| Pine Lake, Georgia | |
| Settlement Type: | City |
| Mapsize: | 250px |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | United States |
| Subdivision Type1: | State |
| Subdivision Name1: | Georgia |
| Subdivision Type2: | County |
| Subdivision Name2: | DeKalb |
| Government Type: | Mayor-Council |
| Leader Title: | Mayor |
| Leader Name: | Brandy Hall |
| Established Title: | Settled |
| Established Date: | 1929 |
| Established Title3: | Incorporated (city) |
| Established Date3: | December 1937 |
| Unit Pref: | Imperial |
| Area Footnotes: | [1] |
| Area Total Km2: | 0.66 |
| Area Land Km2: | 0.61 |
| Area Water Km2: | 0.04 |
| Area Total Sq Mi: | 0.25 |
| Area Land Sq Mi: | 0.24 |
| Area Water Sq Mi: | 0.02 |
| Population As Of: | 2020 |
| Population Total: | 752 |
| Population Density Km2: | 1223.94 |
| Population Density Sq Mi: | 3173.00 |
| Timezone: | Eastern (EST) |
| Utc Offset: | -5 |
| Timezone Dst: | EDT |
| Utc Offset Dst: | -4 |
| Coordinates: | 33.7914°N -84.2064°W |
| Elevation M: | 289 |
| Elevation Ft: | 948 |
| Postal Code Type: | ZIP code |
| Postal Code: | 30072 |
| Area Code: | 404 |
| Blank Name: | FIPS code |
| Blank Info: | 13-61040[2] |
| Blank1 Name: | GNIS feature ID |
| Blank1 Info: | 0332672[3] |
Pine Lake is the smallest city in DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The population was 752 at the 2020 census.
Pine Lake was established as a city in December 1937,[4] after a short life as a summer retreat run by the Pine Woods Corporation. The corporation sold lots around a small fishing lake to Atlantans who lived in (then) faraway areas like Buckhead for use as a weekend retreat. The 20' x 100' lots sold for $69, and the advertisement for lots directed people "from Decatur down the [unpaved] Rockbridge Road East." Many homeowners continued to use their property as a weekend getaway long after the city incorporated. Prior to development, Pine Lake was a portion of a farm. The lake was formerly a widened region of Snapfinger Creek, and the valley that encompasses much of the town was where corn was grown. The lake was dammed by the Army Corps of Engineers as erosion and flood control, prior to the official FDR lake projects.
Pine Lake is located at (33.791505, -84.206428).[5] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.2sqmi, of which 0.2sqmi is land and 5.00% is water.
| White (non-Hispanic) | 480 | 63.83% | |
| Black or African American (non-Hispanic) | 141 | 18.75% | |
| Native American | 5 | 0.66% | |
| Asian | 8 | 1.06% | |
| Other/Mixed | 55 | 7.31% | |
| Hispanic or Latino | 63 | 8.38% |
Residents are zoned to schools in the DeKalb County School District.
All of the schools are located outside of the Pine Lake city limits in unincorporated sections of DeKalb County.
Welcome to Pine Lake, is a documentary feature film released in 2020 by ViacomCBS. The largely observational film looks at the all-women leadership in the predominantly white city of Pine Lake. The documentary claims that the primary funding source of the City’s police force is from traffic tickets issued predominately to people of color from the surrounding communities. According to National Public Radio member station KCRW, the filmmaker “found that this progressive town was participating in an unfair and ultimately racist criminal justice system.”[7] In February, 2022, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote, " 'Welcome to Pine Lake' is a scathing indictment of the privilege of obliviousness when it comes to class and race."[8]