Johns Creek

In the early 19th century the area was dotted with trading posts along the Chattahoochee in what was then Cherokee territory. Some posts grew into crossroads communities where pioneer families such as the Rogers, McGinnis, Findley, Buice, Cowart and Medlock families met and sold crops. By 1820 Sheltonville, also called Shakerag, was a ferry crossing, with McGinnis Ferry and Rogers Ferry carrying people and livestock across for a small fee. Farther south the Nesbit Ferry did the same near a crossroads known as Newtown.

Gold discovered in the foothills of northeast Georgia, about 45 miles north, led to America's second major Gold Rush and to the takeover of the Cherokee Nation by the U.S. government in 1830. The Cherokee were forced out on the Trail of Tears. A few stayed, the most famous being Sarah Cordery, the half-blood Cherokee wife of pioneer John Rogers, with their 12 children. Rogers was an influential plantation owner and a colleague of President Andrew Jackson, who stayed overnight at his 1828 home, which is now a private residence. The humorist Will Rogers, a great-great-nephew of John, visited later.

The city's name comes from Johnson K. Rogers, John's son. A local tributary was named for him, and Johns Creek became the name of the whole area. In 1831 much of the former Cherokee land north of the river was combined into the huge Cherokee County. When Milton County was formed in 1858, the Johns Creek area went into it, and during the Great Depression Milton County was dissolved and absorbed by Fulton County.

Four crossroad communities, Ocee, Newtown, Sheltonville and Warsaw, stayed the social and business centers of a quiet, unincorporated part of northeast Fulton County for the next 50 years, while Roswell, Alpharetta, Duluth and Suwanee grew around them.

In 1981 a group of Georgia Institute of Technology graduates bought 1,700 acres of farmland and woods near McGinnis Ferry and Medlock Bridge Roads for a high-tech office park, modeled on one built in 1970 in nearby Peachtree Corners. They found tiny Johns Creek on an old map and called the project Technology Park/Johns Creek, the first time the name was used for a place. It grew into a home for 200 companies, many of them Fortune 500 firms, with nearly 11,000 people working across 6,000,000 square feet of office, retail and industrial space. Houses and shopping centers followed, and the population rose to about 60,000.

By 2000 a grassroots movement wanted a city, to gain more control over traffic, growth and development and to get service levels that sprawling Fulton County found hard to give. After Sandy Springs incorporated in 2005, a legislative campaign began. House Bill 1321 passed and Governor Sonny Perdue signed it in March 2006, and residents approved it in a July 18, 2006 referendum. The first officials were elected in November 2006, and the City of Johns Creek became official on December 1, 2006. The police department started on April 27, 2008 and the fire department on October 27, 2008.

The Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra is metro Atlanta's only part-time, fully professional symphony orchestra, led by Music Director J. Wayne Baughman. The Johns Creek Arts Center runs classes and camps. The Johns Creek International Festival is held each April, and over 23,000 visitors came in 2017. The city is one of the most culturally diverse in the state and the nation. The Taste of Johns Creek, in the fall, features more than 40 local restaurants, and its proceeds support public school extracurricular activities. Other events are Founders Week in December, the Fall Family Festival in September at Newtown Park, and the juried Arts on the Creek show.

Golf is big. There are six golf facilities, five private and one public, including the Atlanta Athletic Club, which hosted the 2011 PGA Championship and the 2014 U.S. Amateur. The Atlanta Athletic Club also held the first Atlanta Tennis Championships in 2010, and thousands of residents belong to the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association.

On the river, paddlers find shoals and low-level rapids, and there is prime trout fishing. Autrey Mill Nature Preserve and Heritage Center has 46 acres of woodland, a replica of a Creek Indian hut and an 1800s historic village. A 4-mile Greenway along Georgia 141 is a popular route for cyclists. Newtown Elementary School, built in 1929, is the city's only listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2017 a resident started an effort called iHeartJC to build a long-term identity in healthcare innovation and wellness. A resolution passed a year later. The city has since counted over 700 companies and 1400 professionals in life sciences, and 450 companies and 13,000 jobs in healthcare, with Boston Scientific among those that moved, built or work there. In 2022 the group was renamed Johns Creek Vitality.

