Milton County, Georgia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Milton County was a county of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1857 to 1931. It was created on 18 December 1857 from parts of northeastern Cobb, southeastern Cherokee, and southwestern Forsyth counties. Alpharetta was the county seat until the end of 1931, when Milton was merged with Fulton County to save it from bankruptcy during the Great Depression[1]. At that time, Campbell County, which had already gone bankrupt, was also ceded to Fulton, giving it its 70-mile (110 km) long irregular shape along the Chattahoochee River.
Following the 1932 merger, the Cobb County town of Roswell was also ceded to Fulton four months later on 9 May 1932. The cession of Roswell (including everything east of Willeo Creek) made the new county more contiguous, though a very narrow strip (through what is now the Sandy Springs panhandle, ceded to Milton from DeKalb) actually already connected the two sections.
[edit] Re-creation proposals
In recent years, some residents of the former county unhappy with the distribution of Fulton County's municipal services between the lower-income southern and higher-income northern portions of unincorporated Fulton County have sought to re-create Milton County, consisting of Roswell, Alpharetta, and Mountain Park. A bill before the Georgia General Assembly in 2005 proposed to include Sandy Springs as well, and rename the remainder of Fulton County as "Atlanta County". The state's constitution, however, now prohibits any more than 159 counties, the number it has had since the merger in 1932. Any change would require a constitutional amendment, supported by two-thirds of each house in the General Assembly, and by over half of all voters statewide in a referendum. On 9 January 2007, Jan Jones, who represents the house district that includes Roswell, and representives of adjacent districts introduced HR 12. Without mentioning Milton County by name, HR 12 proposes to amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to recreate merged counties regardless of the 159-county limit, if such an action is ratified by people in the areas of the proposed recreated county. This amendment would disallow voters in the remaining parts of Fulton County from voting on the issue. [2]
Another possibility would be a merger of two or more of Georgia's other smaller rural counties into somewhat larger ones, thereby reducing the number of counties in the state. This is reasonable since many if not most of Georgia's counties are considerably smaller and less populous than those in most states.
However, these methods may be irrelevant, because the study concluded that a new Milton County would not initially be cost-effective[citation needed], and instead supported municipalization of the two remaining areas. These are Milton (north) and Johns Creek (east). This was decided by voters in those areas in the 18 July 2006 election. They officially became cities under Georgia constitutional law on 1 December 2006.
[edit] Geography
The map at right depicts the original Milton County in 1883, with (counterclockwise from lower right) Gwinnett County to the southeast, Forsyth County to the northeast, Cherokee County to the northwest, Cobb County to the southwest, and Fulton County (Hammond, now Sandy Springs) and DeKalb County (Chamblee and Dunwoody) to the south. Note that the northern edge of DeKalb County also now no longer touches the river, as it did then.
[edit] External links
See also: list of extinct U.S. counties
