David McEachern

Historical Facts about Peachtree Station

Peachtree Station is a subdivision in Norcross, Georgia in Gwinnett County. We have 716 homes all built in the early 1980s, but our history doesnt start there. In 1905, a farmer, James Washington Westbrook and his son, Berry Westbrook, natives of Forsyth County, Georgia, purchased land on both sides of current West Jones Bridge Road for the purpose of farming. They moved here in order to be twenty miles closer to the Atlanta market and to be near the railroad at Norcross, GA. The Westbrook farm consisted of 300+ acres and covered most of the area that is now Peachtree Station. Pickneyville Middle School is the former site of Berry Westbrooks apple orchard.

James Westbrook lived in the area of the present corner of Clinchfield Trail and Guyton Court. His barn was located at this corner. James later retired and moved to the city of Norcross, where he purchased store buildings and other rental property.

Berry Westbrook acquired his fathers portion of the farm and later bought neighboring properties. His main cash crop was cotton; however, his farm was a working farm in which almost everything needed by the family was produced on site. His big mule barn was located near 4408 Allenhurst. His blacksmith shop was located near Axson Court.

Colbert crossed the path of the garage Berry built to house his first Model-T Ford. He buried some gold in the floor of the garage when his wife received her inheritance from her father. But dont start digging! The gold was dug up in order to purchase the land now occupied by Peachtree Corners Baptist Church and Spalding Triangle Office Park.

Development of Peachtree Station came much later in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The developer of the homes in Peachtree Station was Jim Cowart. In a 2003 interview with him, he said during development that a Groundhog Liquor Still was found during development. Those stills are actually buried in the ground, so the only way one could tell is was there was the pungent smell. It was destroyed during development.

At a General Meeting a number of years ago, Mr. Cowart mentioned that the Station portion of Peachtree Station referred to railroad depots or stations. In 2003, one of our members researched this idea and found the following: Of the 36 streets in Peachtree Station, 29 of their names can be found in the Georgia Atlas under Index of Place Names and Map Features. According to Mr. Cowart, all the streets are named after small towns in Georgia. They started with A and went through and then started all over again. According to the 2003 Atlas, 19 towns appear to be directly on railroad tracks, 7 towns could have been depots but are not directly located on a current track and three of the towns have double crossings.

As another historical note, Jones Bridge Road used to extend through to Spalding Road. Some of the properties in Phase 1 (on the east side of Peachtree Corners Circle) can still find minor remnant of it in the back of their lots.