The Atlantic and Gulf Railroad was chartered in February 1856 by act of the Georgia General Assembly.

In the 1830s, a railroad route through south Georgia to the Atlantic coast was the goal of several different competing companies.

The Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company received its charter from the Georgia General Assembly on December 22, 1835.

On December 25, 1847, the Savannah and Albany Railroad Company was chartered by the Georgia General Assembly to construct a rail line from a point along the Central of Georgia Railway near Savannah to Albany with the possibility of extending the railroad to the Chattahoochee River at any time.

In February 1854, the stock company rebranded themselves the Savannah, Albany, and Gulf Railroad through a new charter from the state, but had also completed very little of the planned route.

[1] By April 1854, citizens in south Georgia were hoping that the two companies would avoid competition with one another and construct a "main trunk" line together.

[4] In early 1856, a compromise was reached between the two competing companies and passed by the Georgia General Assembly.

The act authorized the company to extend the route to the western state line at any point between Fort Gaines, Georgia and the confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers with the route chosen to allow for speedy access to the Gulf of Mexico through either Pensacola, Florida or Mobile, Alabama.

On March 31, 1856, the board of commissioners for the Atlantic and Gulf met in Milledgeville to plan for the opening of books and the subscription of stocks.

Members of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company also met in December 1856 to discuss the changes to the charter made by the Georgia legislature.

The Wiregrass Region that the route of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad was to pass through was sparsely populated.

In July 1858, a meeting of citizens from Berrien and Lowndes counties expressed their disapproval with the route chosen.

They commented that the route chosen was too close to the Florida state line to be beneficial to the citizen of south Georgia and that because of it, the Atlantic and Gulf was in violation of its charter.

[9] Construction of the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad began on January 2, 1859, at the Little Satilla River near modern Screven, Georgia.

The contracting firm Callahan & Co. had been hired to construct the 24 miles (39 km) of bridging and grading west of Thomasville.

At the start of 1864, workers had graded the main line route to a point within about 5 miles (8.0 km) from Bainbridge.

The Brunswick and Florida's main line's primary junction with the Atlantic and Gulf was at Glenmore, but during the Civil War 60 miles (97 km) of the branch line which had extended all the way to Waresboro, Georgia was taken up by the Confederate government of Georgia to be used in more militarily important regions.

The trestles across the Ogeechee and the Little Ogeechee rivers were destroyed, but the long trestle across the Altamaha River was undamaged and ready to use by June 1865, when control of the Atlantic and Gulf was restored to its board of directors by General Henry Warner Birge.

[14] By November 1865, the grading of the route to Bainbridge had been completed and the rails were set to be purchased when company finances allowed.

In 1869, the Atlantic and Gulf purchased the line under construction by the South Georgia and Florida Railroad.

By August, it asked for financial aid from the state of Georgia to help with the completion of the railroad to Pollard, Alabama, but the bill failed to become law in that session or the next.

In general, the Atlantic and Gulf opened up south Georgia to settlement and population growth while also connecting it to areas from which it had previously been isolated.