Atlantic and Gulf Railroad (1856–1879)

Atlantic and Gulf Railroad
Overview
Satilla 3, the first locomotive to arrive in Valdosta, late 19th century
Headquarters	Savannah, Georgia
Reporting mark	A&G
Locale	Wiregrass Region of Georgia, United States
Dates of operation	1856–1879
Successor	Plant System
Technical
Track gauge	5 ft (1,524 mm)

The Atlantic and Gulf Railroad was chartered in February 1856 by act of the Georgia General Assembly. It was also known as the Main Trunk Railroad. It traversed south Georgia from Screven to Bainbridge, Georgia. Construction began in early January 1859. Its construction was halted by the American Civil War. Construction began again after the end of the war and the line was completed to Bainbridge, Georgia by late December 1867. The route never reached all the way to the Gulf of Mexico as it had originally had intended. The company went bankrupt in 1877 and was bought in 1879 by Henry B. Plant and became incorporated into his Plant System.^[1] Its main line is currently operated by CSX Transportation. Throughout its history, the Atlantic and Gulf was closely associated with the Savannah and Albany Railroad Company and its successor the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad.

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Transcription

Episode 24: Western Expansion Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course U.S. History and today we leave behind the world of industry and corporations to talk about the Wild Wild West. Spoiler Alert: You have died of dysentery. And in the process, we’re going to explore how all of us, even those of us who are vegan or eat sustainably-produced food. benefit from massive agribusiness that has its roots in the Wild Wild West. The West still looms large in American mythology as the home of cowboys and gunslingers and houses of ill repute and freedom from pesky government interference, but in fact-- It was probably not as wild as we’ve been told. Ugh, Mr. Green, why can’t America live up to its myths just once? Because this is America, Me from the Past, home to Hollywood and Gatsby and Honey Boo Boo. We are literally in the mythmaking business. intro So, before the Hollywood western, the myth of the Frontier probably found its best expression in Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 lecture, “the Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner argued that the West was responsible for key characteristics of American culture: beliefs in individualism, political democracy, and economic mobility. Like, for 18th and 19th century Americans, the western frontier represented the opportunity to start over, and possibly to strike it rich by dint of one’s own individual effort, even back when the West was, like, Ohio.[1] In this mythology, the west was a magnet for restless young men who lit out for the uncorrupted, unoccupied, untamed territories to seek their fortune. But, in reality, most western settlers went not as individuals but as members of a family or as part of an immigrant group. And they weren’t filling up unoccupied space either because most of that territory was home to American Indians. Also, in addition to Easterners and migrants from Europe, the West was settled by Chinese people and by Mexican migrant laborers and former slaves. Plus, there were plenty of Mexicans living there already who became Americans with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And the whole west as “a place of rugged individualism and independence” turns out to be an oversimplification. I mean, the federal government, after all, had to pass the law that spurred homesteading, then had to clear out American Indians already living there, and had to sponsor the railroads that allowed the West to grow in the first place. About as individualistic as the government buying Walden Pond for Henry David Thoreau. What’s that? It’s a state park now? The government owns it? Well, there you go. Now, railroads didn’t create the desire to settle the west but they did make it possible for people who wanted to live out west to do so, for two reasons. First, without railroads there would be no way to bring crops or other goods to market. I mean, I guess you could dig a canal across Kansas, but, if you’ve ever been to Kansas that is not a tantalizing proposition. Second, railroads made life in the west profitable and livable because they brought the goods that people needed such as tools for planting and sowing, shoes for wearing, books for putting on your shelf and pretending to have read. Railroads allowed settlers to stay connected with the modernity that was becoming the hallmark of the industrialized world in the 19th century. Now, we saw last week that the Federal government played a key role in financing the transcontinental railroad, but state governments got into the act too, often to their financial detriment. In fact, so many states nearly went bankrupt financing railroads that most states now have constitutional requirements that they balance their budgets. But perhaps the central way that the Federal government supported the railroads, and western settlement and investment in general, was by leading military expeditions against American Indians, rounding them up on ever-smaller reservations, and destroying their culture. