Showplace: In the 1870s, Wealth from the North Transformed Thomasville, Georgia. (History Happened Here)

Beginning of article

AS SEEN ON THE CUSP of spring, Thomasville, Georgia, might be any small town in the Deep South. But beneath the sultry perfume and soft palette of wisteria and azalea, wisps of Spanish moss drifting from gnarled live oak trees, and big, white-columned houses, lies an unusual story.

Thomasville's rich, loamy soil and thick pine forests drew its earliest settlers, winners of the Georgia Land Lottery of 1820. Later, second sons of wealthy planters along the Atlantic Coast bought up tracts of land to grow cotton and rice and build showy houses. It looked as though the classic plantation culture had taken irrevocable hold until, with the Civil War, the town's history swerved. Tom Hill, whose lively patter makes him not just curator of the local historical society but its star attraction, explains: "To understand it at all you must understand the kind of money coming in from 1870 to 1900. All Northern money. One out of every three men in Thomas County died in the war--a few years later we smiled at Yankees. The man who smiled had just laid down his gun. You can't hate up close."

The elegant homes on Thomasville's shady residential streets and the old brick buildings housing an intriguing mix of shops along the perfectly groomed commercial blocks reflect the post-Civil War boom, a period known locally as the Hotel Era. One normally thinks of a health resort as commanding a mountaintop or the shore of a lake, but that wasn't Thomasville's lure. People seeking a cure for tuberculosis and other ailments came to the mildly scenic southwest corner of Georgia for the gentle climate and pine-scented breezes. At 350 feet above sea level, ran an 1891 ad, "this city ... is entirely free from malaria or any disease generally particular to a low climate ... come find relief and safety in this high, dry resinous …