Wheeler High School is located in northeast Cobb County, Georgia, U.S. It is near the city of Marietta, about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of downtown Atlanta. The school has been in operation since 1965. It is a public high school, accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. It is named for Joseph Wheeler who was a Confederate military leader, and later, an American military leader and politician.

Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler was a military commander and politician of the Confederate States of America. He was a cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and then a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American and Philippine–American Wars near the turn of the twentieth century. For much of the Civil War, he was the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater.