Americus (Georgia)

Americus is in the Classic Heartland of Georgia.

Understand
Once known as the "Metropolis of Southwest Georgia", Americus was a city of prominence: it had the only privately financed railroad in the state, the first electric street car system, and a status as a cotton distribution center. What started as a town in 1859 became all this and a place for colleges, military installations, a WWII German POW camp, and a nidus of minor league baseball.

Americus has been visited by such likenesses as Booker T Washington, Charles Lindbergh, FDR, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Interestingly enough, Americus has also been part and parcel to some of the darkest and brightest moments of humanity, namely through witness of the Andersonville prisoner of war camp where Union soldiers endured the harshest of elements in survival during the Civil War, and the interracial Koinonia farm and Habitat for Humanity, movements that sprung out of the Civil Rights era with a vision of harmony and spiritual partnership for all.

Get in
Americus is about an hour southeast of Columbus or an hour north of Albany, by car.

Buy
Sadly, the Habitat for Humanity Global Village and Discovery Center where you could visit a recreated Papua New Guinean shanty on stilts or a Haitian lean-to has closed in this town where Habitat For Humanity originated, but you can still visit their store across the street: