Lilburn GA History
The entire region that is now Gwinnett County was inhabited by Cherokee and Creek Indians prior to the arrival of European colonists. A tribe of Native American Indians known as the Lower Creeks were living in the Lilburn area in 1818 when the State of Georgia appropriated the entire region, surveyed it, and subdivided it into land districts and numbered land lots.
Shortly thereafter the Lower Creek Indians were forcibly relocated elsewhere. Beginning in 1819, Georgia conducted a series of six land lotteries in which 250-acre lots were allocated to the lucky winners of the lottery who were then given legal title to the 250-acre properties including all the rights and privileges of ownership. The cost for each participant in the land lottery was one dollar.
Lilburn was originally named McDaniel
A man named William McDaniel won the first land lot in what is now Lilburn, and he built his home in a log cabin near what is now the intersection of Lawrenceville Highway and Harmony Grove Road. Together with his family, William McDaniel also built the first church and named it Camp Creek Church. Lilburn might not have developed much more than that if it had not been for the Georgia Carolina and Northern Railroad, which began purchasing property and right of ways for tracks to be laid from Baltimore to Atlanta in 1887.
Around 1890, the company bought the area that is now Lilburn, named it McDaniel, laid out a grid pattern for streets and constructed a railroad depot. By 1892, a telegraph office and several retail businesses had been established and in 1900, the name of the town was changed to Lilburn. It appears that somebody in management at the railroad liked the first name of one of the company’s general superintendents and thought that the town name should honor the railroad instead of the area’s first resident. So even though Mr. Lilburn Trigg Myers had never actually been to McDaniel, he was the one who inspired the City of Lilburn’s name.
The first school in Lilburn was organized in the early 1900's. On July 27, 1910, the State of Georgia enacted legislation incorporating Lilburn as a city. Next, a mayor and city council were elected and by 1919, Lilburn had a bank, two doctors, and about 10 retail stores including one automobile dealer.
On November 15, 1920, Lilburn was devastated by a fire after which only two stores remained standing. Hard working people rebuilt the town but the economy was heavily dependent upon Georgia’s cotton crop and the next disasters to occur were a devastating boll weevil infestation and the Great Depression of 1929. Local government ceased to exist until 1955 when the need for a new water system sparked enough interest to create a new city government.
As Atlanta grew, Highway 29 became a convenient conduit for people who wanted to live in the suburbs and Lilburn also grew. The original historic downtown area was revitalized, City Hall was built in 1976, and by the year 2000 the population had grown to 11,307.