Gwinnett County, Georgia

Gwinnett County is a county in Georgia, United States, about 21 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. It had a population of 957,062 at the 2020 census, an estimated 1,018,099 by 2025, and covers 430 square miles (1,100 km2) centred near 33°58′N 84°02′W.

Lawrenceville is the county seat; its postal code is 30046. The county holds 17 incorporated cities and towns and about a dozen unincorporated communities, and it runs on Eastern time. Its FIPS code is 13135.

Towns & Villages in Gwinnett

Gwinnett has 17 incorporated cities and towns — several of them straddling into neighboring counties — plus a scatter of unincorporated communities with no city government of their own. The table below covers all 17 incorporated places and the county’s best-known unincorporated communities. CDP marks a Census-designated place with no municipal government; Unincorp. marks a named community that is neither incorporated nor a formally delineated CDP.

Four of the incorporated places are only partly in Gwinnett. Buford’s city limits sit mostly in Gwinnett, with a northern sliver crossing into Hall County. Braselton, a town chartered across four counties, has its largest population share — 2,973 of its 13,403 residents — on the Gwinnett side; the figure in the table above is the Gwinnett portion only, not the townwide total. Auburn is centred in Barrow County and holds just 209 Gwinnett residents out of 7,495 townwide. Loganville is centred in Walton County, with city limits reaching west into southeastern Gwinnett. Rest Haven is a separate 45-person town, chartered in 1938 and now nearly surrounded by Buford, which provides its planning, zoning and utility services — the two remain legally distinct municipalities. Mulberry is the newest city on the list: voters approved incorporation in May 2024, and the city government began operating January 1, 2025, on roughly 28 square miles of former unincorporated land near Dacula, Auburn and Hamilton Mill.

ZIP Codes

• 30046 — Lawrenceville (county seat; also covers 30042–30045 and 30049)
• 30071 — Norcross (also serves parts of Peachtree Corners)
• 30092, 30096, 30097 — Peachtree Corners and Duluth
• 30518, 30519 — Buford and Sugar Hill
• 30024 — Suwanee
• 30078 — Snellville
• 30047 — Lilburn (also 30048)
• 30052 — Loganville
• 30517 — Braselton
• 30011 — Auburn and part of Mulberry
• 30019 — Dacula and part of Mulberry
• 30017 — Grayson

Berkeley Lake and Rest Haven have no ZIP code of their own; mail to both is addressed through neighboring post offices (Duluth and Buford, respectively), and the unincorporated communities of Hog Mountain, Rosebud, Centerville, Allendale and Mechanicsville were never assigned separate ZIPs, since none ever had its own post office.

Geography

Gwinnett sits in the Piedmont, a belt of gently rolling hills between the Appalachian foothills and Georgia’s coastal plain. The county covers 430 square miles of land and 6.4 square miles of water. The Chattahoochee River forms most of its western boundary with Fulton and Forsyth counties; the Yellow River drains the central and southern county past Lilburn and Snellville, and the Alcovy River runs along the eastern edge toward Walton and Barrow. Lake Lanier, the region’s largest reservoir, lies just north of the county line in Hall and Forsyth counties rather than inside Gwinnett itself.

Gwinnett borders eight other counties. Forsyth County lies to the north, Hall County and Jackson County to the northeast, Barrow County to the east, Walton County to the southeast, Rockdale County to the south, DeKalb County to the southwest, and Fulton County to the west.

Demographics

Gwinnett had a population of 957,062 at the 2020 census, the second-highest county total in Georgia after Fulton, and an estimated 1,018,099 by 2025 — a density of roughly 2,226 people per square mile of land. Peachtree Corners (42,243) and Mulberry (39,560) are the two largest communities by population. The county is majority-minority: 2020 census figures show 32.5% of residents identifying as White alone (non-Hispanic), 26.9% Black or African American, 13.2% Asian, and 23.0% Hispanic or Latino of any race — a sharp shift from 1990, when more than 90% of the county was White. Median household income runs $87,890, above the $77,353 statewide Georgia median.

Economy & Local Life

Retail trade is Gwinnett’s largest employment sector at roughly 59,150 workers, followed by health care and social assistance (about 55,080) and professional, scientific and technical services (about 47,000). Farm-equipment maker AGCO Corporation is headquartered in Duluth; Waffle House’s corporate headquarters sits in unincorporated Gwinnett near Norcross; and the Harlem Globetrotters are based in Peachtree Corners. Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest school system in Georgia and the 14th-largest in the country, enrolls more than 180,000 students across over 140 schools and is among the county’s biggest employers in its own right. The county’s biggest annual event is the Gwinnett County Fair, held each September at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds in Lawrenceville.

History

Gwinnett County was established December 15, 1818, carved from Cherokee-cession land and named for Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who served briefly as Georgia’s second governor. In 1831, a group of white missionaries and settlers living in Cherokee territory without a state-issued permit were tried and convicted in Lawrenceville for violating Georgia law — the case, Worcester v. Georgia, went to the U.S. Supreme Court and became a landmark ruling on tribal sovereignty that Georgia and President Andrew Jackson subsequently ignored. The county stayed rural and agricultural for more than a century; its transformation into a dense Atlanta suburb began with the opening of Interstate 85 through the county in the 1970s and accelerated through the 1980s and 1990s, when its population multiplied several times over and its demographics shifted from overwhelmingly White to one of the most diverse counties in the Southeast.

Getting There

Interstate 85 crosses the county diagonally from southwest to northeast, with Interstate 985 branching off near Suwanee toward Gainesville and Lake Lanier. U.S. Routes 23, 29 and 78 and Georgia Highway 316 (University Parkway, toward Athens) also run through the county; no interstate crosses its eastern half.

• Atlanta — 21 miles southwest
• Athens — 40 miles east via GA 316
• Gainesville — 20 miles north via I-985
• Decatur — 15 miles southwest via US 78

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the nation’s busiest, is about 40 miles southwest of Lawrenceville. Gwinnett also has its own general-aviation field, Gwinnett County Airport-Briscoe Field, in Lawrenceville. The nearest Amtrak station is Atlanta’s Peachtree Station, roughly 20 miles southwest, served by the Crescent line.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Gwinnett County?
It is in northeastern metro Atlanta, Georgia, bordering Fulton and DeKalb counties to the west and southwest.

What is the population of Gwinnett County?
957,062 at the 2020 census, an estimated 1,018,099 by 2025 — the second-most populous county in Georgia.

How big is Gwinnett County?
430 square miles of land and 6.4 square miles of water, for a total of about 436 square miles.

What is the county seat of Gwinnett County?
Lawrenceville, incorporated in 1821 and home to the county courthouse.

How many cities are in Gwinnett County?
17 incorporated cities and towns, from Peachtree Corners (42,243 people) down to Rest Haven (45 people), plus about a dozen unincorporated communities.

What ZIP codes does Gwinnett County use?
Roughly 30 ZIP codes in the 300xx range, anchored by 30046 (Lawrenceville), 30071 (Norcross) and 30096/30097 (Peachtree Corners and Duluth).

Is Gwinnett County a majority-minority county?
Yes. As of the 2020 census, non-Hispanic White residents made up 32.5% of the population, with Black, Asian and Hispanic residents together forming the majority.

More counties in this state: Towns and villages in Georgia.