Historic Sites in Ware County

The history of Ware County

Ware County was created on December 15, 1824, from part of Appling County and named for Nicholas Ware, a former Augusta mayor and U.S. senator who died that year without ever visiting the area. Its sprawling original territory was later divided to help form Clinch, Coffee, Charlton, Pierce and Bacon counties, and a large share of the county lies within the Okefenokee Swamp. In 1838, during the Second Seminole War, Native warriors killed nine people in an attack on the Wildes family before escaping into the swamp. The county seat moved from Waresboro to Waycross in 1873; the name reflected a meeting point of routes, and Waycross grew into a major junction on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, later home to CSX's Rice Yard. Timber drove the nineteenth-century economy, from longleaf pine rafted down the Satilla River to a cypress mill at Hebardville that ran a narrow-gauge railroad to haul logs from Billys Island in the swamp. Ware County author and conservationist Laura S. Walker, a champion of forestry and local history, was honored with a park bearing her name, begun as a federal project in 1937 and now Laura S. Walker State Park. Waycross-born Pulitzer Prize novelist Caroline Miller and actor Pernell Roberts are among the county's best-known natives.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orgen.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org