Georgia is the largest State east of the Mississippi River, and was founded in 1735 by James Oglethorpe, an Englishman who landed in Savannah and established the 13th colony in the New World. Georgia is the only State to be named after a British Monarch. It is geographically diverse, with landscapes ranging from mountains in the northeast to the mysterious, low-lying Okefenokee Swamp in the south, called the land of the ‘trembling earth’ by the region’s Native American tribes. It was in this State that gold was first struck in North America in the early part of the 19th century, and the gold rush that followed centered around the town of Dahlonega.

Now a booming services-industry center with a population of over 400,000 (and a metro population topping 4 million), Atlanta – known as ‘The City in a Forest’ – most dramatically expresses the transition from Old South to New. Along its residential streets, magnolia and dogwood trees surround handsome Georgian-style homes, yet only blocks away, some of the country’s most dazzling contemporary buildings are rising at record speed to add to Atlanta’s ever-growing skyline.
Georgia’s varied climate ranges from the low humidity of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the subtropical southern coastal region.