Every April since 1922, the whole town of Thomasville turns out for the Rose Show and Festival, with flower floats rolling past the 1858 courthouse, classic cars lining the square, and local chefs sneaking rose petals into cupcakes and cocktails. On the second Saturday of every month, the arts center throws its doors open for free. The 345-year-old Big Oak in Elizabeth Ireland Poe Park has a gazebo beneath it where people gather to sit, talk, and take each other’s picture (the camera mounted on a phone pole across the street will email it to you for free). Thomasville makes a strong case as the friendliest little town in Georgia, and the case rests on how much of life here happens together.

Downtown Thomasville

Downtown Thomasville turns on the Thomas County Historic Courthouse, an 1858 Greek Revival building that anchors the central square. The courthouse plays its biggest role each April during the Rose Show and Festival, a two-day community gathering that sets the social calendar for the year. The festival’s signature events run on volunteers and neighbors recognizing each other across booths: rose displays from local growers, three additional flower shows, live music, and an artisan market where most of the vendors come from a few counties over.

The Orchids on Parade kicks the weekend off with floats from schools, clubs, churches, and small businesses. The Show and Shine Car and Truck Show fills the square with more than 100 vehicles, most of them shown by their owners, who stand around answering questions all afternoon.

The festival pulls in restaurants and shops the same way. Because roughly 90% of the roses grown locally are edible, businesses around the square work them into the menu for the weekend. Liam’s Restaurant Lounge and Cheese Shoppe, a New American spot with European leanings, mixes a Rose City Cocktail with rose water and vodka. Sweet CaCao Chocolates, which uses local ingredients across its seasonal lineup, layers vanilla cupcakes with rose petal icing and turns out vanilla-rose macarons. None of this is mandated by the festival board. It just happens, the way most things happen here, because everyone is in on it.

Historic Landmarks That Bring People Together

The Big Oak does most of the work for itself. Standing at the corner of Crawford and East Monroe Streets, the southern live oak (registered with the Live Oak Society in 1936 as the 49th member) reaches 68 feet tall, has a trunk circumference of 26.5 feet, and a limb span of more than 165 feet. It dates to around 1680, which makes it older than the town. The tree sits in Elizabeth Ireland Poe Park with a Victorian gazebo beneath it, and most days you’ll find people sitting on the bench, taking pictures, or watching strangers take pictures. A camera mounted on a telephone pole across the street will email a snapshot to anyone who calls the posted number, and that small detail is part of why people end up chatting with whoever’s there.

The Jack Hadley Black History Museum holds 4,669 artifacts of African American history, with exhibits running from slavery and the Buffalo Soldiers through Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The museum runs guided tours and educational programming designed to bring small groups through together. Scavenger hunts pull families and visitors into the same conversation, and the docents lean into that, because the museum’s whole approach is built on people processing history out loud rather than reading panels in silence.

The Thomasville History Center, founded in 1952, is one of the oldest historical societies in the state. Its main building is the historic 1923 Flowers-Roberts House, with eight buildings spread across 3.3 acres. Tours and educational programs run six days a week, all of them free, which makes the center one of the easier places in town to walk in alone and walk out having met someone.

Thomasville’s Arts Scene

The Thomasville Center for the Arts opens its galleries free of charge year-round. The work on display rotates through local, regional, and state artists across multiple media, and the center programs around community engagement deliberately. Free 2nd Saturday is the most visible piece: every second Saturday of the month, the doors open with themed activities, art stations, and hands-on crafts that draw families, retirees, and first-time visitors into the same room. There is no admission charge and no expectation that you stay for any particular length of time, which is part of why it works.

The center’s annual Due South benefit concert, held each April at the Ritz Amphitheater downtown, has run since 2012 and brings performing, visual, and culinary arts together for one evening. The Thomasville Antique Show, which celebrated its 37th year in 2026, draws exhibitors from across the country to show antiques, fine art, and contemporary design alongside design lectures and hands-on workshops.

Friendliness in Thomasville is the kind of thing the town has built infrastructure around. The Rose Show pulls in restaurants, schools, clubs, and chefs in a structure where everyone has a part. The arts center keeps the doors open without charging at the threshold. The Big Oak gives strangers a reason to stand still in the same spot for a few minutes. Each of these is a small mechanism, but stack them together and a town that knows how to talk to itself is what comes out the other side. That is the version of Georgia that Thomasville is actually selling.

The college baseball season is gearing up for the final stretch before the conference tournaments begin and then NCAA regionals. Heading into that final stretch, Georgia Tech remains the team to be beat in the ACC. The Yellow Jackets rebounded from their series loss to North Carolina by run ruling No. 5 Georgia and then sweeping Wake Forest.

