With a rich history dating as back as the early 1700s, Augusta in Georgia is located in the east central section of the state, approximately 150 miles east of Atlanta on Interstate 20. Founded during the British colonial period as a trading outpost, Augusta is Georgia’s second oldest and second largest city. Named in honor of the bride of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, the settlement was established in 1736 by British General James Oglethorpe.

Augusta was home to many neighboring tribes of Creek and Cherokee Indians and built on the flat slopes of the Savannah River. Augusta boasts of the only structure ever built by the Confederate States of America, the site of the old Confederate Powderworks during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. During the cotton boom, Augusta became the second largest inland cotton market in the world with the construction of the Augusta Canal in 1847.

From 1785 until 1795 Augusta served as the state capital of Georgia. It has many historically significant homes and buildings such as the Cotton Exchange, established in 1872; the boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson (28th president of the United States); Ezekiel Harris House (1797); George Walton home (signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Springfield Baptist Church, the oldest African American church in America.

A center for medicine, manufacturing and military, the City of Augusta Consolidated with Richmond County to form Augusta-Richmond County in 1996.