Richland Historic District

Richland is a small southwest Georgia town that began at the crossing of the Americus-Lumpkin and Columbus-Albany roads, where Henry Audulf settled in 1827. Railroads reached it in 1885 and 1890, turning it into a junction and a shipping center for cotton and other crops. The historic district preserves that growth: one- and two-story brick commercial buildings from the 1890s to 1920s, including the 1890 Richland Hotel and Bank, a ca. 1900 mule barn, the 1913 depot, the 1905 city hall and the 1907 waterworks. Surrounding streets hold mostly wood-framed houses in Victorian Eclectic, Neoclassical and Craftsman styles, plus two antebellum houses, three churches, two cemeteries and a 1934 school. Housing for upper, middle and working-class black and white residents survives. The town's historic fabric was virtually complete by 1935, after the boll weevil, the Depression and trucking slowed growth.