Georgia Railroad and Banking Company - History

History

It was chartered in 1833 in Augusta, Georgia. In 1835, the charter was amended to include banking. Originally the line was chartered to build a railroad from Augusta to Athens with a branch to Madison.

The railroad opened in 1845 with its Chief Engineer being J. Edgar Thomson and Richard Peters as the first Superintendent.

At that time the rates were as follows:

• 5¢ per mile for passengers
• 50¢ per 100 miles (160 km) for freight

Several other railroads were then under construction:

• The Western and Atlantic Railroad was chartered to build a line from 7 miles (11 km) south of the Chattahoochee River, at a point that was named Terminus (present-day Atlanta) to Chattanooga, Tennessee (formerly Ross Landing).

• The South Carolina Railroad was building a line from Charleston, South Carolina to North Augusta, South Carolina (formerly Hamburg).

• The Memphis and Charleston Railroad was being built from Memphis, Tennessee to Chattanooga.

• The Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad were both constructing rival lines between Louisville, Kentucky and Nashville, Tennessee.

The Georgia Railroad decided to extend the Madison branch to Terminus (Atlanta) and thus compete with the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia (later the Central of Georgia Railroad), which together with the Macon and Western Railroad, were competing for traffic through Charleston's rival port of Savannah, Georgia. By 1850, this railroad had built 213 miles (343 km) of track and was up to 232 miles (373 km) by 1860. At the time, goods from the Mississippi and Ohio valleys had to go by riverboat to New Orleans and then via coastal steamships around the Florida Keys to get to the big population centers in the northeast. Shipping cross-country by rail to the ports of Charleston and Savannah made perfect economic sense.