Show and Tell Tuesday: Hometown Edition!

I am linking up today with Andrea for Show and Tell Tuesday: Show Us your Hometowns!

I love reminiscing about my hometown!  I am was born and raised in (unincorporated) Alpharetta, Georgia and lived there until I went to college. 

I went to Barnwell Elementary School which was located directly across the street from my neighborhood.  Since there were no sidewalks, we were not allowed to walk to school and we had to take a bus (literally across the street).

Barnwell Elementary

Fun fact: When I was in 4th or 5th grade, my dad hit the awning with the roof of a large moving truck we owned at the time.  He wasn't even supposed to be driving this way, it was for buses.  Ha!

I went to Taylor Road Middle School.  We got very creative in Alpharetta and named all of our middle schools after the roads they were on.  So lame!

I went to Chattahoochee and Centennial High Schools.  I went to Chattahoochee as a freshman and then Centennial opened my sophomore year and my neighborhood was redistricted to go to Centennial.  

Since I graduated high school in 2000, my town has changed names and is now called Johns Creek.  Now according to Wikipedia,

" In the early 19th century, the Johns Creek area was dotted with trading posts along the Chattahoochee River in what was then Cherokee Indian territory.

Some trading posts gradually became crossroads communities where pioneer families – Rogers, McGinnis, Findley, Buice, Cowart, Medlock and others – gathered to visit and sell their crops.

In 1831, much of the land in the former Cherokee Nation north of the Chattahoochee was combined into the massive Cherokee County. When Milton County was formed in 1858, the Johns Creek area was folded into it.

The four main crossroad communities — Ocee, Newtown, Shakerag and Warsaw — remained the social, educational and business centers of rural, unincorporated northeast Fulton County. For the next 50 years, these communities helped bring a sense of identity to this largely undeveloped and underpopulated area, as the nearby cities of Roswell, Alpharetta, Duluth and Suwanee and adjoining Forsyth and Gwinnett counties continued to grow and develop.

In 1981, a group of Georgia Institute of Technology graduates bought 1,700 acres (6.9 km²) of farm land and woods near McGinnis Ferry and Medlock Bridge Roads for a high-tech office park. The new office park was to mirror one built in 1970 in nearby Peachtree Corners, known as Technology Park/Atlanta. Spotting tiny Johns Creek on an old map, they named their mixed-use, master-planned community Technology Park/Johns Creek. This is the first reference to Johns Creek as a place.

By 2000, a grassroots movement to incorporate the Johns Creek area into a city was slowly developing. Residents wanted more control over issues such as traffic, growth, development and their quality of life. They also sought a level of service that was a challenge for the sprawling Fulton County to provide. 

Following the nearby city of Sandy Springs’ successful incorporation in 2005, a legislative campaign was started to incorporate the Johns Creek community. House Bill 1321 was passed by the state legislature, signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue in March 2006, and approved by the residents of northeast Fulton County in a July 18, 2006 voter referendum.^[4] In November 2006, the city's first elected officials were voted into office, with the City of Johns Creek becoming official December 1, 2006." 

My parents moved into our house in 1983 and my mom sold the house in 2012 while I was eight months pregnant with Elizabeth, so I didn't really get to say goodbye to my house. 

Last Memorial Day (2015), we went to Atlanta to visit my brother and sister-in-law and meet our new niece and we stopped by my old house.

 First time seeing my old house since 2010

And, that's my hometown!  I loved growing up in Alpharetta and have so many wonderful memories.

Happy Tuesday y'all!