Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Attapulgus, GA

Attapulgus is a small city in Decatur County in Georgia's southwest corner, close to the Florida state line, and part of the Bainbridge micropolitan area.

The town's name comes from a Muscogee word meaning 'dogwood.'

Attapulgus gave its name to the clay mineral attapulgite: because the mineral is so abundant in the clay soils around the town, the French mineralogist de Lapparent named the newly defined mineral species after Attapulgus in 1935.

The fuller's earth deposits around Attapulgus made it one of the two largest clay-producing centers in the United States, with the Georgia–Florida district producing several hundred thousand tons of bleaching clay a year, much of it used by the oil industry.

The 2020 census counted 454 residents in Attapulgus, up slightly from 449 in 2010, after a count of 492 back in 2000.

Attapulgus covers about 0.8 square miles at roughly 310 feet above sea level.

Attapulgus was the birthplace of civil rights leader Hosea Williams (1926–2000), a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Williams, who had been run out of Attapulgus by a lynch mob at the age of thirteen, went on to lead, with John Lewis, the famous 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that helped spur passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Attapulgus is one of only four incorporated cities in Decatur County, alongside Bainbridge, Brinson and Climax.

Decatur County was created on December 8, 1823 and named for War of 1812 naval hero Commodore Stephen Decatur; its seat is Bainbridge, and the county counted 29,367 residents in the 2020 census.