Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Oglethorpe Oglethorpe, GA

Oglethorpe is a city in Macon County in west-central Georgia — not to be confused with Oglethorpe University in Atlanta or with Oglethorpe County — and it serves as the county seat of Macon County.

The city was named for James Edward Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony of Georgia.

Oglethorpe was founded in 1838, incorporated as a town in 1849, and incorporated as a city in 1852.

The city occupies about two square miles on the banks of the Flint River, on land first settled by Timothy Barnard before the American Revolution.

Oglethorpe became the seat of Macon County in 1857, after voters approved moving it from Lanier once the Central of Georgia Railway laid its line through Oglethorpe.

The city stood in Georgia's Black Belt, where enslaved people outnumbered white residents and cultivated cotton as a commodity crop.

Oglethorpe was once one of the largest cities in southwestern Georgia, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia reports an estimated population of 20,000 in the late 1850s.

Epidemics of malaria and smallpox caused heavy fatalities in the early 1860s, and many remaining residents fled south to Americus to escape disease; the city never recovered its former size.

An 1893 bid to move the county seat from Oglethorpe to Montezuma failed, and Oglethorpe remains the seat today.

The population was 995 at the 2020 census, down from 1,328 in 2010.