By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | On Monday, April 18, 2016, Gwinnett County will welcome its 900,000th resident. Becoming the second most populated county in Georgia, it’s closing in on Fulton County, with 1,010,562 persons (2015). Experts say that eventually Gwinnett should be the most populated county in the state about 2030.
The 900,000th person in Gwinnett may be someone moving in from anywhere in the world. Or it may be one of 14 new babies born each day at Gwinnett Medical Center.
How did we reach that conclusion, and find that it will occur on Tax Day, 2016? We just interpolated the figures.
The official population estimate shows that in Gwinnett County in 2015, we had 894,928 people. We used that as the population at the end of 2015. (You must start somewhere.)
In 2014, Gwinnett County had 877,922 people. Subtracting, that meant that 17,006 people moved into Gwinnett in 2015. That was an average of 1,417 new residents a month, or 47.238 per day.
Start counting off from January 1, and it falls that the 900,000th person will arrive April 18.
(By the way, Gwinnett’s recent growth by 17,006 a year means that its growth alone each year is larger than 57 Georgia counties. And Gwinnett’s population is larger than five states: Wyoming Vermont, Alaska, South Dakota and North Dakota, and is aiming at passing Delaware by 2020.)
Gwinnett’s population growth has been fascinating to watch. Look at its recent growth:
Year Population
1960 43,561
1970 72,349
1980 166,903
1990 352,910
2000 588,448
2010 805,321
2015 894,328 (official estimate)
The greatest period of growth was between 1990-2000, when 235,538 more people moved into our county. The next 10 years saw 216,873 newcomers to Gwinnett. If the county continues growing in the next 4.5 years as it has during the first half of this decade, Gwinnett will then have a population of 983,335 by 2020.
We remember the time when Gwinnett was growing so quickly that it was the fastest-growing county in the United States. We learned it from the publisher of the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun-News. Mike Pate is now retired from the newspaper racket in Tallahassee, Fla.
Mike called one day about 1978, telling me “Congratulations!”
“For what?” I asked.
He said: “Yours was the fastest-growing county in the United States last year.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because we in Horry County, S.C., were second-fastest,” he said.
So when with the Gwinnett Daily News then, we started ballyhooing that Gwinnett was the fastest-growing county in the nation.
Then something happened. What was measured in that pronouncement was “percent of growth” of the county. So when Gwinnett went to 166,903 people in 1980, we were no longer, percentage-wise, the fastest growing. The higher numbers lowered our percentage.
But if you took all counties in the USA above 100,000 population, Gwinnett was fastest growing in that particular category. That’s what we based our continued ballyhooing on that Gwinnett was the fastest growing.
And it’s still continuing.
NEW SUBJECT: We have just recognized that Jonathan Norcross, the namesake for the City of Norcross, was born on April 18. A reader asks: “Why doesn’t the city start having a party in the Lillian Webb Park with blue and white icing on cupcakes? Kids need to learn how the city got its name!”
What a wonderful idea! Are you listening, city fathers?
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