In the beginning

Cities 2010 | How an Old World planner working in a New World forest created one of the country's most enduring urban landscapes | Mindy Belz

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SAVANNAH, Ga.—In the beginning was the river. That's the way Walter J. Fraser begins his 2003 history, Savannah in the Old South. The Indians called the river Keowee, Spanish explorers Rio Dulce, and the French would refer to it simply as the Grande. But when the Carolinian settlers armed a tribe called the Savannahs and defeated all those laying claim, the river was once and for all renamed the Savannah.

Gen. James Edward Oglethorpe was less focused on the river, even though it was a major artery for trade, and more interested in establishing a settlement on the bluff 40 feet above it.

The British, spurred by Carolina colonists who feared an invasion from the Spaniards in Florida, created a plan to attract investors and settlers to establish "a Town on the River Savannah to be call'd by that name." On Nov. 17, 1732, Oglethorpe and an expedition of 114 colonists (including children) sailed down the Thames. When they reached their new home 18 miles up the Savannah from the Atlantic, the settlers climbed the bluff, pitched four tents, and slept on what is now the site of a downtown Hyatt Regency.