Georgia is the Peach State.

But what if we were known as the silk, olive, cotton, peanut, timber, rice, blueberry, pecan, corn, watermelon, all that stuff state?

Well, that almost happened.

When Georgia was just getting started in the 1700s, one of the major goals for the colonists was to grow and send valuable agricultural goods back to England.

But what exactly did they grow and sell?

(bright symphonic music) The challenge was clear.

Colonial Georgia was still small and underdeveloped, making large-scale trade tough.

We had only just been established in 1732, so we were like the new kid trying to catch up.

So what do you do when you're the rookie?

You hustle.

Georgia's colonists started trading fur with indigenous people, South Carolina, and of course, Great Britain, but they needed to trade more than just fur.

James Oglethorpe, who founded the colony of Georgia, and the trustees made a plan for the great Georgia experiment.

Two years after the founding of Georgia's trust, they started The Trustee Garden to figure out how to increase Georgia's exports.

The garden was like a 10-acre agriculture class to help the trustees become better farmers and to make Georgia's economy take off.

This garden was modeled after the ones in Great Britain, because at the time, Britain was like the big brother Georgia looked up to.

But then came the big question, what should they grow?

Well, the big wigs over in England were into luxury items.

They liked silk dresses, the finer things, diamond rings, think fancy goods for fancy people.

Originally, Oglethorpe and the trustees tried to influence the colonists to grow lots of different things like orange trees, olives, and other plants that could be made into medicines.

But ultimately, they decided to focus on materials that were popular with well-off Brits.

Back then that meant silk and indigo.

Oglethorpe was convinced that these expensive materials would put Georgia on the map.

Silk was rare and in high demand, and indigo, which made blue dye, symbolized power and status, perfect for impressing the folks back in London, right?

Well, there were some problems.

Georgia's weather was too unpredictable for silkworms to really do their thing, and the production of silk was incredibly labor-intensive.

So the silk industry never took off.

Other options now had to be considered, like producing and selling wine.

Europeans tried bringing over their grapevines, but that flopped too.

Then came the indigo bounty.

The bounty was a bonus or extra money given to colonists for producing certain goods.

The bounty gave people more of an incentive to produce indigo.

I mean, who wouldn't wanna make some extra cash in colonial Georgia?

So with this bounty up for grabs, and after seeing their South Carolina neighbors get rewarded for delivering a whopping hall of six pounds of indigo, many Georgians jumped on the bandwagon.

Pretty quickly, the colonies were producing a lot more than just six pounds of indigo.

By 1755, Georgia was exporting about 4,500 pounds of indigo, but South Carolina was already way ahead.

So what was Georgia's ticket to getting rich?

What could actually help Georgia become a productive colony?

Indigo was okay, but we needed something big, something that would really pay the bills.

That's when Georgia struck gold, or not literally, but we found our first staple crop, rice.

Rice farming in Georgia was successful for two main reasons.

Swampy areas along the Savannah, Altamaha and Ogeechee rivers were ideal for rice fields and Georgia's legalization of slavery in 1751 following the insistence of the malcontents.

Georgia's rivers and the legalization of slavery made it possible for farmers to operate really profitable and really large rice plantations at a low cost.

Harsh conditions and high death rates made the work unattractive for white laborers.

So much of the rice production was dependent on enslaved people.

The enslaved West Africans who worked these rice fields provided more than just labor.

They brought technology and techniques for growing rice from their native countries.

Because of their efforts, money started rolling in and rice became colonial Georgia's economic backbone.

Georgia finally had a staple crop and established trade routes known as the rice rivers.

Rivers like the Savannah, the Ogeechee, the Altamaha and the Satilla connected goods to people and ports all over the state.

And while rice production was booming in Georgia, so was its population of enslaved people.

In just 20 years, about 60 farmers dominated the rice industry and owned half of Georgia's enslaved population.

Between 1750 and 1755, rice farms expanded to around 40,000 acres, and the number of enslaved people in Georgia jumped from 500 to 18,000.

When the American Revolution began in 1775, silk was out, indigo had already peaked, but rice kept growing.

For almost 190 years, Georgia was one of the top rice producers in the United States.

But rice wasn't all that Georgia produced during its colonial period.

Other goods in Colonial Georgia included timber, tobacco and furs.

And while most people were involved in small-scale farming, there were other trades outside of agriculture like blacksmiths, silversmiths, tailors and potters.

Times really have changed.

I mean, who would've thought that we'd go from struggling with silk worms to becoming a principal rice trader, and now the Peach State.

If you think about it, we've got a little bit of everything today.

Agriculture, manufacturing, entertainment, tech.

So here's a challenge for you.

Consider how Georgia's goods and services have evolved over time and what things you'd like to see in the state's future.

Just like the colonists had to figure out what worked and what didn't, we are still shaping Georgia today.

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