Bleckley County, in central Georgia, was named for state chief justice Logan Bleckley. The 219-square-mile county was carved from Pulaski County by constitutional amendment in October 1912, when it became Georgia’s 147th county. The area was originally inhabited by the Creek Indians.
The seat of Bleckley County, Cochran, originally known as Dykesboro, was incorporated in 1869 and named for Judge Arthur E. Cochran, president of the Macon and Brunswick (later Southern) Railroad. The current courthouse was built in 1914 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Among the town’s most memorable events are several tornadoes, the two most devastating occurring in 1929 and 1958. Six people were killed in the earlier storm, and sixteen people were injured in the latter. Newspaper reports of the 1958 tornado describe the funnel cloud picking up a church building and depositing it onto a city street.
Other towns in the county are Allentown and Empire. Allentown existed first as Cross Roads, then as Cool Spring, and later as Allen’s Crossroads, named for one of the first postmasters, John Allen. The current name was taken in 1891, when the Macon, Dublin, and Savannah Railroad began running through the town. Empire has existed since 1886, when sawmill owners John Anderson and John W. Hightower named it. Like many other small towns of the era, Empire was located at the junction of two rail lines, the Macon and Brunswick division of the Southern Railroad and the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad. The county also includes the community of Cary.
Bleckley is home to Middle Georgia College, a two-year residential college in the University System of Georgia.
Descriptions of the county from its earliest days emphasize the amount of acreage devoted to pine forest. Where the forest was cleared, rich soil promoted an active agricultural economy with an emphasis on row crops (especially cotton, soybeans, and peanuts), fruit orchards (primarily peaches, apples, and pecans), and livestock.
Points of interest in the county include the Ocmulgee River and Game Preserve, and Hillcrest (also known as Cedar Hall), an early-twentieth-century home in Cochran built in the Classical Revival style and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
According to the 2020 U.S. census, the population of the county is 12,583.
