• Going on 300 years old, Savannah is Georgia’s oldest city.

• It is also America’s first planned city. The shady squares that today’s locals and tourists enjoy were laid out in 1733 by the city’s founder, James Oglethorpe, following a grid plan.

• Savannah’s founders under Oglethorpe were not debtors snatched from prison, as you might have heard. Instead, they were skilled “deserving poor,” whom Oglethorpe hoped would become farmers in this thirteenth colony.

• Catholics were forbidden to live in Savannah until 1748. Who were Catholics, according to the colonists? Spaniards. And the Spaniards down in St. Augustine could plant spies in Savannah, so the colonists thought it smart to ban all Catholics from the city!

• At first, slavery in Savannah was banned, but this ban was soon lifted in 1750 to allow Georgia to compete with other slave-holding colonies.

• No lawyers were allowed to live in Savannah until 1755. They were thought unnecessary. If you had a problem with your neighbor, you should just argue it out amongst yourselves!

• Savannah is home to the third oldest synagogue in America, the Congregation Michve Israel. It was founded after Jews arrived from London in the summer of 1733.

• Three of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence were natives of Savannah. Can you name them? I didn’t think so. They were Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Walton.

• At Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene’s plantation outside Savannah, Eli Whitney, the Greene children’s tutor, perfected the cotton gin in 1793.

• The first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. to Europe sailed from Savannah in May 1819. Take a guess at its name. S.S. Savannah! And it arrived in Liverpool 29 days later.

• How would you like to receive Savannah as a gift? Abraham Lincoln did! During the Civil War, Union General Sherman made his way from Atlanta, which he had just burned to the ground, to Savannah. He was so awed by Savannah’s beauty that he decided to spare it and in a telegram presented it to Lincoln as a Christmas present.

• From the 1880s until the 1920s, Savannah was the WORLD’S leading exporter of naval stores (or ship building) products, including pine timber, resin, and distilled turpentine!

• In Savannah today, if you see what looks like a city block moving before your eyes, you’re not crazy; that’s a ship! Savannah is home to the nation’s largest container port, which handles almost 4.5 million 20-foot container units annually.

• Savannah is home to the Girl Scouts Headquarters because it was home to the group’s founder. Juliette Gordon Low was born at the Wayne-Gordon House.

• The Savannah police department was one of the first in the South to hire African American officers.

• How many movies filmed in Savannah can you name? Forrest Gump? Of course. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? Uh huh. If you can add the Legend of Bagger Vance, Glory, and Roots to that list, color me impressed!

• In Savannah, you can openly drink alcohol in the streets! Just make sure you are drinking from a to-go cup in the city center.

• Savannah has mighty live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss…which isn’t really moss! Spanish moss is not a parasite as most people think, but an epiphyte, which means it is a flowering plant.

• The city hosts the second largest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the U.S. The party is completed with fountains running green water and 400,000 revelers annually.

• Savannah is America’s most haunted city. It literally is built on the dead. Whenever you see a wavy, uneven sidewalk, it was likely built over a grave that has collapsed.

Dare to learn about Savannah’s centuries-old ghosts and more on your own trip to Savannah! As you can see, there is so much to explore in this Southern jewel!

Experience Savannah on our Jewels of the South in 9 Days Tour!