The fish fauna of the Buffalo Creek drainage, a tributary of the Little Tallapoosa River in the upper piedmont ecoregion of West Georgia was sampled during the summer and fall of 1999. Five regions within the drainage were defined primarily on the basis of perceived anthropogenic impact. Community structure was described by species richness, diversity, evenness, relative species abundance, family composition, feeding guilds and pollution tolerance levels. Little Buffalo Creek, perceived as the least impacted region, exhibited higher species richness, diversity, and evenness, higher trophic structure complexity and a greater abundance of pollution sensitive species than regions on Buffalo Creek. Within Buffalo Creek, species richness was more dependent upon local conditions of substrate and flow regime than distance downstream.