[2] Walton County is part of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA metropolitan statistical area.

It is named for George Walton, one of the three men from Georgia who signed the United States Declaration of Independence.

In addition, many whites resisted black veterans' efforts to gain expanded freedoms following their service during World War II.

[4] A historical highway marker erected by the state in the 21st century reads: 2.4 miles east, at Moore’s Ford Bridge on the Apalachee River, four African-Americans - George and Mae Murray Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Dorsey Malcom (reportedly 7 months pregnant) - were brutally beaten and shot by an unmasked mob on the afternoon of July 25, 1946.

[7] There was a noted decline in the African American population from 1900 to 1960 as thousands left rural areas in the South during the Great Migration to the North, Midwest and West Coast to escape social oppression and to gain better jobs and opportunities.

With dramatic new growth related to the rise of Atlanta as a corporate city, the demographics have changed and the county is majority white in the 21st century.