Here’s a view of Railroad Street in Alamo, Ga., the seat of government in Wheeler County, which has the highest rate of poverty in the state.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown writes: “The modern independent hardware store in the foreground is a nice contrast to the old agricultural warehouses and water towers. Dot H. Brown writes that her father, J. F. Hattaway and his business partner Cecil Carroll built and operated the cotton gin and warehouses until about 1970.”
According to 2011 poverty estimates by the U.S. Census, Wheeler County, which had 7,421 people in 2010, had a 42.2 percent poverty rate. What’s remarkable about that is it is one of the few high-poverty counties where the overall rate is higher than the rate for children under 18.
About two thirds of the residents of the south-central Georgia county are white with the remaining almost all black.
Copyrighted photo taken in March 2014 by Brian Brown. All rights reserved.