Georgia State Map

Geography of Georgia

Georgia is usually divided into five physiographic regions. The Fall Line, where the hard rock of the Piedmont meets the softer sediments of the Coastal Plain, runs across the middle of the state through Columbus, Macon and Augusta; rivers drop over rapids there, which is why those cities grew up as river ports and mill towns.

Blue Ridge

The mountainous northeast, with Brasstown Bald, the state’s highest point, and Springer Mountain, the southern end of the Appalachian Trail. Towns include Blue Ridge, Dahlonega and Helen. The Chattahoochee National Forest covers much of the area.

Ridge and Valley and Appalachian Plateau

Long parallel ridges in the northwest around Rome and Dalton, the center of US carpet manufacturing. The far northwest corner, around Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee, belongs to the Appalachian Plateau.

Piedmont

Rolling hills between the mountains and the Fall Line. The Piedmont holds metro Atlanta, Athens and Lake Lanier, a reservoir on the Chattahoochee River north of the city. Stone Mountain, a large granite dome, rises east of Atlanta.

Coastal Plain

Flat farmland and pine forest covering roughly the southern three-fifths of the state, with Albany, Valdosta, Waycross and Statesboro. Southwest Georgia grows much of the nation’s peanut crop. The Okefenokee Swamp, a large blackwater wetland protected as a national wildlife refuge, straddles the Florida line.

The coast and Sea Islands

Georgia’s short Atlantic coast runs from Savannah to the St. Marys River. Barrier islands (the Sea Islands, also called the Golden Isles around Brunswick) include Tybee, Sapelo, St. Simons, Jekyll and Cumberland Island, a national seashore.

Rivers and lakes

The Chattahoochee River flows from the Blue Ridge through Atlanta and then forms the southern half of the Alabama border before joining the Flint River at Lake Seminole on the Florida line. The Savannah River forms almost the entire border with South Carolina and passes Augusta and Savannah. In the middle of the state, the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers join to form the Altamaha, which reaches the Atlantic near Darien. Most large lakes in Georgia are reservoirs, including Lake Lanier, Lake Hartwell, Clarks Hill Lake (J. Strom Thurmond Lake) and West Point Lake.

Georgia county map

With 159 counties, Georgia has more than any state except Texas. Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, is the most populous (1,066,710 in 2020), followed by Gwinnett, Cobb and DeKalb, all in metro Atlanta. Ware County, around Waycross, is the largest by area. Use the county toggle on the map above to see every county line.

Major highways

• I-75: from Chattanooga through Dalton, Atlanta, Macon and Valdosta into Florida.
• I-85: from South Carolina through the northeast Atlanta suburbs and Atlanta to LaGrange and Alabama.
• I-20: west to east from Alabama through Atlanta to Augusta and South Carolina.
• I-16: from Macon southeast to Savannah.
• I-95: along the coast from South Carolina through Savannah and Brunswick to Florida.
• I-285: the Perimeter, a beltway around Atlanta; I-185 links I-85 with Columbus.
• US 441 and US 19: long north–south routes through the mountains and the Coastal Plain, away from the interstates.