No city in the country has wider or better parked streets and it is noted for having been the first city in the United States to employ an all auto-fire department. The National and Dixie highways, eastern, western and central routes, all centre in Macon and is the grand central point for State and Interstate tours. Her up-to-date hotels and splendid roads are fast making Macon the mecca of the tourists traveling North and South in summer and winter.
There are two public libraries; Mercer Uni versity (for men, Baptist, 1831); Wesleyan Female College (1836, the oldest chartered fe male college in the world) ; Saint Stanislau (Roman Catholic, preparatory for the priest hood) ; Mount DeSales (Roman Catholic); Masonic Home (widows and ornhans) ; State Academy for the Blind (1852), with a valuable library of several thousand volumes; and a modern granite public building. Macon is the home of the Masonic Order in Georgia and maintains a handsome home for widows and orphans on a 100-acre farm one mile from the city. All other orders, are represented: Knights of Pythias Castle is valued at $50,000 Elks Hall, $20,000; Odd Fellows, $25,000.
Recreation facilities include the home of the Georgia State Fair, located in Central City Park, good buildings for agricultural and in dustrial exhibits, cattle, swine and poultry. Annual attendance, 125,000; Idle Hour Country Club with modern club house and golf links; several resorts for swimming and dancing; four playgrounds with up-to-date apparatus; splen did mile-track; half-mile jog track and winter quarters for circuses and racing stock; the Y. M. C. A. building, four stories, with gym nasium, dormitories and swimming pool; Grand Opera House and four splendid moving picture theatres. All of the principal resorts are reached by street cars and taxi Imes. One
park is maintained for colored people exclu sively.
Tatnall Park, with playground, covers 18 acres. There are numerous street parks all over the city, with shade trees, cement walks and seats. The city has been the recipient of 200 acres of beautiful woodland on the bank of the river two miles out, reached by a boule vard, where a tourist hotel and golf links are to be built. This gift is a part of the late Senator Bacon's estate. There are 29 churches for white people with 14,000 members; many of them handsome buildings, with annexes for Sunday schools, and homes for widows and orphans. The colored population is also well represented in church work and have substantial churches.
The cemeteries include Rose Hill, 150 acres, established in 1840; Riverside, and other smaller ones located on the river bank and famed for their natural beauty, handsome monuments and mausoleums.
The city is governed by a mayor and council of 12 aldermen, with separate commissions of three each in charge of police and fire depart ments, and a water commission of three. Ma con has a modern water plant valued at over $1,000,000, supplying water from the Ocmulgee River, above navigation, on one side, and Tuft Springs on the other. Macon was settled in 1822, incorporated in 1823 and received a city charter in 1832 and was named after Nathaniel Macon, a patriot and statesman of North Caro lina. Macon's population in 1900 was 23,000; in 1910, 42,000; in 1915, over 50,000, and this does not include at least 5,000 people who live in the immediate vicinity, enjoying street car, electric light and water service, while within a 50-mile radius of Macon there is a popula tion of nearly 800,000 people who reach the city over a system of the best roads in the county.