Americus is at the center of an area once known as the "granary of the Creek nations," so called because Native Americans favored this area for the cultivation of maize. The town was named, it is said, either for Americus Vespucius or for the settlers themselves, who were referred to as "merry cusses" because of their happy-go-lucky ways. The town flourished in the 1890s. Many Victorian and Gothic Revival buildings remain from that period.

Today, peanuts, corn, cotton, small grain, and pecans are grown, and bauxite and kaolin are mined in the area. Americus is also a manufacturing center, producing lumber commodities, metal lighting equipment, heating products, and textiles. The town's livestock sales are second in volume in the state. Plains, nine miles west via Hwy 280, is the hometown of the 39th president, Jimmy Carter.