As of the census[2] of 2000, there were 597 people, 232 households, and 167 families residing in the town. By 2020, its population increased to 638, experiencing no population change from 2010.
Brooks Brown (1985-), American professional baseball pitcher for the Colorado Rockies of Major League Baseball (MLB). Brown attended Portal High School and played baseball there. He attended the University of Georgia, playing in college. He played for several minor league teams before being called up to the majors for the first time on July 6, 2014.
Dr. Leila Denmark (1898–2012), a pediatrician, author and researcher who blazed trails for women in medicine, and lived to be 114
Matthew L. Gibson (1985-), Science instructor emeritus at Portal High School and Curator of Natural History at the Charleston Museum, credited as America's First Museum.[9] Gibson also published a Journal of Paleontology articles which designate a new species of pontoporiid dolphin, Auroracetus bakerae as well as a new species of protocetid whale, Tupelocetus palmeri.[10][11][12] He is a research member of the Don Sundquist Center for Excellence in Paleontology.[13]
Sebastian McBride, African-American man who was lynched by whites on August 27, 1904; the fourth lynching victim of white racial violence that month in Bulloch County[14]
^Gibson, Matthew L.; Geisler, Jonathan H. (2009). "A new pliocene dolphin (Cetacea: Pontoporiidae), from the Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 29 (3): 966–971. doi:10.1671/039.029.0307. S2CID85706327.
^Matthew L. Gibson, John Mnieckowski & Jonathan H. Geisler (2018) Tupelocetus palmeri, a new species of protocetid whale (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the middle Eocene of South Carolina, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 38:6, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2018.1555165
^"Members". East Tennessee State University & General Shale Natural History Museum Visitor Center and Gray Fossil Site. Retrieved July 30, 2014.
