Historic Resources of Douglas County, Georgia
The Losing Georgia Project presents the Historic Resources of Douglas County, Georgia, a collection of over 780 historical structures that were initially documented in 1999 and 2000. The surveys were by historic preservation consultants, QuatreFoil Consulting, by the Douglas County government and later by the City of Douglasville.
The first historic resource survey was done in 1999 for Douglas County, which also incorporated the resources of Lithia Springs, a former municipality and historic tourist attraction in the late 1890s. A year later the City of Douglasville had a survey created that included resources prior to the 1950s, primarily indicating the historic downtown area, residential homes and commercial areas.
This is the first time that data associated with any state of Georgia historic resource survey has been displayed for public use via Google Earth. The tour was created voluntarily over a month’s time that goes on to illustrate not only a historical glimpse of Douglas County, but further demonstrates the inherent losses of some historic resources that have occurred in the past seven years after which the surveys were completed.
The documentation effort consisted of comparing street addresses from the historic surveys to Douglas County property records. Before plotting any resources in Google Earth, aerial photography of a physical location was compared using Flash Earth, TerraServer-USA, and Microsoft Live Maps.
There were times where street address did not correspond to property records, therefore Google Maps was used to locate a general area – usually in cases where small tracts of property had been converged into one large tract. In some cases resources had ambiguous street address, i.e. House on Connors Road, which inhibited the documentation process, not allowing these structures to be located.
Losing Georgia’s findings include that of the 783 resources that comprise the surveys, 659 are active, 4 are in ruins, and 54 have been displaced with the remaining 66 resources having ambiguous physical location data which could not be displayed. Individual findings are available in the table below.
| Total | Active | Ruins | Displaced | Ambigous | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Douglas County | 346 | 275 | 3 | 43 | 25 |
| Lithia Springs | 87 | 75 | 1 | 7 | 4 |
| City of Douglasville | 350 | 309 | 0 | 4 | 37 |
Features
- The first Georgia Historic Resource Survey to be used in Google Earth
- Over 700 placemarks indicating historic resources
- Includes rural Douglas County, City of Douglasville, and former city of Lithia Springs
- Colored icons to distinguish active, ruin and non-existent resources
Awards
- Best of Google Earth Community - September 2007
Download
- You must have Google Earth to view the Interactive Tour. If you do not have Google Earth, it is free and available here.
- Download the Historic Resources of Douglas County, Georgia tour
- If you haven’t done so, locate and open the KMZ file.
- Activate the network link.
Change Log
- Version 1.1 - Added sub-folders and photos, created network link
- Version 1.0 - Initial release
