DIVERSITY 2005 | A Special Advertising Section

Diversity isn't new to Augusta, it's been a part of the city's history since the very beginning

Sweeping back and forth over the pages of Augusta's history have been waves of American migration, each depositing new pieces of the mosaic that is our diverse population today.

Members of Augusta's highly respected genealogy society are in constant demand for information about families with Scottish and Irish names who now reside in the Deep South and Southwest. The city was the "jumping off point," for westward movement into Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas in the early 1800's, much the same way that St. Louis was the funnel for exploration of the western U.S. two generations later.

Thousands of the Scotch-Irish that walked with their wagons and mules from New York, New Jersey, Virginia and other mid-Atlantic states, turned west when they reached the lowest ridges of the Appalachian mountains, and many paused in Augusta, some for a generation or two, before heading to the frontier.

But Augusta was already a bustling burg, and had even served as a temporary capital of the state before that migration pattern passed through town.

Geography is often the reason why a community is found where it is.

Columbia was a planned city, founded as a compromise capital between Charleston and the Carolina (both North and South then) backcountry.

Atlanta sprang up where so many railroad tracks converged.

Charleston could only be where it is, at the convergence of two rivers with a sheltered harbor, much like Pittsburgh, founded where three great rivers come together.

The vital area where the wide Savannah River met the fall line -- the geological divider where the upcountry flattens into the Coastal Plain -- has always made Augusta a prime trading location.

The territories of several Native American peoples bordered on what we now call the Central Savannah River Area -- the Lower Cherokee, the Wando and the Savannah (probably an English corruption of their word Shawnee). From here ancient trails fanned out to the lands of the Creek, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and others great Native American nations in what is now Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The Spanish Conquistador Hernando Desoto trekked through the area in what was wilderness in 1540, with no way of knowing that 460 years later thousands of Spanish speaking people would live and work in the Augusta area.

Many years later English colonists first came to the backwoods, followed by Swiss settlers on the South Carolina side of the river. Augusta was founded in 1735 by the English reformer Gen. James Oglethorpe who brought English and Irish settlers to the headwaters of the river, two years after establishing Savannah at the river's mouth.

Oglethorpe used the settlement of Augusta on the natural fall line to hijack the lucrative fur trade from the city of Charleston, sending it down the river to Savannah.

The English brought the plantation system to Georgia, and with it the "Peculiar Institution" of African slavery. These black Americans tilled the soil here by the thousands, harvesting the cotton that made the economy flourish. A third of Augusta's population today consists of the descendents of those proud African people.

The prosperity of the early days of the republic brought the wave of Scotch-Irish immigration, searching for freedom and a better life.

From a completely different direction came hundreds of Chinese people who helped build the Augusta Canal in 1845. Many of them stayed and prospered in Augusta commerce for a century, and some of their families still live on here in significant numbers today.

Augusta became a major manufacturing city for Confederate munitions and textiles during the War Between the States, and attracted workers from across the South. But, unlike most other Southern cities, it was not invaded nor destroyed by Union armies during the war.

Times were tough all over the South for a generation after the war, but Augusta thrived in the latter part of the 19th Century as the second largest inland cotton market (next to Memphis) in the world. That bustling commerce continued to attract new residents for decades.

During the heady days of the American Industrial Revolution, Augusta, North Augusta and Aiken were "discovered" by many immensely wealthy families of the North. Many landmarks from that era still remain and tourism continues to be an important industry, bringing yet a more diverse array of visitors to the city.

A worldwide image was forged for Augusta when Atlanta lawyer Bobby Jones chose the Fruitlands Nursery site on Washington Road to build his Augusta National Golf Club. There he started the Masters Tournament that has made the word "Augusta" synonymous with both golf and excellence around the globe. Every April thousands of people flock here for the tournament, diverse in many ways except for their love of golf.

World War I brought us what would become the U.S. Army's Fort Gordon, and with it a steady influx of people from around the country ? many of whom made their permanent homes here and who enrich our community with their ethic of hard work and discipline.

The aftermath of the next Great War brought us the Savannah River Site and thousands of highly educated scientists, engineers and technicians from across the country, brining a new perspective on our politics and our attitudes -- and a 50-yer-long boom to the economy.

Augusta's magnificent complex of the most modern teaching and clinical research hospitals continue to attract some of the finest minds of medicine from all over the Earth.

Today, mixed with the bedrock of textile workers you'll find artists, tradesmen, technicians and professionals of every race and many nationalities. Every day you'll see a new arrival from the North chatting happily with someone who can trace their Southern roots back to the first Georgia colonists.

Black, white, brown and yellow; poor, middleclass and wealthy; athletes and scholars -- all live and work side by side in Augusta, and it takes every piece of the mosaic to make the image come alive.