Norcross: Atlanta's First Resort Escape

The railroad reached Norcross in eighteen seventy, and the town incorporated that October. John J. Thrasher, an early Atlanta businessman, laid out the community and named it for Jonathan Norcross, a former Atlanta mayor.

Atlantans came to see Gwinnett County as a short train ride from a pleasant summer retreat, and Norcross drew visitors from the city looking to escape the heat. Today it is one of the older cities in Gwinnett County and is absorbed into the sprawl of metro Atlanta, though its walkable Victorian downtown, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still gives a sense of what the getaway looked like before the suburbs caught up.