*** Welcome to piglix ***

West Point, GA

West Point, Georgia
City
The West Point Commercial Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 2006.
The West Point Commercial Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 1, 2006.
Location in Troup County and Georgia
Location in Troup County and Georgia
Coordinates: 32°52′35″N 85°10′26″W / 32.87639°N 85.17389°W / 32.87639; -85.17389Coordinates: 32°52′35″N 85°10′26″W / 32.87639°N 85.17389°W / 32.87639; -85.17389
Country United States
State Georgia
Counties Troup, Harris
Area
 • Total 11.3 sq mi (29.2 km2)
 • Land 11.2 sq mi (28.9 km2)
 • Water 0.1 sq mi (0.3 km2)
Elevation 568 ft (173 m)
Population (2010)
 • Total 3,474
 • Estimate (2016) 3,766
 • Density 311/sq mi (120.1/km2)
Time zone Eastern (EST) (UTC-5)
 • Summer (DST) EDT (UTC-4)
ZIP code 31833
Area code(s) Area code 706
FIPS code 13-82132
GNIS feature ID 0333394
Website www.cityofwestpointga.com

West Point is a city in Troup County, with a small tail of the south end of town in Harris County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 3,474, and in 2015 the estimated population was 3,728. The portion of the city in Harris County is part of the Columbus, Georgia Metropolitan Area, while the portion in Troup County is part of the LaGrange, GA Micropolitan Statistical Area.

The city's present name comes from its being near the westernmost point of the Chattahoochee River, where the river turns from its southwesterly flow from the Appalachian Mountains to due south – for all practical purposes – and forms the boundary with Alabama. The large nearby reservoir, West Point Lake, was created by the Army Corps of Engineers by the building of the West Point Dam, for water storage and hydroelectric power generation. The reservoir stores water which can be released during dry seasons, in order to maintain the water level of the navigable inland waterway from Columbus, Georgia, south to the Gulf of Mexico.

During the late spring of 2003, there was a flood caused by extremely heavy rainfall and thunderstorms upstream of the West Point Dam; the weather caused the water level in the reservoir to come close to overflowing the top of the dam. There were allegations of poor forecasting by the Corps of Engineers of the reservoir's water levels. The flood water would have overflowed the dam had a large amount of water not been released though the spillway of the dam. Whereas this prevented the catastrophic failure of the West Point Dam, the city endured a flood much more severe than any other in the time since the dam had been built.


...
Wikipedia

...