Pelham, GA

At the 2020 census, Pelham was a Mitchell County city of 3,507 people on the east side of the Flint River, where U.S. Highway 19 and State Route 93 cross. It was incorporated in 1881 and named for Major John Pelham, a Confederate artillery officer killed at Kelly's Ford in 1863. The name carries a Civil War origin, but Pelham's day-to-day character comes from the fields around it: cotton, peanuts, corn, and pecans shape the agricultural picture, and Camilla, the county seat, is eight miles to the northwest.

ATTRMichael Rivera / CC BY-SA 3.0

Pelham has a couple of surprises for a town this size. Its city school district follows the municipal boundary from pre-kindergarten through grade 12, while WABW-TV, a full-power Georgia Public Broadcasting station, sends its signal across southwest Georgia from just outside town. U.S. 19 gives the city a north-south spine toward Camilla and Thomasville, and downtown still sits inside that highway crossroads. Pelham is a farm city with a Confederate-era namesake, a school system organized around the city line, and a television signal reaching far beyond the pecan groves.