Coweta County, Georgia, lies southwest of Atlanta by way of Interstate 85. The county seat is Newnan; other incorporated towns in Coweta include Senoia, Grantville, Sharpsburg, Turin, Moreland and Haralson. Also, the Fulton County town of Palmetto includes a small portion of Coweta County. There are also a number of unincorporated communities scattered across the county.
Coweta County's population has surpassed 100,000 by 2006, and the area has undergone explosive population growth to reach that figure. Like most parts of metropolitan Atlanta, Coweta's ability to support its growth has been severely challenged. Coweta lies within the state's auto emissions control area and some of its planning functions are overseen by the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority.
Coweta's location on the southwest side has made it an attractive place for airline employees to live. It is also home to a Yamaha manufacturing plant for golf cart engines, and to distribution centers for Home Depot, Kmart and Petsmart. However a significant number of Cowetans commute into Atlanta or nearby cities to work, and a 2006 survey found that Cowetans on average have one of the longest commutes in the nation.
Country music superstar Alan Jackson was born and raised in Newnan, and country singer Doug Stone lived there as a youngster; Moreland can claim novelist Erskine Caldwell and humorist Lewis Grizzard. Newnan is also home to David Boyd, illustrator of Jeff Foxworthy's popular "You Might Be a Redneck if..." books, and co-author (with Foxworthy) of The Redneck Grill.
Newnan may be less thrilled about being the birthplace of Klondike-era badman Soapy Smith, but you take the bad with the good. Yet for some of us the first awareness of Coweta County came from a TV-movie starring Johnny Cash and Andy Griffith, based on the true story recorded in the book Murder in Coweta County.
