[4] This area of Georgia was inhabited by succeeding cultures of indigenous Native Americans for thousands of years before European contact.

Historical tribes included the Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek, who encountered European Americans as their settlements moved into traditional territory.

The city was named in honor of Wilson Lumpkin, a two-term governor of Georgia and legislator who supported Indian removal.

This was part of the Black Belt, named for the fertile land in the upland South that supported extensive cotton plantations in the 19th century.

In the antebellum years, planters depended on the labor and skills of hundreds of thousands of enslaved African Americans to cultivate and process the cotton for market.

With land erosion and depletion, cotton farming gave way to peanut and pine tree cultivation, and labor needs decreased.

The population of the county dropped markedly from the Great Migration of blacks to industrial jobs in the North and Midwest in the early decades of the 20th century, but the town of Lumpkin remained relatively stable.

[5] Lumpkin was the first small town in Georgia to complete a successful historic preservation project to encourage what has become known as heritage tourism.