the piedmont region - amazon s3 · from the north near roanoke rapids southwest past ra-leigh and...

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The Piedmont Region

North Carolina’s Piedmont region is aplace almost anyone can recognize imme-diately, for it has an unforgettable feature—its red clay. These iron-rich clods show upwherever a field is plowed or a lawn re-

seeded, and their stain is hardly ever removed from soiled laundry. Onefinds this distinctive color from Oxford near the Virginia line to Shelbynear South Carolina, and in almost all places in between. The red clay isactually the subsoil in most places, meaning that, at one time, trees andforests covered it with black woods dirt. The widespread timbering andcropping of the region made it bleed red in the rain as early as the 1800s.

As you read, look for:• the features of the Piedmont region• the significance of the fall line• vocabulary terms fall line, headwaters, sectionalism,

mill village, NASCAR, monadnock

The Piedmont Region

18 Chapter 1: The Lay of the Land

To control the erosion of red clay,state officials planted millions of kudzuplants in the 1930s, hoping the fast-growing vine would save the soil. In-stead, the big-leafed kudzu—a nativeplant of Asia—turned out to be themonster that almost ate North Carolina.On a hot, wet day it can grow severalinches. Its tendrils will reach anywhere,all the way up power poles and over thetops of abandoned buildings. By the latetwentieth century, kudzu was commonas a weed throughout the Piedmont.

The Fall LineThe Piedmont’s red clay erodes so

easily because the region is hilly. Thelandscape is pocked with hills andhollows that twist and curve in all di-rections. Technically, most of the Pied-mont—which in Latin means “foot of

the mountains”—is a plateau, a step up from the Coastal Plain, a stepbelow the Blue Ridge. In fact, the line that divides thePiedmont from the Coastal Plain is called the fall line.This is the place where rivers flowing out of the Pied-mont, like the Tar or the Neuse, actually go down theirlast hill. At these points, the rivers usually become flat-ter and smoother, allowing boating. The fall line extendsfrom the north near Roanoke Rapids southwest past Ra-leigh and Fayetteville. A state park near Raleigh is calledFalls of the Neuse. Historians generally use the fall lineto divide North Carolina into east and west sections.Similarly, the western side of the Piedmont, often calledthe foothills, is bounded by the ridge line, where theBlue Ridge Mountains rise up on the horizon.

The two principal rivers of the Piedmont region arethe Yadkin-Pee Dee and the Catawba. These rivers donot run to the fall line. These rivers have their head-waters (the springs from which they first flow) on theside of the Blue Ridge and head east until being turnedsharply south when their currents encounter very hardrock layers. After the rivers bend—the Catawba westof Statesville, the Yadkin west of Winston-Salem—thetwo parallel one another into South Carolina, wherethey flow into the Atlantic north of Charleston. Oneof the key reasons sectionalism (excessive concernfor local interests and customs) developed in the state

Kudzu was brought to theUnited States in 1876 forthe Centennial Industrial

Exposition in Philadelphia.It was on display at the

Japanese pavilion.

Section 3: The Piedmont Region 19

Opposite page, above: The richclay soil of the Piedmont nourishesa variety of crops. Opposite page,below: The Pee Dee River, seenhere near Albemarle, is one of themajor rivers of the Piedmont.Below: The Catawba River flowssouth into South Carolina just westof Charlotte.

was the lack of connection between the rivers of thePiedmont and the Coastal Plain.

More than half the Piedmont is covered in forests.Where there are extensive pine trees, it usually meansthat they were planted years ago for erosion controlon an abandoned farm. Biological succession—whereconiferous trees like pines give way to hardwoods likeoak or hickory—occurs all over the region.

Farms and FactoriesFarming has been as much a tradition in the Pied-

mont as the Coastal Plain. However, except for cer-tain rich areas with unusually rich brown soils, likethe area around the Lowe’s Motor Speedway nearCharlotte, farming has always been a struggle in thePiedmont. Early on, farmers depended upon livestockto make their living; since the end of World War II,they have returned to dairying. This too has been indecline in recent times. Only in western Iredell Countyand eastern Alamance County are a significant num-

ber of dairies left in the region.The decline in farming was countered by the building of factories, as

people made a living processing and manufacturing raw materialsproduced elsewhere in the state. In the area stretching from Kannapolisto Gastonia, textile mills began to make cloth of all types for an inter-national market. Durham, Winston-Salem, and Reidsville were home to

Top: Farming in the Piedmonthas not always been easy. Thisabandoned farm is in MooreCounty. Above: These dairy cowson a Piedmont farm are going infor milking.


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CAROLINA CURIOSIT IESCAROLINA CURIOSIT IES

The Mysterious Devil’s Tramping Ground

Most North Carolinians know that Wake Forest Univer-sity students can be “demon” deacons and that Duke Uni-versity students paint themselves blue because they are“devils.” These athletic nicknames are one of the funnierparts of our state culture. So too is the folk belief that theDevil himself shows up inNorth Carolina every night tothink about his wicked plans.

