Augusta (population 41,783) is on the South Carolina border, 136 miles east of Atlanta via I-20/520. Georgia’s most famous event, the Masters golf tournament, is held in April at the Augusta National Country Club.

Augusta is also the birthplace of soul singer James Brown.

Augusta was Georgia’s second colonial settlement. It was established on the Savannah River in 1736 as a fur-trading center at the behest of James Oglethorpe, who had recently founded Savannah.

It served as the state capital from 1786 to 1795 and, owing to its riverside location, was, until the mid-twentieth century, the United States’ second-largest inland cotton market (after Memphis). During the Civil War it served as an ordnance center. Augusta’s 41,783 residents are a part of a wider metropolitan population of 415,000. The enormous US-Army training center, Fort Gordon, is 15 miles southwest of the city.

The Cotton Exchange Welcome Center and Museum, built in 1886, features exhibits about the early cotton industry, and it has a brochure that outlines a driving tour of the historic sites. They include Meadow Garden House Museum, the home of George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the beautifully restored Ezekiel Harris House, built in 1797, the Appleby House (circa 1830), the Old Government House (1801), the boyhood home of President Woodrow Wilson, the Augusta Museum of History, and also the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.

The beautiful Riverwalk Augusta follows the Savannah River from 5th to 10th Streets, past a marina, a range of eateries, the Morris Museum of Art, the vast Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, and the National Science Center’s Fort Discovery.

Buses service the area, and the nearest trains and international airport are in Atlanta.