved a new constitution creating eight counties in place of the then-existing twelve parishes of the Church of England. These new counties-Burke, Camden, Chatham, Effingham, Glynn, Liberty, Richmond and Wilkes-lay along the coast and up the Savannah River which was the extent of Georgia's settlement at the time.
  • In 1785, The University of Georgia became the nation's first state-chartered university. The university has grown from a few students when classes first began in the fall of 1801 to more than 29,000 students in the fall of 1996.
  • As Georgians gradually moved north and west into Indian lands, the state capital was also relocated. The first move was from Savannah to Augusta in 1786. The capital was moved again in 1796 to Louisville and a third time to Milledgeville in 1807. Finally, it came to permanent rest in Atlanta in 1877.
  • In 1861, Georgia and ten other southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy. Three years later, General William T. Sherman's Union forces invaded the state from the northwest, captured the rail center of Atlanta, and began the infamous March to the Sea, burning many towns along the way. Confederate forces retreated from Savannah on December 20, 1864. The next day, Sherman telegraphed President Lincoln, "I beg to present to you as a Christmas present the City of Savannah."
  • Georgia began building railroads in the 1830s to protect Savannah's status as a leading Atlantic trade port from a challenge by Charleston's new rail line to Hamburg, across the Savannah River from Augusta. In the early 1840s, the Central Railroad of Georgia was built connecting Savannah with Macon and the interior of the state. The Georgia Railroad between Augusta and Athens was also constructed during the same period. The latter railroad split into two branches at Union Point, in Greene County. The northerly of the two routes continued to Athens as originally planned; the other ran due west to a point near the Chattahoochee River. First called Terminus, the place later was named Marthasville, and then, in 1845, was renamed Atlanta.
Timeline
BC 9500 - AD 1838 Paleo-Indian, Archaic Indian, Woodland Indian, Mississippian Indian cultures.
1540 DeSoto's Spanish expedition traverses Georgia.
c. 1690 Charles Town traders establish trading post at Ocmulgee, near present-day Macon.
1733 Georgia colony established at Savannah.
1763 Treaty of Paris establishes English hegemony in the Southeast.
1776 Georgians Lyman Hall, Button Gwinnett, and George Walton sign the Declaration of Independence.
1785 University of Georgia chartered.
1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin at a plantation near Savannah.
1825 Creek Indian Chief William McIntosh murdered in retaliation for ceding Lower Creek lands to the white men. Sequoyah invents Cherokee alphabet.
1829 Gold discovered in northeastern Georgia. Nation's first gold rush ensues.
1833 Central Railroad of Georgia chartered to build a line from Savannah to Macon.
1835-38 Cherokees forcibly removed from Georgia.
1842 Poet Sidney Lanier born in Macon.
1845 Marthasville renamed Atlanta.
1846 Atlanta and Macon connected by railroad.
1851 State-owned Western & Atlantic Railroad completed between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
1860 Atlantic and Gulf Railroad connects Savannah and Thomasville.
1861 Georgia secedes from the Union. 1864 Union troops capture Atlanta.
1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox, Virginia.
1877 Atlanta officially becomes permanent capital of Georgia.
1879 Morehouse College established.
1881 Atlanta holds "World's Fair and Great International Cotton Exposition."
1912 Juliette Gordon Low establishes the Girl Scouts.
1913 Boll weevil comes to Georgia and begins its long devastation of the state's cotton crop.
1915 Ford assembly plant opens in Atlanta. 1919 Candler family sells Coca-Cola for $25 million.
1924 Peach County becomes the last county in the state to be created.
1925 Atlanta leases Candler Field racetrack and converts it into an airport.
1925 Atlanta and Macon and Savannah and Brunswick are linked by paved roads.
1927 General Motors assembly plant opens in Atlanta.
1929 Delta Air Lines launches passenger service between Atlanta and Dallas.
1932 Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road published.
1939 Gone With The Wind premieres at Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta.
1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs
1964 Atlantan Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) receives Nobel Peace Prize.
1964 Ground is broken for $18 million Atlanta Stadium.
1965 Atlanta acquires an NFL expansion team, the Falcons.
1965 Georgia congressman Carl Vinson ends 50-year career in the House.
1968 MLK assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1969 I-285 around Atlanta is completed.
1970 First Lockheed-Georgia C-5A delivered to Air Force.
1972 Andrew Young elected as Georgia's first black congressman since Reconstruction.
1974 John Portman's Peachtree Plaza Hotel completed, becomes world's tallest hotel.
1976 Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter elected President of United States.
1991 Rich's store in downtown Atlanta closes.
1996 Atlanta and Georgia host Centennial Olympic Games.

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