Forestry Commission

About forestry service, 31013, Clinchfield, GA, US, Georgia

Fitzgerald is a city in and the county seat of Ben Hill County in the south central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of 2020, its population was 9,006. It is the principal city of the Fitzgerald micropolitan statistical area, which includes all of Ben Hill and Irwin counties. A small portion of Fitzgerald is in Irwin County. The city is an agricultural marketing center that grows cotton, tobacco, and peanuts. It is also home to diverse manufactures including textiles, lumber, and metal products. The city is home to the Blue and Gray Museum, the Grand Theatre, the Milton Hopkins Memorial Nature Preserve, and the Fitzgerald chicken topiary. The Ben Hill Irwin Campus of Wiregrass Georgia Technical College is in Fitzgerald. == History == Fitzgerald was developed in 1895 by Philander H. Fitzgerald, a newspaper editor from Indianapolis, Indiana. A former drummer boy in the Union Army during the Civil War, he founded it as a community for war veterans–both from the Union and from the Confederacy.