Richland, GA

Richland is a Stewart County city on the U.S. 280 and Georgia 520 corridor, about 36 miles southeast of Columbus. The settlement began as Chisholm in 1827, when Henry Audulf established a community here. The Georgia General Assembly incorporated it as Richland in 1889, and the name came from the local Richland Baptist Church. The railroad arrived in the 1880s, connecting Richland east and west and reaching the Chattahoochee River by 1890.

ATTRRivers Langley; SaveRivers / CC BY-SA 3.0

Broad Street still holds the town’s historic brick storefronts and the Richland Inn, built in 1889 by the Americus Investment Company. The Gordy home also stands along Broad Street; Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s mother, was born in Richland in 1898. Today the city’s map still follows the old corridor, with county roads, rail history, downtown buildings, Providence Canyon trips, and Florence Marina tying the town to west Georgia. The old rail line still organizes the way people read the town. Richland is a small place with a surprisingly deep railroad-and-family-history spine.