The North Carolina Railroad – Celebration!

A rail line across the state from Goldsboro to Charlotte would energize North Carolina and arouse it from the economic, educational and cultural stagnation that had earned it the derogatory nickname of "The Rip Van Winkle State." So construction of the North Carolina Railroad in the 1850s was cause for great celebration up and down the line. Festivities often included rah-rah speeches, tooting brass bands, shrieking steam whistles, booming cannons, and lots and lots of barbecue.

The Great Wagon Road part 2: Shaping North Carolina

In the 1700s, The Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia to North Carolina was the conduit for one of the great migrations in United States history. German and Scotch-Irish colonists flooded south in search of land to homestead. The legacy of those immigrants from so long ago is is very much a part of who we are as a state today.

The Great Wagon Road part 1: Flooding South

In the mid-1700s, German and Scotch-Irish colonists flooded south from Pennsylvania down The Great Wagon Road to North Carolina and beyond. It was a decades-long migration of epic proportions, and it marked a social upheaval that reconfigured the demographics of the colonies in ways that still reverberate today.