The Towns In Georgia Where Retirees Are Moving To

Georgia added more than 260,000 Medicare enrollees aged 65 and over between 2020 and 2025, a 17.5% gain. The sharpest gains came in counties fed by movers from Gwinnett and Forsyth, led by Jackson County at 46% and Dawson County at 41%. In the mountains, Fannin and Rabun counties grew about 13%, and survey estimates show Blue Ridge and Dahlonega each losing about 12% of their older residents. IRS records show 13,759 tax returns headed by someone 65 or older moving into Georgia between 2022 and 2023, against 10,613 leaving. State tax rules also let residents 62 and older exclude part of their retirement income.

Downtown Jasper, Georgia. By Thomson200 – Own work, CC0 More than one in ten older residents of Jasper arrived during the previous year, about three times the statewide figure of 3.5%. Census survey estimates for 2020 to 2024 put the town’s older population at 847, up from 538 for 2016 to 2020. Over half had lived outside Georgia.

Cherokee County supplied the largest single group of newcomers to Pickens County in the 2022 to 2023 tax year. In town, Piedmont Mountainside handles hospital care on Highway 515, and Jasper City Park keeps two lighted clay courts for tennis and pickleball. Pickens marble reportedly went into 60% of the monuments in Washington, DC, and the county still celebrates the stone with the Georgia Marble Festival in early October. New building faces a limit for now. The city has suspended new water and sewer connections until September 8, 2027, citing a lack of operational capacity.

GA-372 in Ball Ground. Cherokee County, the top source of new Pickens County residents, is gaining older residents of its own. Its count of Medicare enrollees 65 and older rose 30% in five years, well above the statewide 17.5%. Ball Ground shows the change at street level.

Here the 65-plus count climbed from 246 to 410. Of those residents, 12% had relocated from another Georgia county in the year before the survey, more than triple Georgia’s 3.5%. Cobb County sent Cherokee the most movers. A county-run senior group meets on Groover Street from Tuesday to Thursday for breakfast, exercise, and bingo. On Fridays it hosts a coffee hour. Calvin Farmer Park gives walkers 15 acres and a duck pond, while Gibbs Gardens, which carries a Ball Ground address, includes Japanese gardens and daffodil gardens. Local legend places a Cherokee ball game on this ground. The town takes its name from that contest.

View in Dawsonville, Georgia, via EQRoy / Shutterstock.com Dawson County recorded the second-fastest growth in older Medicare enrollees statewide, at 41%. Dawsonville shows the same climb. Its residents past 65 numbered 637 in the latest estimate, compared with 367 before. About 7.7% had arrived from another Georgia county during the prior year, roughly double the statewide share.

Forsyth County sent Dawson the most newcomers. Two county senior centers on Recreation Road open on weekdays for anyone 60 or older. County senior services there include exercise classes and rides on Dawson Transit. Silver Leaf, a 55-plus townhome community, sits half a mile from downtown, and Kolter plans the 750-home Cresswind at Dawson Springs elsewhere in the county. For hospital care, the new Northeast Georgia Medical Center Lumpkin campus opened in nearby Dahlonega in 2024. Whenever an Elliott wins a race, the Dawsonville Pool Room sounds its rooftop siren.

Main Street Flowery Branch, Georgia. Flowery Branch outpaced its own county. Hall County’s older Medicare rolls rose 17%, close to the state pace, while the town’s 65-plus count jumped from 810 to 1,397. Of those residents, 12% were new arrivals, more than triple the state figure, and 68 of the 168 newcomers had come from another state.

Gwinnett County supplied Hall with more than a quarter of its incoming residents. On the Lake Lanier shore, Flowery Branch Bay Park packs 6.5 acres around a fishing pier. Restored in 2001, the Historic Train Depot at Railroad Avenue and Main Street now serves as a community center and museum. Northeast Georgia Medical Center runs hospitals in both Gainesville and Braselton. The Atlanta Falcons train in town too. Fans can watch summer camp practices for free with a ticket.

City Hall in Hoschton, Georgia. By Chris Pruitt – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 In Jackson County, Medicare enrollment past 65 jumped 46%, the fastest rate in Georgia. Hoschton’s older population more than doubled across the two survey periods, from 297 to 627. Some 15% had lived somewhere else a year earlier, more than four times the state rate.

Gwinnett County sent Jackson County 2,368 people in one tax year, and Hall County sent 1,218. Hoschton is home to Cresswind Georgia at Twin Lakes, a 55-plus community that Kolter planned for 1,300 homes. NGMC Braselton is the hospital next door. The Hoschton Fall Festival, billed as the largest in Jackson County, takes over the first weekend of October. Four Hosch brothers founded the town in 1881, hoping to pull a proposed railroad route through their land.

The Walton County Courthouse building forms a historical backdrop to a classic car show in Monroe, Georgia. Image credit Jen Wolf via Shutterstock.com Walton County’s Medicare count past 65 grew 36%, fourth among Georgia’s 159 counties. Monroe, the county seat, added roughly 540 residents past 65 between survey periods. Close to 10% were newcomers, nearly triple the rate statewide.

Gwinnett supplied more than a third of Walton County’s arrivals. The Monroe Senior Center on South Madison Avenue opens on weekdays with bingo, birthday parties, and exercise classes. Members also tend a community garden. Piedmont Walton gives Monroe its own hospital and emergency room. On Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons, the McDaniel-Tichenor House, once the home of Governor Henry McDaniel, opens for self-guided tours. A state marker downtown names seven governors tied to Walton County, six from Georgia and one from Texas.

