Sandy Springs is a city in northern Fulton County, Georgia, United States, and an inner ring suburb of Atlanta. The city’s population was 108,080 at the 2020 census, making it Georgia’s seventh-largest city. It is the site of several corporate headquarters, including UPS, Newell Brands, Inspire Brands, Focus Brands, Cox Enterprises, and Mercedes-Benz USA’s corporate offices.

Human settlement in the area can be traced back to approximately 400 CE, when Native Americans forged three trails to better access the area’s freshwater springs. In the 16th century, the Creek Muskogee tribe settled the area, where they remained until the early 1800s, when they were forced out of the area due to the discovery of gold.

In 1821, the federal government held a number of land lotteries in the area, resulting in the purchase of land in present-day Sandy Springs and its subsequent settlement. The Austin-Johnson House, the oldest existing unaltered house, was built in 1842 on what is now Johnson Ferry Road. In 1851, Wilson Spruill donated 5 acres (2.0 ha) of land for the founding of Sandy Springs United Methodist Church, near the natural spring for which the city is named. In 1905, the Hammond School was built at Johnson Ferry Road and Mt. Vernon Highway, across the street from the church.^{[citation needed]}

In 1950, the state legislature blocked Atlanta from annexing the community, which remained rural until the Interstate Highway System was authorized by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. In 1959, after a fire at Hammond Elementary School, William Hartsfield, the mayor of Atlanta, urged residents to support annexation so that the area would have better firefighting protection. Community opposition killed the proposal. In the early 1960s, Georgia 400 and Interstate 285 were constructed, connecting Sandy Springs to metro Atlanta and initiating a housing boom that brought new residents and major land development as part of the white flight from Atlanta after the Civil Rights Movement won greater racial integration within Atlanta.

In 1965, Hartsfield once again proposed the annexation of the Sandy Springs area. Spokesmen for Sandy Springs promised residents to “build up a city separate from Atlanta and your Negroes and forbid any Negroes to buy, or own, or live within our limits” should they reject annexation. In 1966, annexation by Atlanta was defeated in a referendum, with two-thirds voting against.^{[citation needed]}