Augusta is a city on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Georgia and the county seat of Richmond County. The city lies directly across the Savannah River from North Augusta, South Carolina at the head of its navigable portion. Augusta, the third most populous city in Georgia (following Atlanta and Columbus), is situated in the Fall Line region of the state.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Augusta had a 2024 population of 201,737 It is the 124th most populous city in the United States and the 92nd-largest metropolitan area. The process of consolidation between the city of Augusta and Richmond County began with a 1995 referendum in the two jurisdictions. The merger was completed on July 1, 1996, but it excluded the municipalities of Blythe and Hephzibah. Augusta is the principal city of the Augusta metropolitan area. In 2020 the metro area had a population of 611,000, Augusta's warm climate made it a major resort town of the Eastern United States in the early and mid-20th century. Internationally, Augusta is best known for hosting the Masters golf tournament each spring. The Masters brings over 200,000 visitors from around the world to the Augusta National Golf Club.
Augusta lies approximately two hours away from downtown Atlanta by car via I-20. The city is home to Fort Gordon, a major U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Eisenhower. In 2016, it was announced that the new National Cyber Security Headquarters would be based in Augusta.
History
Establishment
thumb|upright|[[James Oglethorpe, founder of Augusta]]
In 1735, two years after James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, he sent a detachment of troops to explore the upper Savannah River. He gave them an order to build a fort at the head of the navigable part of the river. The expedition was led by Noble Jones, who the following year created a settlement as a first line of defense for coastal areas against potential Spanish or French invasion from the interior. Oglethorpe named the town in honor of Princess Augusta, the mother of King George III and the wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
Oglethorpe visited Augusta in September 1739 on his return to Savannah from a perilous visit to Coweta Town, near present-day Phenix City, Alabama. There, he had met with a convention of 7,000 Native American warriors and concluded a peace treaty with them in their territories in northern and western Georgia. During the American Revolutionary War, the Siege of Augusta resulted in the retaking the city from the British by the Americans. Augusta was the second state capital of Georgia from 1785 until 1795. A historical marker in Augusta reads:
Development
Augusta developed rapidly as a market town as the Black Belt in the Piedmont was developed for cotton cultivation. Invention of the cotton gin made processing of short-staple cotton profitable, and this type of cotton was well-suited to the upland areas. Cotton plantations were worked by slave labor, with hundreds of thousands of slaves shipped from the Upper South to the Deep South in the domestic slave trade. Many of the slaves were brought from the Lowcountry, where their Gullah culture had developed on the large Sea Island cotton and rice plantations.
During the American Civil War, Augusta was home to many war industries, including the main facilities of the vast Confederate Powderworks. After the war, Augusta had a booming textile industry leading to the construction of many mills along the Augusta Canal to include Enterprise Mill, Sibley Mill, and King Mill.
The devastating Augusta fire of 1916 damaged 25 blocks of the city's downtown and wiped out many buildings of historical significance, some dating back to the 18th century.
Augusta was a major center of economic activity during Reconstruction and thereafter. In the mid-20th century, it was a site of civil rights demonstrations. In 1970, Charles Oatman, a mentally disabled teenager, was killed by his cellmates in an Augusta jail. A protest against his death broke out into a riot involving some 500 people; during the unrest, six Black men were killed by police, each found to have been shot in the back. The noted singer and entertainer James Brown, a native of Augusta, was called in to help quell lingering tensions, which he succeeded in doing. Air, groundwater, and soil were all believed to be contaminated, and people living in the area were hoping for government assistance to move away from Hyde Park. Two of five neighborhoods in Hyde Park appeared to have arsenic, chromium, and dioxin, while all five were found to have PCBs and lead.
Climate
As with the rest of the state, Augusta has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen Cfa), with short, mild winters, very hot, humid summers, and a wide diurnal temperature variation throughout much of the year, despite its low elevation and humidity. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from in January to in July; there are 53 nights with the low reaching the freezing mark, 82 days reaching or exceeding , and 5.5 days reaching annually. Extreme temperatures range from on January 21, 1985 up to on August 10, 2007, and August 21, 1983. Snowfall is not nearly as common as in Atlanta, due largely to Augusta's elevation, with downtown Augusta being about lower than downtown Atlanta. The heaviest recorded snowfall was in February 1973 with Freezing rain is also a threat in wintertime.