Athens-Clarke County is a unified city-county in Georgia, U.S., in the northeastern part of the state, at the intersection of U.S. Highways 29, 78, 129, and 441, and near the eastern terminus of Georgia 316. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial creation of Athens and its subsequent growth. In 1991, after a vote the preceding year, the original city abandoned its charter in order to form a unified government with Clarke County, referred to collectively as Athens-Clarke County.

As of the 2000 census, the consolidated city-county (including all of Athens-Clarke County except Winterville and a part of Bogart) had a total population of 100,266. Athens-Clarke County is the principal city of, and is included in, the Athens-Clarke County, Georgia Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 187,405 as of the July 1, 2007 Census Bureau estimate. In the late 18th century, a trading settlement on the banks of the Oconee River called Cedar Shoals stood where Athens is located 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 (2.6 km²) from Daniel Easley and donated it to the university.

Milledge named the surrounding area Athens after the city that was home to the 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 University of Georgia and the City of Athens' first permanent structure. This brick building is now called Old College.

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