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. There was an economic as well as a racial imperative to move the Native Americans off their land: white people wanted it. Initially it was needed to set down railroad tracks, and then for farming, but eventually it was also exploited for minerals like gold and iron and other stuff that makes industry work. I mean, would you really want a territory called the Badlands unless it had valuable minerals? Early western settlement, of the Oregon Trail kind, did not result in huge conflicts with Native Americans, but by the 1850s, a steady stream of settlers kicked off increasingly bloody conflicts that lasted pretty much until 1890. Even though the fighting started before the Civil War, the end of the “war between the states” meant a new, more violent phase in the warring between American Indians and whites. General Philip H. “Little Phil” Sheridan set out to destroy the Indians’ way of life, burning villages and killing their horses and especially the buffalo that was the basis of the plains tribes’ existence. There were about 30 million buffalo in the U.S. in 1800; by 1886 the Smithsonian Institute had difficulty finding 25 “good specimens.”[2] In addition to violent resistance, some Indians turned to a spiritual movement to try to preserve their traditional way of life. Around 1890 the Ghost Dance movement arose in and around South Dakota. Ghost Dancers believed that if they gathered together to dance and engage in religious rituals, eventually the white man would disappear and the buffalo would return, and with them the Indians’ traditional customs. But even though a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors completely destroyed George Custer’s force of 250 cavalrymen at Little Bighorn in 1876, and Geronimo took years to subdue in the Southwest, western Native Americans were all defeated by 1890, and the majority were moved to reservations. Thanks, Thought Bubble. Boy, this Wild West episode sure is turning out to be loads of fun! It’s just like the Will Smith movie! Alright, Stan, this is about to get even more depressing, so let’s look at, like, some pretty mountains and western landscapes and stuff, while I deliver this next bit. So in 1871 the U.S. government ended the treaty system that had since the American Revolution treated Native American land as if they were independent nations. And then with the Dawes Act of 1887, the lands set aside for the Indians were allotted to individual families rather than to tribes. Indians who “adopted the habits of civilized life,” which in this case meant becoming small scale individualistic Jeffersonian farmers, would be granted citizenship and there were supposed to be some protections to prevent their land from falling out of Native American possession. But, these protections were not particularly protective and much of the Indian land was purchased either by white settlers or by speculators. After the passage of the Dawes Act “Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land in their possession.” [3] Oh boy, it’s time for the Mystery Document. The rules here are simple. I guess the author of the Mystery Document. And then you get to see me get shocked when I’m wrong. Alright. I have seen the Great Father Chief the Next Great Chief the Commissioner Chief; the Law Chief; and many other law chiefs and they all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice, but while all their mouths talk right I do not understand why nothing is done for my people. I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done (…) Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father's grave. (…) Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. I mean that could be almost any American Indian leader. This is totally unfair, Stan. All I really know about this is that the Great Father Chief is the President. I mean it could be any of a dozen people. How bout if I say the name in 10 seconds I don’t get punished? Aaaand start. Sitting Bull Crazy Horse Geronimo Chief Big Foot um Keokuk Chief Oshkosh Chief Joseph Ch-OH YES YES SUCK IT STAN SUCK IT! And now let us move from tragedy to tragedy. So if you’re thinking that it couldn’t get worse for the Native Americans: it did. After killing off the buffalo, taking their land and forcing Indians onto reservations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted a policy that amounted to cultural genocide. It set up boarding schools, the most famous of which was in Carlisle, PA, where Indian children were forcefully removed from their families to be civilized. This meant teaching them English, taking away their clothes, their names, and their family connections. The idea put succinctly, was to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Now, the U.S. wasn’t the only nation busy subjugating its indigenous inhabitants and putting them on reservations in the late 19th century. Like, something similar was happening in South Africa, in Chile, and even to First Peoples in Canada. And you’re usually so good, Canada. Although the slower pace of western settlement meant that there was much less bloodshed, so, another point to Canada. And as bad as the American boarding school policy was, at least it was short lived compared with Australia’s policy of removing Aboriginal children from families and placing them with white foster families, which lasted until the 1970s. Alright, Stan, we need to cheer this episode up. Let’s talk about cowboys! The Marlboro Man riding the range, herding cows and smoking, solitary in the saddle, alone in his emphysema. Surely that is the actual West, the