The Devil’s Tramping Ground—an actual place southof Siler City—is world famous. People have been goingthere for more than a century, ever since a Wilmingtonnewspaper first published a storyabout it in 1882.

The story goes like this: Suppos-edly, Satan paces all night just aboutevery night around a strange circle ofdirt in Chatham County. Mysteriously,nothing will grow in a near-perfectcircle that is about forty feet in diam-eter. Folks in the neighborhood say thatobjects that fall into the circle duringthe day, like sticks or rocks or evenheavy logs, are gone by the next morn-ing. Hunters swear that their dogs willnot cross over the space, and that theyyip and howl if they are taken near it.People who have stayed there during the night have oftenhad strange dreams. More than one group of brave col-lege students has abandoned its camp during the night.No one, however, has ever claimed to have seen the Devil.

There are other explanations for the place. One old tra-dition says that an Indian chief was killed on the spot, andhis blood tainted the soil forever. More recently, advocatesof Unidentified Flying Objects say that a space ship musthave landed there and scorched away the grass.

The Mysterious Devil’s Tramping Ground

Scientists have another idea. Recently, a soil specialistfrom out of state took samples of dirt from the track of thecircle, from the center of the circle, and from the nearbywoods. He then put seeds in each sample and carefullywatered them. The seeds in the soil from the center of

the circle and from the woodssprouted. The seeds put in the“doughnut” soil—that is, the dirt

from the place where the Devil supposedly paces—did not.Tests then showed that the doughnut soil is totally lackingin carbon, a necessary element for plant growth.


Above: Leaves often cover the “devil’s path,” despitelegends to the contrary.

So, the mystery has been solved . . . or has it? Scien-tists still scratch their heads over the fact that the soilchanges completely in its fertility just an inch from theedge of the path. And, there is still the question: Why sucha near-perfect circle? Why is this the only place where ithappens? Why is it not found anywhere else?

the leading cigarette makers in theworld in the early twentieth century.High Point, Lenoir, and Hickory builtchair factories, using hardwoodfrom nearby forests. A traveler in thePiedmont in this period would ex-pect to see a factory in every town.

Textiles, tobacco, and furniturewere regarded as the three principalindustries in the state. Many of theworkers in these factories lived on theedges of town in clusters of housingcalled mill villages, like the Proxim-ity neighborhood in Greensboro. Thecompany owned the houses, pro-vided stores and schools, and gener-

ally influenced the lives of workers both inside and outside the factory.All three principal industries went into sharp decline in the 1990s, as

foreign competition cut into their shares of the market. Most notably,textile factories have been closed in recent years in one Piedmont townafter another. Fieldcrest-Cannon Company of Kannapolis was the larg-est closure, in 2003, when more than 5,000 people lost their jobs in oneday. In contrast, Phillip Morris Tobacco Company continued to do wellwith a cigarette factory in Concord, marketing a lot of its product to thefactory workers in Asia that were now making textiles and furniture.


Top: This photograph of a loomwas taken around 1980 at theFieldcrest-Cannon Mill inKannapolis. Above: Cooleemeehas retained much of its textileheritage. These are two of overthree hundred former mill housesthat have been preserved.

Banking and RacingMost Piedmont cities have worked hard to find other economic out-

lets. Over the past two decades, Charlotte has become a center of in-ternational banking, with both Bank of America and Wachoviaheadquartered there. Charlotte has also become the support center forstock car racing. Companies that build and maintain cars on theNASCAR circuit are concentrated in the triangle from Charlotte to Con-cord to Mooresville. NASCAR is an acronym (an abbreviation that it-self seems to be a word) meaning National Association of Stock CarAutomobile Racing. In the spring of 2007, ground was broken for theNASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte.

In Winston-Salem and Durham, community leaders have attemptedto turn around the decline of industrial jobs with the growth of medi-cal services. Wake Forest University in Winston and Duke Universityin Durham both have world-class medical schools that staff regionalhospitals.

Smaller towns have also turned to innovative businesses. Salisbury isheadquarters for the grocery chain Food Lion, the largest private employerin the state. The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area continued to developways to use their resident universities. Since the 1960s, the ResearchTriangle Park, located in a finger of the Sandhills between the threecities, has been a leader in technology innovation, particularly in phar-maceuticals and computers.

More banking activity isconcentrated in Charlottethan anywhere else in theUnited States, except for

New York City.


Below: The start of the 2004Coca-Cola 600 at the Lowe’s MotorSpeedway in Concord. TheCharlotte area is home to mostNASCAR teams.

The UwharriesThe most distinctive natural land-

marks of the Piedmont are its monad-nocks. This hard-to-pronounce wordrefers to a geological condition wherea point of land stands out because allof the land around it has been eroded.The most famous monadnock is PilotMountain north of Winston-Salem.This handsome spire has a distinctivecap of granite that makes it recogniz-

able from as far as forty miles away. It has served as a landmark for NorthCarolinians for centuries, from the first Indian paths to the laying ofinterstates.

