The Grady County Courthouse at Cairo: the Grand Old Courthouses of Georgia

• Citation: Vol. 30 No. 3 Pg. 0028
• Year: 2025
• Pages: 0028

The Grady County Courthouse at Cairo: The Grand Old Courthouses of Georgia No. Vol. 30 No. 3 Pg. 28 Georgia Bar Journal February, 2025

BY WILBER W. CALDWELL

GBJ | Feature

The Grady County Courthouse at Cairo, built in 1908, burned Feb. 18,1980. Alexander Blair III, architect.

Grady County was one of eight new counties created in 1905. But unlike Tifton, Cordele, Toccoa and the other progressive rail crossings that sought new county status in that year, Cairo was not a hotbed of New South zeal. Most of the beneficiaries of the "new county movement" centered on railroad "boom towns," which achieved their independence as the apparent heirs to the New South's capricious legacy. But in Cairo, the county soon to be ironically named Grady, after the New South's most influential spokesman, based her appeal on no such progress. She clung to her rural ways and simply argued for the partition of Decatur and Thomas Counties on the grounds that they were the two largest counties in Georgia.

Cairo's agrarian ideological focus was dramatically revealed in the fight with Thomas and Decatur Counties over the creation of the new county. The region that was soon to become Grady County was considered a "hot bed of Populism" by many in Thomas County.

After an attempt to move the county seat from Cairo to nearby Whigham and three failed attempts to pass a bond issue to fund a new...