Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
More historic than 52% of U.S. towns · #106 of 263 in Georgia. What drives it
14 places in town are on the National Register, among them three historic districts with 68 buildings between them. Below: 10 old photos and papers from 1893 on and the census since 1900.
Tybee Island first appears in the census in 1900. Three smaller post offices, Tybee (1885), Fort Screven (1904) and Savannah Beach (1929), opened inside today’s city and later closed.
More historic than 52% of U.S. towns, on its age, its old homes and the National Register.
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Tybee Island is more historic than 52% of U.S. towns, #106 of 263 in Georgia. Its National Register listings hold the grade up; its age pulls it down.
Georgia towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical Georgia town has 10.0 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Tybee Island’s 461 sits above most of its state (88% of Georgia towns have fewer) while its 144 historic buildings outnumber those of 91% of U.S. towns.
Founding year: the first census (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Lost two-thirds of its people between 1910 and 1920, then grew more than tenfold.
13 censuses, 1900–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Tybee Island’s Wikipedia page.
Tybee Island’s post office has been open since 1978. Three other post offices opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
The country’s official list of buildings and places worth saving.
National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places. Photos from Wikimedia Commons, credited on each place’s page.
From Wikipedia’s history of Tybee Island.
Native Americans, using dugout canoes to navigate the waterways, hunted and camped in Georgia's coastal islands for thousands of years. The Euchee tribe likely inhabited the island in the years preceding the arrival of the first Spanish explorers in the area in the 16th century. Tybee is the Euchee word for "salt".
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveDamaged homes from the 1893 hurricane
In the archiveHotel Tybee2 decades in the archive, from the 1890s to the 1900s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
1893Damaged homes from the 1893 hurricane
1893Damaged railroad from the 1893 hurricane
1893Tybee after the Sea Islands hurricane
1895Palmettoes on Tybee Island, Savannah, Ga1900Hotel Tybee
1900Tybee Surf
1900Palmettoes on Tybee Island, near Savannah, Ga
1901Palmettoes on Tybee Island
1901Palmettoes on Tybee Island, near Savannah, Ga
1907Tybee Island, palmettoes, Savannah, GaNo then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Tybee Island’s page.
Retake this view · +15Nobody well known was born in Tybee Island itself, so here are the best known from just nearby.
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
The Tybee Island post office opened in 1900, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
Tybee Island is more historic than 52% of U.S. towns, #106 of 263 in Georgia. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
14 listings: 11 buildings and 3 historic districts, the Fort Screven Historic District, the Tybee Island Strand Cottages Historic District and the Tybee Island Back River Historic District, with 68 contributing buildings. 144 historic buildings in all.
12% of Tybee Island’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±4.2 points), against a typical 3.8% for a Georgia town; the median home was built in 1984.
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (5), the Library of Congress (7), the National Register of Historic Places (14), Wikipedia, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock) and the USGS Geographic Names Information System. Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
2008
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