24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Calvary, GA

Calvary is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Grady County, Georgia, located along Georgia State Route 111 about 15 miles southwest of Cairo, the county seat, and 23 miles north of Tallahassee, Florida.

Calvary was first listed as a census-designated place in the 2010 census, and its population slipped from 161 in 2010 to 129 in 2020; the community has never had more than about 250 residents at one time.

The Calvary area was settled around 1835-1836 by emigrants from Sampson County, North Carolina, who reportedly chose it after hearing the soil resembled their home county, and the settlement was long known as the North Carolina settlement.

Calvary got its own post office on June 15, 1869, with Harrison Fairbanks as postmaster, at a time when the area was still part of Decatur County.

Grady County, which contains Calvary, was created by the Georgia General Assembly in 1905 from parts of Decatur and Thomas counties, was named for newspaper editor and orator Henry W. Grady, has Cairo as its county seat, and had 26,236 residents in the 2020 census.

Tiny Calvary is famous across the region for Mule Day, an annual festival held on the first Saturday in November since 1973 and sponsored by the Calvary Lions Club to celebrate how mules shaped the agricultural South.

Mule Day fills the little community with more than 500 vendor booths, a parade, and contests judging the prettiest, ugliest, and most ornery mules, and in its peak years the one-day event drew crowds estimated at 70,000 or more people.

Calvary also maintains a Mule Museum building honoring the life of farmers in the days of 1850 or earlier and the important role the mule played in Southern agriculture.