Fort Valley is the seat of Peach County, in central Georgia, positioned about 25 miles south of Macon and roughly 100 miles south of Atlanta, in a region where the state's orchard and agricultural heritage is most concentrated. The city grew as a railroad and agricultural center, and its name, along with the county's, speaks to the peach industry that once defined the local economy and still shapes the area's identity. The city's most significant institution is Fort Valley State University, founded in 1895 and today one of Georgia's three public historically Black universities and its only 1890 land-grant institution. The university enrolls more than 2,500 students and anchors the city economically and culturally, bringing a college-town energy to an otherwise small, rural county seat. Its campus, faculty, and student body make Fort Valley a center of African American higher education in the state. Beyond the university, Fort Valley functions as a traditional county seat, with a courthouse, a small downtown, and the government and retail services that anchor Peach County. The surrounding landscape of orchards, pecan groves, and farmland reinforces the city's agricultural roots, while its position along U.S. Highway 341 and near Interstate 75 keeps it connected to the larger central Georgia region. Fort Valley suits students, faculty, and families who want an affordable, community-oriented central Georgia town with the vitality that a university provides. It is a place where the rhythms of campus life and the seasons of the orchards overlap. The city's location keeps it connected without pulling it into a larger metro's orbit. Macon's hospitals, retail, and cultural institutions are a short drive north, and Interstate 75 opens the wider state, but Fort Valley retains the distinct identity of a small central Georgia seat. Its modest cost of living and steady institutional base have kept it stable across economic cycles, and the university ensures a constant flow of young people, ideas, and events through the heart of town. The result is a community quieter than a typical college town yet livelier than most rural county seats.