North Augusta's Historic Industrial Area

North Augusta's Historic Industrial Area. The Georgia Avenue-Railroad Avenue Industrial District. , The City of North Augusta was commissioned in 1906, but construction of the industrial district began earlier, in the 1890s. Factories and industrial properties were located in the bottomlands, while residential areas lined the hills overlooking the Savannah River Valley. In this location the intersection of Georgia and Railroad Avenues was situated. The Georgia Avenue-Railroad Avenue area formed the heart of North Augusta's industrial and manufacturing district in its earliest years. , Among the buildings located here was the North Augusta Dispensary, the only place to purchase liquor legally between 1907 and Prohibition. The building burned in 1995. On the south side of Georgia Avenue stood the South Carolina Pottery, a coal and wood distributor, and a veneer factory, among others. On the north side of Georgia Avenue was another pottery, the Wood Pottery. Later businesses that operated in the same location included a grocery, a furniture factory, a photography shop, a blacksmith, several brick manufacturers, and one of the first independent oil companies in the South. A cotton warehouse and a lumber company operated on the east side of Railroad Avenue. , By the late 1920s, flooding along this lower terrace of the Savannah was becoming so common that many industrial operations began to suffer. The expense of rebuilding was too costly, and those businesses which did not fail eventually moved to the upper end of Georgia Avenue, where the heart of North Augusta is today.