Georgia's location between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean makes it the link between the eastern seaboard and the Gulf states. In the 18th century, Carolina fur traders crossed the Savannah River at the site of Augusta and followed trails to the Mississippi River. Pioneer farmers soon followed the same trails and used the many river tributaries to send their produce to Savannah, Georgia's first great depot. Beginning in 1816, steamboats plied the inland rivers, but they never replaced the older shallow-drafted Petersburg boats, propelled by poles.
From the 1830s onward, businessmen in the eastern cities of Savannah, Augusta, and Brunswick built railroads west to maintain their commerce. The two principal lines, the Georgia and the Central of Georgia, were required by law to make connection with a state-owned line, the Western and Atlantic, at the new town of Atlanta, which thus became in 1847 the link between Georgia and the Ohio Valley. By the Civil War, Georgia, with more miles of rail than any other Deep South state, was a vital link between the eastern and western sectors of the Confederacy. After the war, the railroads contributed to urban growth as towns sprang up along their routes. Trackage increased from 4,532 mi (7,294 km) in 1890 to 7,591 mi (12,217 km) in 1920. But with competition from motor carriers, total trackage had declined to 4,897 rail mi (7,880 km) by 2000. In the same year, CSX and Norfolk Southern were the only Class I railroads operating within the state. In the mid-1990s, Amtrak operated five long-distance trains through the state, with east-west routes through Atlanta, and north-south routes through Savannah. In 1979, Atlanta inaugurated the first mass-transit system in the state, including the South's first subway.
Georgia's old intracoastal waterway carries about one million tons of shipping annually and is also used by pleasure craft and fishing vessels. Savannah's modern port facilities handled 22.3 million tons of cargo in 2000; the coastal cities of Brunswick and St. Mary's also have deepwater docks.
In the 1920s, Georgia became the gateway to Florida for motorists. Today, I-75 is the main route from Atlanta to Florida, and I-20 is the major east-west highway; both cross at Atlanta with I-85, which proceeds southeast from South Carolina to Alabama. I-95 stretches along the coast from South Carolina through Savannah to Jacksonville, Florida. During the 1980s, Atlanta invested $1.4 billion in a freeway expansion program that permitted capacity to double. In 2000, Georgia had 114,727 mi (184,635 km) of public roads, 7,321,013 registered motor vehicles, and 5,550,176 licensed drivers. In 2002, there were 219 private and 106 public airports in Georgia. Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta is the hub of air traffic in the Southeast and in March 2000 topped Chicago's O'Hare for title of world's busiest airport.