Buford, GA news and local guide

The Buford area was originally Cherokee territory. Although the Cherokee ceded it in an 1817 treaty and Gwinnett County was created in 1818, Cherokee people still lived there in large numbers until the 1830s. The first white settlers came in the late 1820s or early 1830s, but the area was not widely settled until the 1860s. When the Richmond and Danville railroad system was extended after the Civil War, the railroad stockholders Thomas Garner and Larkin Smith bought land along the right-of-way and began developing a town, named for Algernon Sidney Buford, president of the Atlanta and Richmond Air-Line Railway. It grew quickly after the railroad was completed in 1871, was incorporated as the Town of Buford on August 24, 1872, and became the City of Buford in 1896.

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In the late 1800s and early 1900s Buford was so well known for leather that it was called the Leather City, making saddles, horse collars, bridles and shoes. The industry began when the leatherworker R. H. Allen opened a harness shop and tannery in 1868, and his brother Bona Allen came from Rome, Georgia, in 1872 and founded the Bona Allen Company the next year. Leather became the city's largest industry despite fires in 1903 and 1906, and Bona Allen saddles were sold through the Sears catalog and used by many Hollywood actors. Sources Wikipedia: Buford, Georgia