Bowman, GA

Bowman is a city in northwestern Elbert County, Georgia, where State Routes 17 and 172 meet. Its story starts with the Elberton Air Line Railroad: the line connected Elberton and Toccoa, and the depot was named for Thomas Jefferson Bowman, who surveyed land around the railroad. The first train arrived in 1878, when the settlement had little more than a depot and storehouse. A well and public square became the center of the growing community, and Bowman was incorporated in 1907.

By the early twentieth century Bowman was a mercantile center with a brickyard, shoe and harness shop, blacksmith, lumberyard, bank, drugstore, grocery, and telephone company. The Bowman Commercial Historic District now gathers those railroad-era businesses around the public square. The Big Iron Crank-Up and Bowman Fall Festival keep the square on the calendar, while the Broad River Water Trail adds a second landscape beyond the tracks. Bowman is a small Georgia city whose map begins with a railroad depot and keeps unfolding through a well, a square, shops, festivals, and the roads radiating toward Elberton, Royston, Hartwell, and Athens.