A loaded steamboat at Hawkinsville, Ga. Skeet & Ruby Brown gave me a good photo but in playing with it I created a few white spots but you can get the idea. [Photo Credit: Skeet & Ruby Brown] PS Loads like this one might have put many a steamer under stress and explosions occurred. One of my great great uncles died in the explosion of the Steamboat S.M. Manning - just below Jacksonville, Ga.

After Macon, Hawkinsville, at one time, was at the headwaters of the steamboat traffic. Plans were to construct the Atlanta & Hawkinsville Railroad, to facilitate taking goods from steamboats at Hawkinsville and transporting them by rail to Atlanta. We find this history in Steve Storey's Railroad History Index for Georgia:

"Chartered in July, 1886, the Atlanta and Hawkinsville Railroad would have connected Atlanta and the middle Georgia steamboat port of Hawkinsville.

Plans changed, however, and the Hawkinsville link was never completed. In 1887 the partially built line was renamed the Atlanta and Florida Railroad."