Georgia Tech is on top but how does the rest of the conference look?

Updated ACC Standings (as of 4/26)

1. Georgia Tech (19-5 ACC, 36-7 Overall)

2. North Carolina (17-7, 36-8-1)

3. Boston College (33-14 overall, 16-8 ACC)

4. Miami (32-12, 12-9)

5. Florida State (12-9, 29-14)

6. Virginia (29-16, 12-12)

7. Pittsburgh (28-14, 10-11)

8. NC State (27-16, 10-11)

9. Louisville (26-18, 10-11)

10. Stanford (21-19, 10-11)

11. Wake Forest (28-17, 11-13)

12. Virginia Tech (22-20, 11-13)

13. Duke (23-23, 9-15)

14. California (22-20, 7-14)

15. Notre Dame (19-20, 8-16)

16, Clemson (26-19, 6-15)

Convincing sweep

It was not always pretty, as Georgia Tech trailed early in every game of this series, but they were able to overcome that and get the sweep at home agianst a Wake Forest team that had been playing well.

The Yellow Jackets have swept four ACC series this season for the first time since 2011 and three-straight home ACC series for the first time since 1997.
The Jackets secured their 7th overall series sweep of the season, the most since 2010, still with three more weekend series on the schedule.

GT has won 13 straight home games for the first time since 2010 (17 straight) and has won 14 straight games in the state of Georgia.
The Jackets are 25-2 at Mac Nease Baseball Park this season, the best 27-game home record since 2002.

Drew Burress recorded his fifth straight multi-hit game, going 2-for-4 with a two-run HR, a single and a walk. His five-game streak with multiple hits matches the longest such streak of his career as he extends his hit streak to six games.

He hit his eighth HR of the season in the first inning, it was his 52nd career home run, tying him with Andy Bruce (1988-91) for the 4th most in program history. He is now three homers away from tying Tony Plagman (2007-10) for the third-most and five away from Jason Varitek’s record (57) set back in 1994.

He has scored 59 runs this season, the most on the team. Burress has scored 209 runs over his career, the 10th most in program history and four away from Tony Plagman (2007-10) for the ninth most.
Burress has now delivered 63 hits this season, the second most on the team behind only Advincula.
This was his 21st multi-hit game of the season, tied for the second most on the team, behind Advincula’s 26.

Up next for Georgia Tech is a midweek contest at Kennesaw State and then a home series against Xavier.

NAHUNTA, Ga. (AP) — One of two large wildfires in southeastern Georgia continues to grow and now exceeds 31 square miles (80 square kilometers), officials reported Sunday.

The Highway 82 Fire has been burning since April 20 and as of Saturday had destroyed at least 87 homes. On Sunday morning, officials said it was only 7% contained.

Highway 82 in Brantley County is about 35 miles (56.3 kilometers) north of the state line with Florida.

“The fire basically doubled last night in size,” Brantley County Manager Joey Cason said Sunday in a Facebook post. “It is a dynamic fire event that will be impacted by the wind.”

Wind gusts of about 15 mph (24.1 kph) were expected Sunday.

Cason also said evacuation notices could be issued Sunday and that residents should heed them.

“We had folks that did not evacuate and they almost got caught by that fire,” he added. “It’s going to be another potential bad fire day as the winds pick up later in the day.”

A second fire about 70 miles (110 kilometers) to the southwest in Clinch and Echols counties, near the Florida state line, had burned more than 46 square miles (121 square kilometers), destroyed at least 35 homes and only was about 10% contained as of Saturday. That blaze was started by sparks from a welding operation.

The Highway 82 fire was started by a foil balloon hitting live power lines. That created an electrical arc that ignited combustible material on the ground.

More crews were expected to arrive Sunday and Monday to help battle it, Cason said.

“There’s a ton of assets that are being poured into this fire to, hopefully, get it under control or get it out,” he said. “This whole situation is heartbreaking.”

Updated figures on homes damaged or destroyed by the blaze were not immediately available Sunday afternoon, said Susie Heisey, spokeswoman with the Southern Area Incident Management Team.

“Our firefighters worked so hard and had so much success in protecting structures and private homes, but there also were losses,” Heisey said.

Due to the ongoing fire, investigators can’t be sent in yet to assess damages, she added.

Firefighters have been battling more than 150 other wildfires in Georgia and Florida that have sent smoky haze into places far from the flames, triggering air quality warnings for some cities.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the Southeast. Scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, climate change and dead trees still littering some forests after being toppled by Hurricane Helene in 2024.

In northern Florida, Nassau County Sheriff’s Office volunteer firefighter James “Kevin” Crews died Thursday evening after he suffered an unspecified medical emergency while suppressing a brush fire. No fire deaths or injuries have been reported in Georgia.