Hall County, Georgia

Hall County is a county in the Northeast region of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 203,136, up from 179,684 at the 2010 census. The county seat is Gainesville. The entirety of Hall County comprises the Gainesville, Georgia, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is also part of the Atlanta-Athens-Clarke County-Sandy Springs, Combined Statistical Area.

Hall County was created on December 15, 1818, from Cherokee lands ceded by the Treaty of Cherokee Agency (1817) and Treaty of Washington (1819).

The county is named for Lyman Hall, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of Georgia as both colony and state.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 429 square miles (1,110 km²), of which 393 square miles (1,020 km²) is land and 37 square miles (96 km²) (8.5%) is water. The county is located in the upper Piedmont region of the state in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the north.

Slightly more than half of Hall County, the eastern portion of the county, is located in the Upper Oconee River sub-basin of the Altamaha River basin, while the western half of the county is located in the Upper Chattahoochee River sub-basin of the ACF River Basin (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin).

The Chattahoochee River gathers strength in Hall County, as immortalized in Sidney Lanier's poem, "Song of the Chattahoochee":

OUT of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,

Hall County remains extremely rural and many of its residents reside in unincorporated areas, accounting for more than half of the county's population.