Tag: Cordele
Cordele is a city in Crisp County, Georgia, United States. The population was 11,608 at the 2000 census. The city is the county seat of Crisp County.
Cordele is also known as The Watermelon Capital of the World,
Cordelle was incorporated on January 1, 1888, and named for the eldest daughter of Colonel Samuel Hawkins, the president of the Savannah, Americus and Montgomery Railroads.
In November 1864, the area that is now Cordele served as the temporary capital of Georgia. During the last days of the Confederacy, Georgia’s war governor Joseph E. Brown used his rural farm house to escape the wrath of Sherman’s March to the Sea. During that time the farm house which Brown called “Dooly County Place” served as the official capital for only a few days. It was replaced in 1890 by the Suwanee Hotel, located in what became downtown Cordele. The hotel was destroyed by a fire in late 1994 and was rebuilt.
The small town of Cordele, Georgia was founded in the southern part of Dooly County in 1888…