Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near Covered Bridge Berkeley Lake, GA

Berkeley Lake is a small city in western Gwinnett County, a northern suburb of Atlanta built entirely around its private, roughly 88-acre namesake lake.

Most of the land within the city — the 700-acre Berkeley Lake Properties — was developed by Frank Coggins in the late 1940s, and the dam he built in 1948 is one of the largest earthen dams in the state of Georgia.

Lake Berkeley was named after Coggins's Berkeley Blue Granite Quarries in Elberton, Georgia.

Berkeley Lake began in the 1950s as a summer retreat, where fishing cottages around the lake slowly gave way to year-round homes after the Berkeley Lake Estates subdivision was laid out in 1950.

Property owners formed the Lake Berkeley Civic Association in 1953 to secure electricity, telephones, and an all-year road, and their push for municipal services led the Georgia General Assembly to approve the City of Berkeley Lake's charter on March 6, 1956.

Berkeley Lake's population was 2,054 at the 2020 census — a long way from the 94 residents counted in 1960, just after incorporation.

Berkeley Lake has been named a Tree City USA for 18 years, reflecting the heavily wooded character the city works to preserve.

The city covers only about 1.2 square miles in total, roughly a tenth of it water, and its northern boundary follows the Chattahoochee River, with Duluth to the east, Peachtree Corners to the south and west, and Johns Creek to the north.

In 1996 Berkeley Lake voters approved a bond referendum to buy about 63 acres of undeveloped forest land, which the city acquired as a permanent greenspace buffer.

The community consists of several subdivisions wrapped around the private lake, and homes there use Duluth-area ZIP codes despite Berkeley Lake being its own incorporated city.