The courthouse in Covington, Georgia. Image credit Georges_Creations via Shutterstock Between 2022 and 2023, Walton and Newton counties traded hundreds of residents in each direction. Newton County added 22% more Medicare enrollees past 65 over five years, outpacing Georgia’s 17.5%. In Covington, the older population climbed from 1,926 to 2,446, and about one in ten had moved in within the year, close to three times the state level.

Rockdale and DeKalb counties each sent Newton roughly 1,500 movers. The Josephine B. Brown Center runs lunches, pickleball, ceramics, and day trips from Monday to Thursday. Rides there cost $2 a day. Piedmont Newton covers hospital care in town. The paved Cricket Frog Trail follows the old Central of Georgia Railroad route for about 14 miles, heading east from the city’s western edge. Covington also runs its own utilities and has supplied natural gas since 1956.

Old buildings on the square in Monticello, Georgia. Of all the counties sending people to Jasper County, Newton sent the most. More than one in five Monticello residents is now 65 or older, against roughly 15% statewide. That group reached 617 in the latest survey, up from 437. Nearly 7% had moved over from another county within the year, about twice the statewide rate.

Jasper County’s Medicare rolls past 65 grew 24% from 2020 to 2025, against 17.5% for Georgia. Jasper Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital, keeps its emergency room open around the clock, and the Jasper County Senior Center is on Mack Tillman Drive. A self-guided walking and driving tour leaves from the visitors’ center on the square, and the neoclassical Jasper County Historic Courthouse carries Corinthian columns and a stained-glass dome skylight. The country singer Trisha Yearwood was born here in 1964.

The city hall in Locust Grove, Georgia. By csmith/dbb1, CC BY-SA 3.0 Every older newcomer the survey caught in Locust Grove came from another state. The town counted 737 older residents, up from 510. Of those, 14.5% had arrived in the previous 12 months, about quadruple the state average. Henry County’s senior Medicare rolls beat the state, at 24%.

Clayton County is Henry County’s largest source of movers. Broward and Miami-Dade counties in Florida lead the out-of-state list. The Park at Brighton, a gated 55-plus neighborhood, carries a Locust Grove address. The Locust Grove Senior Activity Center on Mose Brown Drive opens from 8 am to 5 pm on weekdays. Full hospital care is at Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, but the state approved a freestanding emergency department for Locust Grove in September 2026.

Overlooking Greensboro, Georgia. Nearly a third of Greene County’s residents are 65 or older. The county counted about 6,900 people in that age group in 2024, or 32.6% of its population, more than double Georgia’s 15.8%. Much of that growth has followed Lake Oconee, where planned communities such as Reynolds Plantation, Reynolds Landing, and Harbor Club line the shore. Many of their homes carry a Greensboro mailing address.

Greensboro, the county seat, was founded in 1786, and its downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a multiple resource area with five historic districts. The Old Gaol, completed in 1807, is believed to be the oldest jail still standing in Georgia, and the Greene County Courthouse ranks as the third oldest in the state. For care, St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Hospital, a 25-bed critical access hospital on Lake Oconee Parkway, keeps its doors open around the clock. Greene, Morgan, and Putnam counties market the area together as Georgia’s Lake Country, with Greensboro, Madison, and Eatonton ringing the lake.

Senoia, Georgia. Editorial credit: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com Out-of-state movers made up 39% of Coweta County’s arrivals in one IRS tax year, a higher share than Henry, Hall, or Cherokee counties. Senoia follows that pattern. Its 65-plus count rose from 519 to 720, and more than half of its recent older movers had crossed a state line.

Fayette County led the origins. The Senoia Farmers’ Market sets up on Travis Street every Saturday morning until Christmas. The Senoia Area Historical Society Museum opens free on Saturday afternoons and keeps the teller windows from an 1874 bank. Listed on the National Register in 1989, the Senoia Historic District counts 150 contributing buildings on a street grid that railroad engineers laid out in the 1860s. Piedmont Newnan Hospital is in Newnan.

Guyton Historic District, Guyton, Georgia. By Judson McCranie, CC BY-SA 3.0 Since the 2016 to 2020 survey, Guyton’s 65-plus population has nearly doubled, from 173 to 310. More than 13% of them were recent arrivals, close to four times the statewide share. Effingham County as a whole drew 42% of its newcomers from other states, above even Coweta’s 39%. Beaufort County, South Carolina, led those out-of-state origins.

Chatham County sent Effingham 1,988 people, far more than any other county. Guyton grew up as Station Number 30 on the Central of Georgia Railroad. Its National Register nomination describes an early commuter suburb and a seasonal home for businessmen. A three-quarter-mile walking trail now runs through downtown from a red caboose. Effingham Hospital in Springfield keeps a 24-hour emergency room. December brings a tree lighting, a luminary service, and a Christmas parade.

Georgia’s older population is growing fastest in counties such as Jackson, Dawson, and Walton, where many newcomers move over from Gwinnett and Forsyth counties. Twin Lakes and Dawson Springs alone plan more than 2,000 active-adult homes. Elsewhere, supply is the pressure point, and Jasper has paused new sewer and water connections until 2027. On the care side, Locust Grove won state approval for its own emergency department in September 2026.