Fitzgerald, Georgia

• Open map evidence
• Research guide
• Ben Hill County

Buildings and businesses the archive holds for this place. Each opens its own page, with the source record it came from.

On the National Register 7 records

• Ben Hill County Courthouselisted 1980
• Ben Hill County Jaillisted 1982
• Dorminy-Massee Houselisted 2000
• Holtzendorf Apartmentslisted 1988
• Miles V. Wilsey Houselisted 2001
• Fitzgerald Commercial Historic Districtlisted 1992
• South Main-South Lee Streets Historic Districtlisted 1989

Surveyed buildings and structures 1 record

• A. J. McDonald Homeplace, 103 West Roanoke Drive, Fitzgeraldfederal building survey, 11 photographs

Fitzgerald fell from 9,053 to 9,006 between 2010 and 2020. These are the recorded population figures Wikidata holds for this place, reached through the Geographic Names Information System number this page is keyed on rather than by name, so they belong to this place and not to another of the same name. Most are census counts, but not all are: an early figure may be a founding or settlement estimate, and an estimate published within five years of a census is left out. The change column is computed, and is left blank where more than 20 years separate a figure from the one before it, because a gap that long is not a change between two counts.

Matched by testing this settlement's coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet in the United States Geological Survey's historical collection. Each opens the scanned sheet at the Survey.

• 1953 USGS Waycross quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
• 1958 USGS Waycross quadrangle1:250000, 2 printings
• 1973 USGS Fitzgerald West quadrangle1:24000, 2 printings
• 1981 USGS Cordele quadrangle1:100000
• 1988 USGS Waycross quadrangle1:250000

Taken for the Office of War Information and the Farm Security Administration, who photographed the country between 1935 and 1944. Works of United States government photographers, with no known restriction on use. Each opens its catalogue record.

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 651 fires within 5 miles of Fitzgerald between 1992 and 2020, burning about 1,221 acres in total. 21 started naturally. 74 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Settlements close enough to share some of these fires:

• Westwood
• Lulaville
• Ashton
• Queensland

Every fire recorded in Ben Hill County

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Fitzgerald in 52 storm reports between 1995 and 2025: 36 thunderstorm wind, 10 hail, 5 flash flood, 1 tornado. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

Every storm recorded in Ben Hill County

7 papers published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read: 2,636 issues, 14,036 pages. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Front pages of the local paper, read from the Library of Congress scans: 40 issues spread across its run from 1902 to 1927, 70,194 words in total. Each is reproduced on its own page, exactly as the recogniser returned it.

These pages read less well than anything else here, and the number is worth stating: about three words in four come through cleanly, against nine in ten for the building records. An 1896 broadsheet sets eight-point type in seven columns on microfilm, which is the hardest thing in this archive to read by machine. We tested our own recognisers against the Library's and they were not better, so the Library's text is what appears, with the wholly unreadable columns removed. Read it as a guide to what the paper covered, and follow the link to the scan before quoting anything.

The eight closest, with where each one stands in the county. Distances are straight-line, computed from the Geographic Names Information System coordinates.

Matched on this settlement's Geographic Names Information System number rather than its name, so it cannot be a different place of the same name in another state.

This settlement is recorded in the Geographic Names Information System as feature 355809. The sheet list is computed by point-in-boundary test against the United States Geological Survey's historical topographic inventory. Both are works of the United States government and carry no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.

Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.

Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.