Augusta, Georgia

City: Augusta

County: Richmond

State: Georgia

Lat/Long: 33.4667, -82.0167

The city of Augusta is located at the head of navigation on the Savannah River in eastern Georgia, 105 miles east northeast of Macon, and 140 miles east of Atlanta. The area was originally home to Creek and Cherokee Indians. In 1735, the founder of the colony of Georgia, James Oglethorpe, ordered that a town be laid out at the location that is now Augusta. Augusta served as the capital of Georgia from 1786 to 1795 and was incorporated as a city in 1798. It is the county seat of Richmond County. In 1860, the city had a population of nearly 12,500 people and was the second largest city in Georgia. Following Georgia’s announcement of secession, the governor of Georgia seized the federal arsenal at Augusta in January of 1861. As home to the Augusta Arsenal, to powder works that were the largest of the Confederacy, and to factories that produced weapons and supplies, Augusta was an important Confederate industrial city during the Civil War. The city also served as the center of Confederate Army quartermaster activity for the state of Georgia, and beginning in 1863 was the permanent site of a Confederate clothing bureau that produced clothing for the Confederate Army. In early May 1865, the arsenal and powder mills were surrendered to federal forces.

Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 89; Courtlandt Canby, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York: Facts on File, 1984), 1:60-61; Florence Fleming Corley, Confederate City: Augusta, Georgia 1860-1865 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1960), xiii, 4, 36-37, 46-60, 94-95.