[7] Dublin, according to a historical marker[8] at the town's main Oconee River bridge, was one of the last encampments at which Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his family stayed before being captured by Union forces in May 1865.

This infrastructure allowed the town to become a major cotton trading and export center for central Georgia.

By the early 1920s, however, the boll weevil infestation led to successive cotton crop failures, causing economic collapse and population loss.

[9] On April 17, 1944, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his first public speech, "The Negro and the Constitution" at First African Baptist Church in Dublin.

[15] Structures within the district represent a wide range of architectural styles, including Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Commercial, and Art Deco.

The predominant architectural styles of the area consist of Craftsman, Gothic Revival, Folk Victorian, and Georgian Cottage.

[42] It was originally commissioned as Naval Hospital Dublin on January 22, 1945, as an ideal location for convalescence from rheumatic fever.

The Navy transferred the hospital to the Veterans Affairs Department in November 1947, and it was subsequently named for congressman Carl Vinson who was responsible for getting it built in Dublin.

[43] Dublin's Laurens County Library is known for its genealogy department, with archives and records going back two hundred years.

[44] The theatre features Art Deco architectural design, with flat symmetrical wall surfacing and horizontal bands, in addition to an overhanging marquee and neon sign.

[16] Since its renovation in 1996, Theatre Dublin has served as a performing arts center for Dublin-Laurens County and surrounding areas.

In the late 1970s, the Dublin Carnegie Library was structurally stabilized and maintained by the Dublin-Laurens Historical Society.

[53] Dublin is home to several scholarship pageants, which are largely popular in the southern United States: Dublin, the Oconee River, and Laurens County are mentioned in the opening page of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselves to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time."