| history |
What makes a
Friendly City?
The history of Tifton
words & photography by Davis Cobb
Acity isn’ t built in a day, nor is it built by one set of hands— that sentiment rings no less true for Tifton. Across its storied legacy, from humble beginnings to the city it is today, the Friendly City has been shaped, elevated, and transformed by a number of hands— some working on their own, others en masse, but all intent on making Tifton a greater place to live.
Before the late 1800s, there were hardly any buildings in the area we now know as Tift County, save for a few scattered, independent farms— only miles and miles of untouched forest. But in that forest, a man named Henry Harding Tift saw opportunity.
Leaving his home in Mystic, Connecticut, for the woods of Berrien County, Tift purchased a tract of land, located at the highest ground south of Macon’ s fall line and along the newly established Brunswick and Albany railway, and established a sawmill to produce wood from the surrounding woodland.
Salvaged from parts of a Dawson-based sawmill owned by the father of Bessie Willingham, who would later become Tift’ s wife, Tift’ s sawmill converted the nearby trees into timber at a steady, determined rate, putting them to use in his family’ s shipbuilding business, as material for barrels and other items, or sending it across the sea to construct homes and buildings in Britain.
The facility was massive, even by today’ s standards, running across multiple city blocks down what is now Second Street towards U. S. Highway 82 and operating 24 hours a day.
As the sawmill continued to operate, the town that would become Tifton began to grow around it, first emerging as quick, slipshod cabins, then becoming more orderly as time went on.
The introduction of the Georgia Southern and Florida railway in the late 1880s, running north and south, led to explosive growth around its intersection with the Brunswick-Albany line— right around Tift’ s settlement— that continued into the turn of the century.
Before the late 1800s, there were hardly any buildings in the area we now know as Tift County, save for a few scattered, independent farms— only miles and miles of untouched forest.
8 TiftonScene | JANUARY 2026