Since at least 2008, plans for Lanier Golf Course have been in the works, though it wasn’t until earlier this year that the current Board of Commissioners finally approved the course’s development.
This Week in Forsyth County History is presented by Gracemont Senior Living.
Water parks are a summer staple every child loves. Though many things have changed in the last 30 years, the concept of traveling down a long slide in a tube has not.
Forsyth County currently contracts with Central EMS for its ambulance services. Eighteen years ago, the county used Advance Ambulance Inc., though a May review of the service was “highly critical.”
Two men were charged with illegally cutting down a tree and leaving it in the middle of Hwy. 20 on June 2. According to this story, they “dragged it along the highway before abandoning it in the middle of the busy road.”
Riverwatch Middle and Shiloh Point Elementary schools, while now staples in the county, were only built just over a decade ago. Two new high schools are currently being built.
More than 75 years ago, Forsyth County’s first theater, the Frances Theatre, and only showed “good, clean, wholesome and educational pictures.” The theater cost $7,500 and was named for the youngest daughter of Mayor Roy Otwell.
Brenda Hubbard of Chestatee High School signed a contract in 1965 to play with the professional All-American Red Heads, a professional women’s team based in Caraway, Arkansas. The team played across the U.S., Mexico and Canada and was billed as the “world championship girls’ professional team.”
There must have been more room in the county in 1970. That year, the federal census found the county had a population of 16,436, up more than 4,000 from 1960. In 2016, the county’s population was estimated at 221,009.
In 1965, readers were given a history of the county’s namesake, John Forsyth. Forsyth was the 33rd governor of Georgia also served in the U.S. House and Senate and was Secretary of State from 1834-1841 under Presidents Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
Forsyth County is now home to many restaurants and other stores selling alcohol, but none of that may have been possible without a referendum in 1977 for voters to decide whether alcohol sales should be allowed in the county, which was approved by commissioners after “a long and controversial discussion”.
Staff writer Isabel Hughes contributed to this report