The Atlanta Athletic Club is a private country club founded in 1898, and its home in Johns Creek is its second life. The club started downtown, first in a building on Edgewood Avenue and later in a 10-story clubhouse on Carnegie Way. In 1904 it built a golf course on its East Lake property. John Heisman, the Georgia Tech football coach for whom the Heisman Trophy is named, was hired as athletic director in 1908.

The move north began in 1963. The club bought land called River Bend in Duluth in 1963 and opened a 27-hole course there in 1967. The spot was then unincorporated Fulton County with a Duluth mailing address, and it became part of Johns Creek in 2006. Stockholders voted in 1968 to sell East Lake, which later became East Lake Golf Club and is now home to The Tour Championship. The name Atlanta Athletic Club Country Club was chosen for the new property in 1969, and the downtown clubhouse was torn down in 1973.

The club's two 18-hole courses, Highlands and Riverside, have hosted big events. The 1976 U.S. Open was played here, along with the PGA Championship in 1981, 2001 and 2011, the 1990 U.S. Women's Open on the Riverside Course and the KPMG PGA Women's Championship in 2021. Both courses were used for the 2014 U.S. Amateur. Rees Jones redesigned Riverside and later Highlands, and Tripp Davis reworked Riverside again in 2022.

Autrey Mill is a 46-acre preserve with 1.25 miles of trails, and it is free to visit. Over time the land went from dense forest to farmland and then back to woodland, and it is now a city park and a small historic village. The village keeps buildings that tell the story of the farm families who lived nearby, including farmhouses, a country store and a church that was moved here and restored.

A Visitor Center and Farm Museum shows old tools and household items beside rescued animals. The nonprofit that runs the preserve offers programs for children, school groups, scouts and seniors, along with camps and guided hikes. Each fall it joins a creek clean-up called the Johns Creek Crawl, which ties the preserve to the Chattahoochee River watershed.

Newtown Park is the city's other gathering place. The Fall Family Festival is held there, and the city runs a summer concert series at the park. One season's final concert featured the Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra.

The Chattahoochee is about 430 miles long. It begins at Jacks Gap in the southeastern corner of Union County, in the southern Blue Ridge Mountains, and flows southwest to Atlanta and through its suburbs, with Johns Creek among the communities along its banks. Its upper course lies inside Chattahoochee National Forest. Further downstream it forms part of the Georgia and Alabama border before joining the Flint River to make the Apalachicola.

The poet Sidney Lanier wrote The Song of the Chattahoochee in 1877, and Lake Lanier upstream is named for him. A nonprofit called Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper has for decades pushed to protect the northern stretch of the river, especially where it crosses metro Atlanta. Johns Creek the stream is one of the river's tributaries too, and it runs through Forsyth County and north Fulton, including the city that took its name.

Johns Creek High School is a Fulton County public school for grades 9 to 12 that opened in the fall of 2009. Its students mostly live in the city, though it also serves part of Alpharetta, and they come up from Autrey Mill Middle School. The school had 2,142 students in 2019. Its mascot is the Gladiator. Its 2009 cheerleading squad won the AAA state championship in the school's first year, and it has a heated rivalry with Chattahoochee High School, which sits 2.5 miles away.

Northview High School opened in the fall of 2002 and draws mainly from River Trail Middle School. It had 1,752 students in the 2021-2022 school year. Its mascot is the Titan. It runs about one hundred clubs and teams, offers dual enrollment courses with Georgia Tech, Gwinnett Technical College, Kennesaw State University and Georgia Perimeter College, and has hosted the playoffs of the Southeastern Lacrosse Conference since 2010.

The main highways are State Routes 120, 140 and 141. Johns Creek has no direct MARTA train or bus service. A GRTA Xpress route, 408, once linked it to the Doraville MARTA station. Plans approved in 2018 would upgrade State Bridge Road and Pleasant Hill Road, with a new pedestrian bridge over the river toward Duluth, and the Rogers bridge project would restore a bike and pedestrian link between Duluth and Johns Creek.

Fulton County Schools run the public schools. There are ten elementary schools, three middle schools, Autrey Mill, River Trail and Taylor Road, and three high schools, Chattahoochee, Johns Creek and Northview. Private options include Perimeter School, Providence Christian Academy, Woodward Academy North Campus, Cresco Montessori School, Mount Pisgah Christian School and Holy Redeemer Catholic School, which opened in fall 1999. The Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System runs the Northeast Spruill Oaks Library and the Ocee Regional Library.