Williamson, GA

Williamson is a Pike County city whose name arrived with the railroad. Before the tracks, the settlement was called Driver for an innkeeper and then Stearnsville; in 1887 two Atlanta-bound lines crossed here, and the community took the name of Judge Ike Williamson, who donated land for the railroad. The Candler Field Museum later gave Williamson an aviation chapter, recreating Atlanta's 1920s and 1930s airport at Peach State Airport. That museum closed in 2021, but the idea still fits the place: Williamson's story runs from inn, to rail junction, to an airfield in the middle of Georgia.