men and women but mostly men who stood apart from the industrializing country as the last of Jefferson’s rugged individuals. But, no. Once again, we have the railroad to thank for our image of the cowboy. Like, those massive cattle drives of millions of cows across open range Texas? Yeah, they ended at towns like Abilene, and Wichita, and Dodge City--because that’s where the railheads were. Without railroads, cowboys would have just driven their cattle in endless circles. And without industrial meat processing, there wouldn’t have been a market for all that beef. And it was a lot of beef. You know what I’m talking about. I’m actually talking about beef. By the mid 1880s the days of open range ranching were coming to an end as ranchers began to enclose more and more land and set up their businesses closer to, you guessed it, railroad stations. There are also quite a few things about western farming that just fly in the face of the mythical Jeffersonian yeoman farmer ideal. Firstly, this type of agricultural work was a family affair; many women bore huge burdens on western farms, as can be seen in this excerpt from a farm woman in Arizona: “Get up, turn out my chickens, draw a pail of water … make a fire, put potatoes to cook, brush and sweep half inch of dust off floor, feed three litters of chickens, then mix biscuits, get breakfast, milk, besides work in the house and this morning had to go half mile after calves.” These family-run farms were increasingly oriented towards production of wheat and corn for national and even international markets rather than trying to eke out subsistence. Farmers in Kansas found themselves competing with farmers in Australia and Argentina, and this international competition pushed prices lower and lower. Secondly, the Great Plains, while remarkably productive agriculturally, wouldn’t be nearly as good for producing crops without massive irrigation projects. Much of the water needed for plains agriculture comes a massive underground lake, the Oglala Aquifer. Don’t worry, by the way, the Aquifer is fed by a magic and permanent H20 factory in the core of the earth that you can learn about in Hank’s show, Crash Course Chemistr--What’s that? It’s going dry. MY GOD THIS IS A DEPRESSING EPISODE. Anyway, large-scale irrigation projects necessitate big capital investments and therefore large, consolidated agricultural enterprises that start to look more like agri-business than family farms. I mean, by 1900, California was home to giant commercial farms reliant on irrigation and chemical fertilizers. Some of them were owned, not by families, but by big corporations like the Southern Pacific Railroad. And they were worked by migrant farm laborers from China, the Philippines, Japan, Mexico. As Henry George, a critic of late 19th century corporate capitalism, wrote “California is not a country of farms, but … of plantations and estates.”[4] When studying American history, it’s really easy to get caught up in the excitement of industrial capitalism with its robber barons, and new technologies, and fancy cities because that world looks very familiar to us, probably because it’s the one in which we live. After all, if I was running a farm like that Arizona woman I talked about earlier, there’s no way I could be making these videos because I’d be chasing my calves. I don’t even know what a litter of chickens is. Is it four chickens? Twelve? Six? It’s probably twelve because eggs do come in dozens. The massive agricultural surplus contemporary farms create, and the efficient transportation network that gets that surplus to me quickly, makes everything else possible--from YouTube to Chevy Volts. And no matter who you are, you benefit from the products that result from that massive surplus. That’s why we’re watching YouTube right now. Or watching Crash Course on DVD, available for pre-order now. Look at that beautiful box set of DVDs that would not be possible without a massive agricultural surplus. So, agriculture and animal husbandry did change a lot in late 19th century America as we came to embrace the market driven ethos that we either celebrate or decry these days. And in the end, the Wild West ends up looking a lot more like industrial capitalism than like a Larry McMurtry novel. The Wild West, like the rest of the industrialized world, was incentivized to increase productivity and was shaped by an increasingly international economic system. And it’s worth remembering that even though we think of the Oregon Trail and the Wild West being part of the same thing, in fact, they were separated by the most important event in American history: the Civil War. I know that ain’t the mythologizing you’ll find in Tombstone, but it is true. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller. Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko. The associate producer of the show is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Halse Rojas, and myself. And our graphics team is Thought Café. Every week, there’s a new caption for the libertage. If you’d like to suggest one you can do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course. If you enjoy it, make sure you subscribe. And as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome...OH, ahh I didn’t get a good push. Westward Expansion - ________________ [1] Foner, Give me Liberty ebook version p. 644 [2] Foner Give me Liberty ebook version p. 648 [3] Ibid p 654. [4] Foner Give me Liberty p. 647

