In-Home Drug Testing Athens, GA

Local Area Info: Athens, Georgia

Athens, officially Athens–Clarke County, is a consolidated city–county and college town in the U.S. state of Georgia. Athens lies about 70 mi (113 km) northeast of downtown Atlanta, a Global City and the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, being in the top ten of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. It is a component of the larger Atlanta–Athens–Clarke County–Sandy Springs Combined Statistical Area, a trading area. The University of Georgia, the state's flagship public university and a R1 research institution, is in the city and contributed to its initial growth. In 1991, after a vote the preceding year, the original City of Athens abandoned its charter to form a unified government with Clarke County, referred to jointly as Athens–Clarke County. As of 2017[update], the U.S. Census Bureau's estimated population of the consolidated city-county (all of Clarke County except Winterville and a portion of Bogart) was 125,691; the entire county including Winterville and Bogart had a population of 127,064. Athens is the sixth-largest city in Georgia, and the principal city of the Athens metropolitan area, which had a 2017 estimated population of 209,271, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The city is dominated by a pervasive student culture and music scene centered on downtown Athens, next to the University of Georgia's North Campus. Major music acts associated with Athens include numerous alternative rock bands such as R.E.M., the B-52's, Widespread Panic, and Neutral Milk Hotel. The city is also known as a recording site for such groups as the Atlanta-based Indigo Girls.

In the late 18th century, a trading settlement on the banks of the Oconee River called Cedar Shoals stood where Athens is today. On January 27, 1785, the Georgia General Assembly granted a charter by Abraham Baldwin for the University of Georgia as the first state-supported university. Sixteen years later, in 1801, a committee from the university's board of trustees selected a site for the university on a hill above Cedar Shoals, in what was then Jackson County. On July 25, John Milledge, one of the trustees and later governor of Georgia, bought 633 acres (256 ha) from Daniel Easley and donated it to the university. Milledge named the surrounding area Athens after the city that was home to the Platonic Academy of Plato and Aristotle in Greece.

The first buildings on the University of Georgia campus were made from logs. The town grew as lots adjacent to the college were sold to raise money for the additional construction of the school. By the time the first class graduated from the university in 1804, Athens consisted of three homes, three stores, and a few other buildings facing Front Street, now known as Broad Street. Completed in 1806 and named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin College was the first permanent structure of the University of Georgia and of the city of Athens. This brick building is now known as Old College.