Savannah was born as a port and never forgot it. Oglethorpe landed at Yamacraw Bluff in 1733, and the river twenty miles from the Atlantic became the city's reason for existing — carrying cotton from plantation country out to European markets, building the wealth that funded the squares and the warehouses along the waterfront. The cobblestones on River Street aren't decorative; they came as ballast in the hulls of sailing ships, the city's commerce literally pressed into its pavement. Those antebellum cotton warehouses still stand along the nine-block stretch, converted now to restaurants and shops, but the bones are the same. The Central of Georgia Railway roundhouse rose from the same logic — move the goods. A city that surrendered peacefully in 1864 to preserve itself is still here, still a working port, one of North America's largest container operations. The river built this place. It still runs it.