History

Brunswick versus Savannah

In the 1830s, a railroad route through south Georgia to the Atlantic coast was the goal of several different competing companies. The route was desired due to the growth of cotton production in the area and the lack of navigable rivers through the area. The head of navigation on the Flint River was at Albany, Georgia, the center of cotton trade in the region; however, the Flint River was relatively small and Apalachicola Bay lacked a decent harbor. There were two major ports on Georgia's Atlantic coast at the time: Brunswick and Savannah.

The Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company received its charter from the Georgia General Assembly on December 22, 1835. Their charter allowed them to select a route between Brunswick, Georgia and Florida, and forbade another route from existing with 20 miles (32 km) of their own. On that same day, the Great Western Railroad Company received their charter. Theirs allowed for a route from Macon to the start of the Altamaha River on either side of the Ocmulgee River with the option of extending the line to Brunswick and to the Flint River. The latter soon faded into obscurity. By 1836, the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company was advertising their desire for a route from Brunswick to Apalachicola.^[2] The Brunswick and Florida faced major setbacks due to funding problems.

On December 25, 1847, the Savannah and Albany Railroad Company was chartered by the Georgia General Assembly to construct a rail line from a point along the Central of Georgia Railway near Savannah to Albany with the possibility of extending the railroad to the Chattahoochee River at any time. The bill was introduced by Nelson Tift. By 1853, some in the company were discussing a branch line to Florida. In February 1854, the stock company rebranded themselves the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad through a new charter from the state, but had also completed very little of the planned route. They also lacked the legal right to a more southern route that the Brunswick and Florida Railroad had by its charters.^[1]

By April 1854, citizens in south Georgia were hoping that the two companies would avoid competition with one another and construct a "main trunk" line together.^[3] In November 1855, a bill was introduced to the Georgia General Assembly by Alexander Lawton to give the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf's southern branch line the right to cross the line of the Brunswick and Florida, but it did not pass.^[4]

Establishment and construction

In early 1856, a compromise was reached between the two competing companies was passed by the Georgia General Assembly. They would both build to a certain point in south Georgia, and then a main trunk line was to be built. The company chartered to build that line was incorporated as the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad Company in February 1856. Construction of the Atlantic and Gulf was forbidden until the junction of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad and the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad. After that junction had been made the line was to state from the intersection of the county lines of Appling, Ware, and Wayne. The borders of those counties have changed substantially since the passage of the act creating the railroad. The act authorized the company to extend the route to the western state line at any point between Fort Gaines, Georgia and the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers with the route chosen to allow for speedy access to the Gulf of Mexico through either Pensacola, Florida or Mobile, Alabama. At that time the Brunswick and Florida had only completed the first 32 miles (51 km) of its line. On March 31, 1856, the board of commissioners for the Atlantic and Gulf met in Milledgeville to plan for the opening of books and the subscription of stocks. By October 22, 1856, the commissioners showed a total of $600,000 in stock raised. On October, the state of Georgia subscribed to a total of $500,000. James P. Screven was named as the president of the company in December 1856.^[5] He was also the president of the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad.

