LEARN ABOUT THE HISTORY OF JOHNS CREEK GA
Founding, 19th Century
The City of Johns Creek was established in a Cherokee Indian territory in at the start of the 19th century. The precursor of this town was a cluster of small trading posts lined along Chattahoochee River inside the territory. In just 20 years, the preexisting trading posts had grown into crossroad communities. Some of the notable pioneer families that gave to the communities are the Rogers, McGinnis, Buice, Cowart, Medleck and the Findley. The main occupation of families in the community was farming and thus agricultural produce helped the town grow rapidly towards the middle of the 19th century. If you visit Johns Creek today you will see the names of some of the prominent pioneering farming families inscribed on the bridges and streets.
In 1820, Sheltenville community (now Shakerag) was established complete with a ferry crossing on the river across which people and livestock crossed thus boosting the trade in the town. Downstream, Nesbit ferry was also established at Newton.
20th Century
Towards the end of the 1920's, gold deposits were discovered inside the Cherokee nation in Northeast Georgia. It was close to 45 miles in the north of Johns Creek. This led to US's first ever Gold Rush which attracted the government's attention and led to the takeover of the territory. As a result, the infamous "Trail of Tears" force flight was inevitable causing the Cherokee Indians to flee to Oklahoma and beyond the western flank.
A small number of Indians remained though, the most outstanding being Sarah Cordery, then a mixed-race wife of John Rodgers (1774-1851) the pioneer and her 12 children who lived to fight for Cherokee rights towards the end of Cherokee Nation’s existence in Georgia.
In 1970
Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) graduates established the technology business park which is now T known as Technology Park of Atlanta and proceeded to acquire 1,800 acres of land along the Medlock Bridge Road (GA 141) and McGinnis Ferry Road in 1981 to build a master-planned community/second campus. Trying to spot the small Johns Creek on the older map, they named this mixed-use community enclave Johns Creek/Technology Park.
Thus it became the first ever reference to the Johns Creek town as a specific place and it rose rapidly in few years into the home of over 200 companies - a huge number of them being Fortune 500 companies - with around 76,000 residents and over 6 million ft of retail, office and industrial space. By 2000, a local movement started advocating for incorporation of the John Creek region and its neighboring lands into a city. Only 1 of 3 main communities north in the northern part of Chattahoochee in the Metro Atlanta were not merged by that time.
As the town stands today, the whole of Fulton County in the north of Chattahoochee River has been incorporated. Following the Sandy Springs' successful inclusion in the spring of 2005, a legislative push was started to advocate for the incorporation of the whole of Johns Creek community. Consequently, the legislators passed House Bill 1321 which was signed by then-Governor Sonny Perdue in 2006 and finally approved by citizens of northeastern Fulton in July the same year in a voter referendum. In November 2006, John Creek’s first batch of elected officials was duly elected into office on December 1, 2006, under the official name “Johns Creek City”.