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 he Golden Crescent, running in a wide swath along the Atlantic Coast from
Savannah to Cape Canaveral and inland towards Tallahassee, is remarkably rich in history and prehistory. Following thousands of years
of Native American occupation, this area witnessed many of the first North American
encounters among Europeans, Africans, and native inhabitants. A two-hundred-year-long
period of small settlements, mission-building, colonial warfare, and pirate attacks gave
way in the late eighteenth century to the beginnings of the plantation system. Spain's
cession of Florida in 1821 finally made all of the crescent part of the United States.
Rice and cotton plantations, with their interdependent white and black populations,
dominated the antebellum years. After the Civil War, the Golden Crescent underwent
additional transformations - Reconstruction, the shift to sharecropping, a resort boom, a
lumber boom, and the struggle for civil rights. The interactions of Native American,
African, and European groups in the crescent have profoundly influenced the course of
American and world history. Today, many of the historic wonders of the crescent are
protected under the careful stewardship of state, federal, or nonprofit ownership. Take
this opportunity to catch a glimpse of the cultural crossroads of the Golden Crescent!In
addition to this web site, more information on the historic sites of the Golden Crescent
is available from a number of sources. Good places to start
are the tourism hotlines maintained by the states of Georgia (1-800-VISIT-GA) and Florida
(1-888-7-FLAUSA), or the various sites managed by the National
Park Service. |
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