Augusta-Richmond County, GA

Water from the Savannah River still enters the Augusta Canal much as it has since 1845. The channel remains the only fully intact American industrial canal in continuous operation and is now a National Heritage Area. It still supplies municipal water and feeds hydroelectric plants, while its towpath carries cyclists and pedestrians and its waterway carries paddlers and replica cargo-boat tours. A few blocks east, the Augusta Riverwalk follows the river from Fifth to Tenth streets, with a marina, play space, picnic areas, shelters, and access to the water. Together, the canal and riverfront place recreation beside infrastructure that continues to do the work for which it was built.

ATTRU.S. Federal Judiciary Center / Public domain

Augusta began as a British colonial trading outpost established by James Oglethorpe beside the Savannah River in 1736. The canal was built for power, water supply, and transportation, and cotton mills and other factories began using it in the late 1840s. It helped bring the Industrial Revolution into the American South. During the Civil War, the Confederate Powder Works operated along the channel. The city's governmental name reflects a much later change: Augusta and Richmond County consolidated in 1996, creating one of Georgia's three consolidated governments. The former U.S. arsenal now houses a university campus, while Enterprise Mill houses the Discovery Center, extending old military and industrial sites into present-day use.

Military, medical, university, and cybersecurity work occupy different parts of Augusta. Fort Eisenhower, established in 1941, is home to the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence, the Army Signal School, and Eisenhower Army Medical Center. Augusta University's downtown Health Sciences Campus includes the flagship Medical College of Georgia, the nation's 13th-oldest medical school, Georgia's only dental school, and the state's only public academic medical center. The university's Summerville Campus grew around the former U.S. arsenal, while its Riverfront Campus houses the state-owned Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center near Broad Street and the Riverwalk. The center's two buildings total 332,000 square feet and include a cyber range, research labs, a 340-seat auditorium, secure briefing rooms, and incubator space. Classes there involve Augusta University, the Army Cyber School, the Cyber Protection Brigade, and NSA Georgia, placing military training, higher education, research, and business incubation in adjoining buildings.

Downtown community activity gathers along Broad Street, the Augusta Common, the Riverwalk, and the canal. Festivals and other gatherings use the Common and Riverwalk, including the riverfront's Jessye Norman Amphitheater. Each year during the first week of April, Augusta National Golf Club hosts the Masters Tournament, the event for which the city is internationally best known. Along the river side of downtown, the public spaces support a towpath trip past former mills, a performance by the water, or a cargo-boat tour departing from the Discovery Center inside the former Enterprise Mill. A cargo boat moving through a canal that still generates power and supplies water puts Augusta's industrial history directly into present-day city life.