The story of the Savannah, Americus & Montgomery Railway illustrates New South boosterism, boom, and bust in Georgia during the 1880s and 1890s. Founded in Americus by Samuel Hugh Hawkins and other ambitious men eager to secure the continued prosperity and dominance their city enjoyed during the post-Civil War period, the SAM created what in fact was a second railroad boom for Americus, the first boom having occurred with the arrival of the South Western Railroad thirty years earlier in 1854. Promoting not only the fortunes of Americus, the SAM spawned the development of numerous new towns along its 265-mile route stretching eventually from Montgomery, Alabama to Lyon’s, Georgia.
Prior to and immediately after the Civil War, the only railroad serving Sumter and surrounding counties was the South Western, which was organized in Macon in the late 1840s, reached Americus by October 1854, and entered Albany through the purchase and construction of additional track between 1856 and 1857. The coming of the South Western Railroad in the early 1850s caused Americus to experience its first population and construction boom, transforming it from a small courthouse town to the center of the region’s expanding wagon trade.
