Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Canton, GA

Canton is a city in and the county seat of Cherokee County, Georgia — not Canton, Ohio — lying at the southern tip of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northwest Georgia.

Canton sits on lands that were originally part of the Cherokee Nation and were claimed by Georgia after gold was discovered there in 1828.

Settlers chose a site for a permanent county seat and courthouse in 1833, naming it Etowah; the name was changed to Cherokee Courthouse and then, in 1834, to Canton.

Canton was named after the Chinese city of Guangzhou, then known in English as Canton, because a group of local citizens dreamed of making the Georgia town a center of the silk industry, which was concentrated in China at the time.

The 2020 census counted 32,973 people in Canton, more than four times the 7,709 recorded in 2000, as Atlanta's expanding metropolitan area spread north along Interstate 575, about forty miles from downtown Atlanta.

Census Bureau survey figures for 2020–2024 counted about 12,398 households in Canton, averaging 2.85 people per household.

The Etowah River, a tributary of the Coosa River, flows from east to west through the center of Canton, which covers about 18.7 square miles.

Canton's Cherokee County Courthouse, completed in 1928 after its predecessor burned in 1927, is a five-story Neoclassical Revival building made of native Georgia marble — one of only a few courthouses in Georgia made of local marble — and it originally housed the county jail in its top story.

The courthouse stands within the Canton Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which also includes the Art Moderne Canton Theatre (1940), the Collegiate Gothic Canton High School building (1924), and the Canton Grammar School (1914).

Brown Park in Canton was established in 1906 by the family of former Georgia governor Joseph Brown.