Historic Sites in Atkinson County

The history of Atkinson County

Atkinson County was established in 1917 from portions of Clinch and Coffee counties, making it one of Georgia's younger counties. It carries the name of William Y. Atkinson, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives who served as governor from 1894 to 1898. The county seat is Pearson, incorporated in 1890. Long before the county existed, Muscogee (Creek) people used a route through the region later known as the Kinnaird Trail, and after the Civil War the Brunswick and Albany Railroad laid its track along roughly the same corridor, reaching Pearson by the 1870s. White settlers from middle Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee moved into the piney woods after the American Revolution. Logging was the first major industry, with timber floated down the Satilla River toward the coast, and turpentine production followed. McCranie's Turpentine Still in Willacoochee, which operated from 1925 to 1949, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a reminder of the naval stores era. Farming gradually displaced logging, with tobacco, corn, peanuts, cotton and poultry becoming mainstays. The neoclassical revival Atkinson County Courthouse, completed in 1920, joined the National Register in 1980, and the Minnie F. Corbitt Memorial Museum, founded in 1955, preserves local history.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org