Brunswick /'br?nzw?

k/ is a city in and the county seat of Glynn County, Georgia,

United States.[5] As the major urban and economic center of the state's lower
southeast, it is the second-largest urban area on the Georgia coast after Savannah
and contains the Brunswick Old Town Historic District.

British colonists settled the peninsula in 1738 as a buffer to Spanish Florida. It

came under provincial control in 1771 and was founded as "Brunswick" after the
German duchy of Brunswick�L�neburg, the ancestral home of the House of Hanover. It
was incorporated as a city in 1856. Throughout its history, Brunswick has served as
an important port city: in World War II, it served as a strategic military location
with an operational base for escort blimps and a shipbuilding facility for the U.S.
Maritime Commission.

Brunswick supports a progressive economy largely based on tourism and logistics,

with a metropolitan GDP of $3.9 billion.[6] The Port of Brunswick handles
approximately 10 percent of all U.S. roll-on/roll-off trade�third in the U.S.,
behind the ports of Los Angeles and Newark.[7][8][9] The headquarters of the
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is located 5 miles (8 km) north of the
central business district of the city and is adjacent to Brunswick Golden Isles
Airport, which provides commercial air service to the area. In the 2010 U.S.
census, the population of the city proper was 15,383;[1] the urban area, 51,024;
and the metropolitan area, 112,370.

Brunswick is located on a harbor of the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 40 mi (60 km)

north of Florida and 80 mi (130 km) south of South Carolina. Brunswick is bordered
on the west by Oglethorpe Bay, the East River, and the Turtle River. It is bordered
on the south by the Brunswick River and on the east by the Atlantic Intracoastal
Waterway in the Mackay River, which separates it from the Golden Isles.

Contents [hide]
1 History
1.1 Liberty ships
2 Geography
2.1 Topography
2.2 Climate
2.3 Environment
3 Demographics
4 Economy
5 Government
5.1 Sister cities
6 Education
6.1 Higher education
6.2 Primary and secondary schools
7 Culture
7.1 Arts and theatre
7.2 Sports and recreation
7.2.1 Parks and squares
7.3 Cuisine
8 Infrastructure
8.1 Transportation
8.2 Healthcare
9 Media
10 Notable people
11 See also
12 Notes
13 References
14 External links
History[edit]
Main article: History of Brunswick, Georgia
Original town plan (1771)
The Mocama, a Timucua-speaking people, originally occupied the lands in what is now
Brunswick.[10] The Spanish established missions in Timucuan villages beginning in
1568.[11] During this time, much of the Native American population was depleted
through enslavement and disease.[10] When the Province of Carolina was founded in
1663, the British claimed all lands south to the 31st parallel north,[12] but
little colonization occurred south of the Altamaha River as the Spanish also
claimed this land.[13] Three years after the Province of Georgia was founded in
1733, James Oglethorpe had the town of Frederica built on St. Simons Island,
challenging Spaniards who laid claim to the island.[14] The Spanish were driven out
of the province after British victories in the battles of Bloody Marsh and Gully
Hole Creek in 1742;[14] it was not until the Treaty of Paris of 1763 that Spain's
threat to the province was formally ended, when all lands north of the St. Marys
River and south of the Savannah River were designated as Georgia.[15][16]

An 1864 map of Brunswick and the surrounding area

The area's first European settler, Mark Carr, arrived in 1738.[17] Carr, a
Scotsman, was a captain in Oglethorpe's Marine Boat Company.[18] Upon landing, he
established his 1,000-acre (400 ha) tobacco plantation, which he called "Plug
Point", along the East and Brunswick rivers.[16][18] The Province of Georgia
purchased Carr's fields in 1771 and laid out the town of Brunswick in the grid plan
akin to that of Savannah, with large, public squares at given intervals.[19] The
town was named for the duchy of Brunswick-L�neburg in Germany, the ancestral home
of George III and the House of Hanover.[19] Brunswick was a rectangular tract of
land consisting of 383.5 acres (155.2 ha).[16] The first lot was granted on June
30, 1772; 179 lots were granted in the first three years.[16] However, about this
time Brunswick lost most of its citizens, many of whom were Loyalists, to East
Florida, the Caribbean Basin, and the United Kingdom for protection during the
American Revolutionary War.[16][20] From 1783 to 1788 a number of these lots were
regranted and there collected in Brunswick a few families who desired proper
education for their children.[16] By the act of the General Assembly on February 1,
1788, eight town commissioners were appointed and Glynn Academy was chartered, the
funding of which was to come from the sales of town lots. Brunswick was recognized
as an official port of entry in 1789 by an act of the United States Congress.[21]
[22] In 1797 the General Assembly transferred the seat of Glynn County from
Frederica to Brunswick.[nb 1][23]

