MACON, a city of central Georgia, U.S.A., the county seat of Bibb county; on Federal highways 41, 8o and 129, and at the head of navigation on the Ocmulgee river. It has a municipal airport, and is served by the Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Macon, Dublin and Savannah and the Southern railways. Pop. (1920), (44% were negroes); and it was 53,829 by the Federal census of 1930. Macon is a city of wide streets, many trees, stately old mansions and attractive new residence districts on the hills, several beautiful public buildings (including the Municipal auditorium, opened in 1925), 500 ac. of parks and playgrounds, and a municipal stadium seating 12,000 spectators. It is the seat of Wesleyan college (1836), the first college in the world chartered to confer academic degrees on women, which in 1928 was building a large new $3,000,00o plant on a campus of 170 ac., 5 m. N. of the city; Mercer university (Baptist), estab lished as Mercer institute in 1833, at Penfield; the Georgia Academy for the Blind (1852); and several other institutions. There are three large Indian mounds near the city. Macon is the commercial centre of a rich agricultural area, devoted largely to peaches, pecans, cotton, vegetables and diversified farm crops.
Immense beds of kaolin are near by. The city ships 10,00o to 18,000 carloads of peaches annually; receives 8o,000 bales of cotton in a normal year, 54,000 of which are used in its own mills; and despatches a train-load of brick daily. It has a large whole sale trade and a variety of manufacturing industries, with an output in 1925 valued at $29,478,220. The largest greenhouses in the South are at Macon. Bank debits for 1926 totalled $286,803,000. The assessed valuation for 1927 was $51,416,438. Macon (named after Nathaniel Macon, q.v.) was surveyed in 1823 by order of the Georgia legislature to be the judicial seat of Bibb county, and was chartered in 1824. It quickly became an important river port and trading centre, shipping 69,00o bales of cotton by water in 1834. In 185o the population was 5,720; in 186o, 8,247. During the Civil War it was the seat of a Con federate commissariat and Treasury depository, and was not occupied by Federal troops until April 20, 1865. Macon was the birthplace of Sidney Lanier.