Founded in 1732 as the province of Georgia and first established in 1733 with the founding of Savannah, Georgia became a royal British colony in 1752. How did Georgia get her nickname? Cherokee Indians cultivated peaches in Georgia in the mid-18th century, and today the state produces about 2.6 million bushels a year, making it the third largest producer of peaches in the United States, behind California and South Carolina. Georgia State University is a major contributor to the cultural vitality of the downtown Atlanta community. Some streams in North Georgia flow into the Tennessee River and then, through the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, flow into the gulf. Georgia State University's intercollegiate athletic teams, the Georgia State Panthers, compete in the NCAA Division I Sun Belt Conference.
Georgia is bordered by Tennessee in the north, South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean in the east, Florida in the south, and Alabama in the west. From the days when the state of Georgia was a single-building night school to the university it is today, the state of Georgia has become the heart of urban Atlanta. All 16 college sports teams from the state of Georgia compete in Division I of the NCAA FBS as members of the beach volleyball team of the Sun Belt Conference of Georgia State, which competes in the Conference USA. Georgia State University was used during the 1996 Summer Olympics, and the GSU Sports Arena hosted the games of badminton.
However, rivalries have grown ever since, even with South Alabama, where the two programs started soccer one year apart and played against each other and have played against each other every season since the creation of Georgian state soccer, except one. At the same time that post-civil war Georgians idealized the old plantation, many also quickly abandoned agriculture to dedicate themselves to industry, and even adopted the ideology of Atlanta journalist Henry Grady, a supporter of the north and the industry. For example, Georgia was named after a European leader who contributed to its creation as an official colony. Georgia State University (Georgia State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia.
States east of the Mississippi River in terms of total area (although first in terms of land area) and, for many years, the youngest of the 13 former English colonies, Georgia was founded in 1732, at which time its boundaries were even larger, including much of the current states of Alabama and Mississippi. Subsequently, cotton and iron manufacturing grew, but the real stimulus to Georgia's postwar growth was the expansion of the rail transportation system, which was centered in Atlanta. Black bears, wildcats, deer and gophers are common in Georgia, and manatees, right whales, and humpback whales can be seen off the coast. The state of Georgia is named after King George II of England, who signed the letter that made it a colony in 1732. Georgia is also commonly called “Goober State” because its state crop is peanuts (which many Southerners used to call “goober”).