At the end of the eighteenth century, a large tract of land surrounding Brunswick
on three sides had been laid off and designated as Commons.[16] Commissioners were
named in 1796 to support these efforts.[16] The General Assembly authorized them to
sell 500 acres (200 ha) of Commons, one-half of the proceeds to go to the
construction of the courthouse and jail and one-half to the support of the academy.
[16] In 1819 the commissioners erected a comfortable building for school purposes
on the southeastern corner of Reynolds and L streets.[16] This was the first public
building in Brunswick.[24] It was abandoned four years later, but a new building
was erected on Hillsborough Square in 1840 using Commons proceeds.[16] A courthouse
and jail were built around this time.[16][23][24] The town was officially
incorporated as a city on February 22, 1856.[24][25] By 1860 Brunswick had a
population of 468, a bank, a weekly newspaper, and a sawmill which employed nine
workers.[24]

Brunswick was abandoned during the Civil War when citizens were ordered to
evacuate. The city, like many others in the South, suffered from post-war
depression. After one of the nation's largest lumber mills began operation on
nearby St. Simons Island, economic prosperity returned. Rail lines were constructed
from Brunswick to inland Georgia, which stimulated a sawmill boom, said to average
one mill every two miles, along with the new industrial corridor.[26] In his book
The New South Comes to Wiregrass Georgia, 1860�1910 author Mark V. Wetherington
states that from Eastman, former Quartermaster General Ira R. Foster "shipped
lumber to Brunswick, where it was loaded onto timber schooners and transported to
international markets like Liverpool, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana."[26] Unlike many
other southern cities during the Reconstruction period, Brunswick experienced an
economic boom.

In 1878, poet and native Georgian Sidney Lanier, who sought relief from
tuberculosis in Brunswick's climate, wrote "The Marshes of Glynn", a poem based on
the salt marshes that span Glynn County. The December 1888 issue of Harper's Weekly
predicted that "Brunswick by the Sea" was destined to become the "winter Newport of
America." Jekyll Island had become a resort destination for some of the era's most
influential families (most notably Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Pulitzers, and
Goodyears) who arrived by train or yacht.

A yellow fever epidemic began in 1893, which heralded a decade of hardships for the
city; it was flooded in 1893 when a modern-day Category 3 hurricane (today known as
the Sea Islands Hurricane) paralleled the coast of Georgia before hitting South
Carolina. The storm left the city under 6 feet (1.8 m) of water.[27] A Category 4
hurricane hit Cumberland Island just south of Brunswick in October 1898,[28] which
caused a 16-foot (4.9 m) storm surge in the city.[27] As a result, 179 were killed.
[27][29]

Construction of an electric streetcar line began in 1909 and was completed in 1911.
[30] Tracks were located in the center of several city streets. In July 1924, the
F.J. Torras Causeway, the roadway between Brunswick and St. Simons Island, was
completed,[31] and passenger boat service from Brunswick to St. Simons Island was
terminated.[30] By 1926, the electric streetcar line in Brunswick was discontinued;
the decline of the streetcar systems coincided with the rise of the automobile.[30]

In World War II, Brunswick served as a strategic military location. German U-boats
threatened the coast of the southern United States, and blimps became a common
sight as they patrolled the coastal areas. During the war, blimps from Brunswick's
Naval Air Station Glynco (at the time, the largest blimp base in the world) safely
escorted almost 100,000 ships without a single vessel lost to enemy submarines.[32]

Liberty ships[edit]

A Liberty Ship is launched from Brunswick.

In World War II, Brunswick boomed as over 16,000 workers of the J.A. Jones
Construction Company produced ninety-nine Liberty ships and "Knot" ships (type C1-M
ships which were designed for short coastal runs, and most often named for knots
for the U.S. Maritime Commission to transport materiel to the European and Pacific
theatres.[33]

The first ship was the SS James M. Wayne (named after James Moore Wayne), whose
keel was laid on July 6, 1942, and which was launched on March 13, 1943.[34] The
last ship was the SS Coastal Ranger, whose keel was laid on June 7, 1945, and which
was launched on August 25, 1945.[34] The first six ships took 305 to 331 days each
to complete,[34] but soon production ramped up and most of the remaining ships were
built in about two months, bringing the average down to 89 days each. By November
1943, about four ships were launched per month. The SS William F. Jerman was
completed in only 34 days in November and December 1944.[34] Six ships could be
under construction in slipways at one time.[35]