Walker Christian Forrester grew up in Loganville, Georgia. Most of the articles on this site are about what he did: the sports, the code, the music. This one is about where he did it.
A town in two counties
Loganville is about 36 miles east of downtown Atlanta. Most of the city is in western Walton County, but the city limits run west into southeastern Gwinnett County, so Loganville belongs to two counties at once. The schools follow that line. The Walton side is in the Walton County School District, and the Gwinnett side is in Gwinnett County Public Schools.
U.S. Route 78, the Atlanta Highway, runs through the middle of town. Five miles east is Monroe, the Walton County seat. Thirty-two miles west is downtown Atlanta. Georgia State Route 20 runs about 10 miles northwest to Lawrenceville, the Gwinnett County seat. Snellville, in Gwinnett County, sits on the same U.S. 78 to the west. Growing up in Loganville means growing up in a small city with all of metro Atlanta a drive away.
Where the name comes from
An early name for the place was Buncombe. It was later renamed for James Harvie Logan, an early settler. During the Civil War, Union cavalry passed through the town, and a historical marker there records it. The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Loganville as a town in 1887.
A family town
Loganville has grown along with the rest of metro Atlanta. It is a town of families, school pickups and youth sports, and it was the kind of town Walker grew up in.
A baseball town
That youth sports culture shows in who has come out of Loganville. The town counts three Major League Baseball players among its own: Clint Frazier, Austin Meadows and Brandon Moss. For a kid who loved baseball, that's a local example of how far the game can go.
Walker was part of that culture from the start. He began playing organized sports at four years old. As a kid he played baseball, basketball, football and wrestling. In high school he played baseball and football, and he graduated as an honor student with A's and B's. His sports years have their own article, and the sports page has the timeline.
Church and service
Sports weren't the only thing that filled Walker's calendar growing up. He took part in Vacation Bible School, church ministry, and outreach and charity projects at churches in Loganville and nearby Snellville. Those are the parts of a hometown that don't show up on a map: the people who organize the summer programs, the volunteers, and the kids who show up year after year.
Where it all starts
Each part of Walker's story starts here. The boy who played four sports, the honor student, the Georgia Tech coding boot camp graduate, the music producer and the gamer all grew up in the same place. Walker Christian Forrester is from Loganville, Georgia, and this site is where his family tells that story.