Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lumber City, GA

Lumber City is a small city in eastern Telfair County in south-central Georgia, and true to its name it was founded around a sawmill near the original town site.

A company of lumbermen from Maine bought thousands of acres of south Georgia pine forest and built large sawmills on the Ocmulgee River, founding the community that became Lumber City.

The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Lumber City as a town in 1889, with the city giving the incorporation date as September 3, 1889.

Lumber City stands at the confluence of the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers, which join there to form the Altamaha River, Georgia's largest river system.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, steamboats carried lumber, turpentine and rosin from Lumber City down the Ocmulgee and Altamaha rivers to Brunswick and Darien, and the town was once known as the 'Artesian City' for its numerous artesian wells.

The historic railroad trestle over the Ocmulgee River just south of town, visible from U.S. Highway 341 and possibly dating to about 1910, once included a rotating swing span for river traffic.

The 2020 census counted 967 people in Lumber City, living in 494 households, down from 1,328 residents in 2010.

Lumber City covers about 1.9 square miles in Telfair County, a county created in 1807 and named for Georgia governor Edward Telfair, whose modern county seat is McRae-Helena.

Novelist Brainard Cheney, associated with the Southern Agrarians and the author of novels set on the Ocmulgee River, moved to Lumber City with his family in 1906 and is considered the town's most famous literary figure.

In 1900, before incorporation-era growth peaked, Lumber City already shipped large quantities of lumber by both rail and river and had its own bank branch, telegraph and express offices.