Members of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company also met in December 1856 to discuss the changes to the charter made by the Georgia legislature. They recommended that their company refuse to junction with or surrender charter privileges to the Atlantic and Gulf Company unless it was beneficial to the development of the city of Brunswick. They also wanted the junction, if it was to take place, to be located east of the Satilla River.^[6] The Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company was still busy in April 1857 trying to get the citizen of Lowndes and Berrien counties on their side and claimed that $40,000 in stock had been raised in Lowndes County alone.^[7] At that same time, the Savannah Albany, and Gulf Railroad had finished grading the section of their line between the Altamaha River and the Little Satilla River.^[8] That section is between modern Doctortown and Screven in Wayne County, Georgia. Portions of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company were being openly critical of the route of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad until its construction was well underway in late 1859. Another line, the Brunswick and Pensacola Railroad was a second projected route that was to link the junction of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad and the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad at what is now Glenmore, Georgia to the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad at Thomasville, Georgia. That line was never constructed. The Brunswick faction began focusing on the branch line they had planned to Albany, which would evolve into Brunswick and Albany Railroad by 1861.

The Wiregrass Region that the route of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad was to pass through was sparsely populated. It dominated by large stands of longleaf pines and wetlands, and crossed by several rivers. Most of the work was done by enslaved people.

Three different routes through Lowndes County were surveyed by E.L. Heriot, Chief Engineer for the company: a route through northern Troupville a line through northern Lowndes County, and a line passing through Lowndes County and crossing the Withlacoochee River at Mineral Springs. On June 17, 1858, the company announced it had chosen the southernmost route of the three. In July 1858, a meeting of citizens from Berrien and Lowndes counties expressed their disapproval with the route chosen. They commented that the route chosen was too close to the Florida state line to be beneficial to the citizen of south Georgia and that because of it, the Atlantic and Gulf was in violation of its charter.^[9]

Construction of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad began on January 2, 1859, at the Little Satilla River near modern Screven, Georgia. Construction averaged 1.27 miles (2.04 km) a week. In July 1859, James P. Screven died and was replaced by his son John Screven as president of Atlantic and Gulf. In late 1860, Atlantic and Gulf failed to pay contractors McDowell and Callahan due to state securities stagnating and private investors failing to pay their installments. The contracting firm Callahan & Co. had been hired to construct the 24 miles (39 km) of bridging and grading west of Thomasville.^[10]

Civil War

The American Civil War disrupted the construction of the Atlantic and Gulf. By April 1861, the railroad had just reached Thomasville. The original completion date to Bainbridge was supposed to be October 15, 1861.^[10]

The line from the initial point in Wayne County to Savannah continued to operate as the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad until the Georgia General Assembly consolidated that line under Atlantic and Gulf effective on May 1, 1863. The Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad had previously operated under its own name between Savannah and Thomasville. At the start of 1864, workers had graded the main line route to a point within about 5 miles (8.0 km) from Bainbridge. 15 miles (24 km) of the portion west of Thomasville already had crossties on the grade.

In April 1861, the Atlantic and Gulf and Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad began building a branch line between Lawton, Georgia and Live Oak, Florida, on the Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad to enable the movement of troops and supplies between Georgia and Florida. Grading of the route was completed by May 1863.^[11] This link was not completed until March 1865, a month before the end of hostilities.^[12] It was the first railroad connecting the states of Florida and Georgia. After the war, it was operated by the Atlantic and Gulf as the Florida Division.

