Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Roberta, GA

Roberta is a small city in Crawford County in central Georgia, part of the Macon metropolitan area, whose motto is 'A small town with a big heart.'

Roberta sprang up in 1888 when the Atlanta and Florida Railroad bypassed the older county seat of Knoxville by about a mile and built a station, drawing residents to a new town first called 'New Knoxville.'

Landowner Hiram David McCrary gave the railroad part of his land and was granted naming rights, choosing the name Roberta for his seven-year-old daughter; he went on to become the town's first elected mayor.

Roberta was incorporated as a city in 1910, its limits extended 1,200 yards in every direction from the depot.

The 2020 census counted 813 people in Roberta living in 354 households.

With the railroad and U.S. Highway 341, Roberta grew quickly as a tourist town of hotels and restaurants, but it quieted after passenger rail service ended in the 1940s and Interstate 75 later bypassed it to the east.

Roberta's original train depot burned in 1949; a replica of it, built in 2003, now houses the Chamber of Commerce Welcome Center.

Each May, Roberta hosts the Georgia Jug Festival, celebrating Crawford County's folk pottery tradition rooted in the area's clay, with pottery sales, craft demonstrations, live music, and a 5K run.

Roberta also sits on the route of the Peaches to the Beaches Yard Sale, held each March along U.S. Highway 341.

In the early 1800s, U.S. Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins operated the Creek Agency and a plantation on the Flint River near present-day Roberta, a trading post for the Creek Nation.