Local city information for Brunswick, GA

Brunswick () is an American city in the state of Georgia and the seat of Glynn County. The municipality is located in southeastern Georgia on a harbor on the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 30 miles (50 km) north of Florida. It was founded in 1771 by the Province of Georgia and incorporated on February 22, 1856. Plans for the city's streets and squares were laid out in grid-style following James Oglethorpe's Savannah Plan. In 1789, George Washington proclaimed Brunswick one of the five original ports of entry for the United States.

In 2007, the city proper had an estimated population of 16,235 and an estimated metropolitan population of 101,792. The city's metropolitan area is the twelfth-largest in the state of Georgia and includes the counties of Glynn, Brantley, and McIntosh.

The Port of Brunswick is the fourth-largest automobile port in the eastern United States. The city's economy encompasses manufacturing, agricultural processing, and bulk cargoes. Tourism constitutes the largest industry in Brunswick and the Golden Isles. Brunswick is the center of Georgia's shrimp and crab industry, attributing to the city's nickname, the "Shrimp Capital of the World."

The headquarters facility of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, is a vital part of Brunswick's economy. The facility, located 5 miles (8 km) north of the central business district of the city, is adjacent to Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, which provides commercial air service to the region.


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The area's first European settler, Mark Carr, arrived in 1738. Carr, a Scotsman, was a captain in General James Oglethorpe’s Marine Boat Company. Upon landing, he established his tobacco plantation along the Turtle River. The Royal Province of Georgia purchased Carr’s fields in 1771 and laid out the town of Brunswick in the grid style following Oglethorpe’s Savannah Plan. The town was then named after the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Germany (the ancestral home of King George II of Great Britain).

The town of Brunswick began to scarcely grow when the American Revolution intervened, and a largely Loyalist population fled to Spanish Florida or the Caribbean basin. Development continued, however, and its strategic location along the Atlantic coast prompted George Washington to proclaim Brunswick one of the five original ports of entry for the colonies in 1789. In 1797, the Georgia General Assembly transferred the county seat of Glynn County from Frederica (on St. Simons Island) to Brunswick.

Glynn Academy, the first public building in Brunswick and the second-oldest high school in Georgia, was constructed in 1819. Throughout the former part of the nineteenth century, Brunswick gained a courthouse, a jail, and about thirty houses and stores. The town was officially incorporated as a city on February 22, 1856. By 1860, the city had a population of 468, a bank, a weekly newspaper, and a sawmill which employed nine workers.

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, and, 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 across 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 six feet of water. A Category 4 hurricane hit Cumberland Island just south of Brunswick in October 1898, which caused a storm surge in the city. As a result, 179 were killed.

Construction of an electric streetcar line began in 1909 and was completed in 1911. 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, and passenger boat service from Brunswick to St. Simons Island was terminated. By 1926, the electric streetcar line in Brunswick was discontinued; the decline of the streetcar systems coincided with the rise of the automobile.

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 site 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.

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