Originally the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad Company had two junctions with the Brunswick and Florida Railroad. The first was with the Brunswick and Florida's branch line from what is now Schlatterville to what is now Waycross, Georgia. The Brunswick and Florida's main line's primary junction with the Atlantic and Gulf was at Glenmore, but during the Civil War 60 miles (97 km) of the branch line which had extended all the way to Waresboro, Georgia was taken up by the Confederate government of Georgia to be used in more militarily important regions. After the Civil War, Brunswick and Florida Railroad's line was taken over by the Brunswick and Albany Railroad in 1869. The Schlatterville to Glenmore route was abandoned because of the growth of Waycross.^[13]

The Atlantic and Gulf line remained open throughout most of the Civil War. Its remaining open allowed many people from central Georgia and coastal Georgia to take refuge in towns like Thomasville and Valdosta in south Georgia during the Atlanta Campaign and Sherman's March to the Sea from Summer to Autumn 1864. On December 19, 1864, the Battle of Altamaha Bridge took place at Atlantic and Gulf's trestle over the Altamaha River near Doctortown. The Confederate victory temporarily kept the only train route from coastal Georgia to south Georgia open.

The railroad sustained some damage the during Civil War compared to other railroads^{[clarification needed]} in Georgia. An estimated 6.5 miles (10.5 km) of the Atlantic and Gulf's rails were irreparably destroyed, with a total of 25.5 miles (41.0 km) damaged from Georgetown, Chatham County, Georgia to Morgan Lake near the Altamaha River. The trestles across the Ogeechee and the Little Ogeechee rivers were destroyed, but the long trestle across the Altamaha River was undamaged and ready to use by June 1865, when control of the Atlantic and Gulf was restored to its board of directors by General Henry Warner Birge.^[14]

Financial decline

By November 1865, the grading of the route to Bainbridge had been completed and the rails were set to be purchased when company finances allowed. By late December 1867, the Atlantic and Gulf's line had been completed to Bainbridge, Georgia.

In 1869, the Atlantic and Gulf purchased the line under construction by the South Georgia and Florida Railroad. It had been chartered by the Georgia General Assembly on December 22, 1857 to construct a railroad between Albany, Georgia and Thomasville, Georgia and from there to the most advantageous point on the Florida line. Only the portion of the line from Pelham, Georgia to Thomasville had been completed by the time of the purchase. The line was completed all the way to Albany within a year. The line was operated by the Atlantic and Gulf as their Albany Division.

In 1871, the Atlantic and Gulf constructed a two-mile extension of its line to the Savannah River.

By January 1872, the Atlantic and Gulf was still trying to expand beyond Bainbridge to the Gulf of Mexico and was still reporting increasing profits. By August, it asked for financial aid from the state of Georgia to help with the completion of the railroad to Pollard, Alabama, but the bill failed to become law in that session or the next. In March 1874, the state of Georgia sold 75% of its shares of stock in Atlantic and Gulf.

On January 1, 1877, Atlantic and Gulf declared bankruptcy after defaulting on several bonds. It had been hard hit by the Long Depression. In November 1879, it was bought by Henry B. Plant at a foreclosure sale and reorganized in December as the Savannah, Florida, and Western Railway, which developed into his Plant System.^[1]

Effect on local geography

The construction of the railroad had a profound effect upon the geography of south Georgia. The coming of railroad helped establish a number of new counties and moved several county seats. In general, the Atlantic and Gulf opened up south Georgia to settlement and population growth while also connecting it to areas from which it had previously been isolated. For decades after the railroad's establishment, new towns grew up along its route.

New counties

Pierce County on December 18, 1857.
Brooks County on December 11, 1858.
Echols County on December 13, 1858.

County seat changes

Lowndes County's seat changed from Troupville, Georgia to Valdosta, Georgia on December 7, 1860.
Clinch County's seat changed from Magnolia, Georgia to Station No. 11 on December 12, 1860.
Ware County's seat changed from Waresboro, Georgia to Waycross, Georgia in early 1873.
Wayne County's seat changed from Waynesville, Georgia to Jesup, Georgia at the junction of Macon and Brunswick and Atlantic and Gulf railroads also in early 1873.

Listing of stations

Even though the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad and the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad were nominally separate entities before they merged in 1863, the Atlantic and Gulf continued with the station numbering system of the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad. Over time additional stations were created as communities grew up along the route.

