Historic Sites in Early County

The history of Early County

Early County was created on December 15, 1818, from land in southwest Georgia taken from the Lower Muscogee (Creek). Named for Peter Early, governor of Georgia from 1813 to 1815, it originally covered roughly 3,770 square miles, and successive divisions trimmed it to about 511 square miles. People lived here long before the Creek: between about 350 and 600 CE, Woodland-era communities built the Kolomoki Mounds, one of the largest mound complexes in the eastern United States, with earthworks aligned to the sun at the spring equinox and summer solstice. The site is now preserved as Kolomoki Mounds State Park near Blakely. When Baker County was carved from Early in 1825, residents chose Blakely as the new county seat and named it for naval captain Johnston Blakeley, whose ship disappeared at sea in 1814. The town was incorporated in 1870. During the Civil War, the Confederate navy yard at Saffold on the Chattahoochee River produced the gunboat CSS Chattahoochee, delivered in December 1862, and two more vessels were still under construction when the war ended. On the courthouse square in Blakely stands one of the last surviving wooden flagpoles from the Civil War era. Peanuts, cotton, beef cattle, and timber have long sustained the county's economy.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.org