Map 1. Dodge County in the State of Georgia

man College and the rest of Atlanta University. The landscape becomes industrial,
and we approach the Ford Motor Company plant. After the airport, the traffic is
quieter, and we follow the interstate to our trip's midpoint in Macon.

This region is the Georgia Piedmont, home of the plantation South immortalized
by Gone With the Wind. No longer a primary agricultural region, the Piedmont
hills are too steep to be ideal farmland in this mechanized era. In the 1980s, the
eroded red subsoil of the cotton heartland is covered with bustling suburbs, quiet
pastures, forests, and small towns. To reach Georgia's prime rowcrop land, we
drive south to the Coastal Plain, the southern half of the state that begins below
Macon. As we pass through the Piedmont, the drive feels completely rural; only
an occasional swingset or garage reveals the houses behind the dense pines mixed
with oaks along most of the route. Though there are several good-sized towns
before coming to Macon, their homes, businesses, and shopping malls are rarely
seen from the interstate.

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