Original Station No.	Opening Date^[10]	Notes^[15]	Location	Coordinates
Atlantic and Gulf Railroad: Main Line
Station No. 0	September 1856	Successor depot demolished. Original location is now Chatham County DFCS.	Savannah
Station No. 1			Miller's
Station No. 1 ½	October 1856		Ways Station
Station No. 2	December 1856		Fleming
Station No. 3	March 1857		McIntosh
Station No. 4		Successor depot still in existence, but was moved in 1980 across the tracks.	Walthourville
Station No. 4 ½		Successor depot still in existence.	Johnston Station	31°42′37″N 81°44′41″W / 31.710201°N 81.744761°W / 31.710201; -81.744761
Station No. 5			Doctortown
Station No. 6		Successor depot still in existence, but in a slightly different location than that of the A&G's.	Jesup	31°36′19″N 81°52′58″W / 31.605204°N 81.882659°W / 31.605204; -81.882659
Station No. 7	April 1858	Initial starting point of Atlantic and Gulf Railroad.	Screven
Station No. 7 ½			Patterson
Station No. 8	May 1, 1859	Successor depot still in existence.	Blackshear	31°18′10″N 82°14′28″W / 31.302846°N 82.241144°W / 31.302846; -82.241144
			Malvern
Station No. 9	July 4, 1859	Junction with the branch line of Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company. Successor depot still in existence.	Waycross	31°12′32″N 82°21′35″W / 31.208908°N 82.359585°W / 31.208908; -82.359585
		A mile away from the Waycross station. Now part of Waycross.	Tebeauville
Station No. 10	October 12, 1859	Junction with the main line of Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company.	Glenmore
			Argyl
Station No. 11	December 21, 1859	Successor depot still in existence.	Homerville	31°02′10″N 82°44′44″W / 31.036239°N 82.745626°W / 31.036239; -82.745626
Station No. 12	February 28, 1860	Successor depot still in existence, but was moved away from the railroad.	Du Pont	30°59′18″N 82°52′17″W / 30.988311°N 82.871430°W / 30.988311; -82.871430
Station No. 13	March 23, 1860		Stockton
Station No. 14	June 18, 1860		Naylor
Station No. 15	July 4, 1860^[16] July 25, 1860^[10]	Successor depot demolished to make room for the James Beck Overpass.	Valdosta	30°49′48″N 83°16′41″W / 30.830033°N 83.277970°W / 30.830033; -83.277970
			Ousley
Station No. 16	October 23, 1860	Successor depot demolished.	Quitman	30°46′48″N 83°33′26″W / 30.779987°N 83.557246°W / 30.779987; -83.557246
Station No. 17			Dixie
Station No. 18	January 28, 1861	Successor depot still in existence.	Boston	30°47′36″N 83°47′25″W / 30.793383°N 83.790225°W / 30.793383; -83.790225
Station No. 19	April 16, 1861	Successor depot still in existence.	Thomasville	30°50′02″N 83°59′02″W / 30.833991°N 83.984007°W / 30.833991; -83.984007
Station No. 20		Successor depot still in existence.	Cairo	30°52′38″N 84°12′31″W / 30.877139°N 84.208558°W / 30.877139; -84.208558
Station No. 21			Whigham
Station No. 22	December 1867	Successor depot still in existence, but was moved to a local park in 1980.	Climax
Station No. 23	December 1867		Bainbridge
Atlantic and Gulf Railroad: Florida Division
		Junction with Main Line	Du Pont, Georgia
			Tarver, Georgia
			Jasper, Florida
			Suwannee, Florida
			Rixford, Florida
		Junction with Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad	Live Oak, Florida
Atlantic and Gulf Railroad: Albany Division
		Junction with Main Line	Thomasville
			Ochlocknee
			Pelham
			Camilla
			Baconton
			Hardaway
			Albany

Company presidents

Savannah and Albany Railroad

James Proctor Screven (1852–1854)

Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad

James Proctor Screven (1854–1859)
John Screven (1859–1861)