Historic Sites in Gwinnett County

The history of Gwinnett County

Gwinnett County was created by the Georgia General Assembly on December 15, 1818, from lands ceded by the Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations along with part of Jackson County. It is named for Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia's three signers of the Declaration of Independence. The county's first elections and Inferior Court sessions were held at the home of Elisha Winn, a house built around 1812 that still stands near Dacula and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lawrenceville, incorporated in 1821 as the county seat, is the oldest city in the county. Through much of the nineteenth century Gwinnett's farm economy centered on cotton, much of it cultivated by enslaved laborers. The Civil War caused little physical damage here but destroyed the county's prosperity. Railroads spurred renewed growth, with the Southern Railroad completed through the county in 1871 and the Seaboard Air Line in 1892. In the early twentieth century the boll weevil and falling cotton prices led many farmers to turn to dairying. Buford Dam, completed on the Chattahoochee River in 1957, created Lake Lanier, and the later construction of Interstates 85 and 985 helped turn a rural county into a populous part of metropolitan Atlanta. Historic buildings such as the 1885 Gwinnett County Courthouse and the Wynne-Russell House, built around 1826, still survive.

Sources: georgiaencyclopedia.orggeorgiahistory.comen.wikipedia.org