Bishop, GA

Bishop is an Oconee County town in the northeast Georgia Piedmont, incorporated in 1890 after starting as a crossroads community. The railroad and cotton trade helped it expand, and the 1920s were its high-water period, with about three hundred people in the 1920s and homes, businesses, churches, schools, and social groups clustered around the town. Bishop's historic district joined the National Register in 1996, which gives the older streets a formal place in the county's story. The older buildings still give the town its shape.

ATTRMichael Rivera / CC BY 4.0

One of Bishop's best community rooms is literally an old church. The First Christian Church building, put up between 1915 and 1924 through member fundraising, was given to the town in the late 1980s. It later served as Oconee County's senior center before returning to town use. A renovation added an emergency exit and expanded the listed capacity from 49 to 384. Add council meetings and the annual Light the Lights holiday event, and Bishop's present-day calendar still grows out of those older gathering places.