One important cluster of monadnocks is often overlooked by NorthCarolinians, but its location influenced the shaping of the state almost asmuch as did the barrier islands. The Uwharrie Mountains are locatedsouth of Greensboro and east of Salisbury. Although most scientists be-lieve that the Uwharries are older than the Appalachian Mountains, theydo not look the part. They resemble miniature mountains from a dis-tance, their elevations seldom reaching more than 2,000 feet. The best-known Uwharrie “peak” is Morrow Mountain near Albemarle.

Because of their slopes and because of the slate found in their soils,the Uwharries were not as thickly settled as other areas in the Piedmont.


Top: The monadnock PilotMountain rises above the sur-rounding farmland. Pilot Mountainwas named a National NaturalLandmark in 1976. Above:Salisbury, a city in the Uwharries,is a national trendsetter in therestoration of its Main Street.

It’s Your Turn

1. What is the most unforgettable feature of the Piedmont region?2. What divides North Carolina into east and west?3. What were the three principal industries in the Piedmont region?

This is why, in large measure, there is the Piedmont Crescent, the curvednecklace of small towns, one after another—Burlington, Greensboro, HighPoint, Lexington, Salisbury, and Concord—that stretch from Raleigh toCharlotte.

First the buffalo, then the Indians followed a trail that became knownas the Trading Path. Travelers on it from the coastal areas of Virginiakept the Uwharrie “peaks” like Occaneechi, near today’s Hillsborough,and Caraway Mountain, near Asheboro, to their right as they headedsouth toward the Catawba and Cherokee Indian towns in South Caro-lina. White settlers gradually moved the network of trails northward,since the soil was more fertile as one got away from the Uwharries.When the first railroad was built in the Piedmont, it was routed aroundthe Uwharries to the north and west, to save money on grading and tobring it closer to the center of farming. Later highways, then interstates,followed the same route.


Below: This view of the Uwharriehorizon draws thousands each yearto Morrow Mountain State Parknear Albemarle. The area shownwas home to the some of theancient inhabitants of the region.

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CAROLINA PLACESCAROLINA PLACES

Mayberry

Perhaps the best-known place in North Carolina isnot actually in the state, but on television. “Mayberry, NorthCarolina” became famous because of “The Andy GriffithShow,” a 1960s comedy series. Since that time, the showhas been rerun just about every day for a half century, cour-tesy of cable television.

Mayberry was “founded” by North Carolina native AndyGriffith, who grew up in Mt. Airy in Surry County. He at-tended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, wherehe became interested in acting. Griffith also tried his handat stand-up comedy. After teaching for a year at Goldsboro

High School, Griffith hit the big-time with a monologue titled“What It Was . . . Was Football.” That was based upon theidea of a country boy coming to Chapel Hill for the first time.In the 1950s, Griffith did comedy in clubs and then beganto get acting jobs. His next break was playing a naive moun-

Mayberry

Below: There really was a Floyd’s Barber Shop on MainStreet in Mt. Airy. It is the inspiration for the sameshop on the television show. The real Snappy Lunch stillserves up its famous pork chop sandwiches almostevery day.


tain boy in the movie No TimeFor Sergeants. By 1960, Griffithhad earned enough fame tohave his own television show.In the show, Griffith portrayedAndy Taylor, the town sheriff.

Griffith and a group of tele-vision writers, including DukeUniversity graduate HarveyBullock, created a mythicaltown full of characters that anyNorth Carolinian would recog-nize as real. Otis Campbell, theScots-Irishman who drank toomuch but had a heart of gold;Barney Fife, whose supersti-tious habits followed the tra-ditions of Piedmont Germans;

and Gomer Pyle, whose parents could have worked in thecotton mill villages; all rang true to viewers. One characterin the show, Emmett Clark, was named for Griffith’s child-hood best friend.

Part of the show’s popularity was its sense of kindnesstoward all people, regardless of who they were. Mayberrywas a place full of odd people who often did foolish and sillythings, but no one ever hated them for their behavior ortheir weaknesses. Usually, a lesson was learned and a valuetaught, as in the episode when Opie, the son of the sheriff,killed a bird with his slingshot. Opie had to learn to takecare of the orphaned baby bird and then let it fly away. Theshow even slyly called attention to race relations in the South.The show had no black characters, but in many episodesblack “residents” were on the streets.

The closest real town to Mayberry in North Carolina isMt. Airy, which has proudly claimed its heritage as an in-spiration for Andy Griffith’s career. Visitors to Mt. Airy cansee a mock-up jail, a barber shop, and even the “SnappyLunch,” a diner actually depicted in the show. Most folkswho eat there have the Mayberry Special, a pork chop sand-wich. Even into the twenty-first century, Mt. Airy residentscontinue to visit their downtown, walking, talking, visiting,and even going to the movies on a weekday night. Mt. Airywas honored in 2003 with a statue of “Andy and Opie” givento the town by the cable channel TV Land.

Griffith himself went on to other television and movieroles. He came back to North Carolina when he retired,building a home in Manteo.


Above: Mt. Airy has preserved Andy Griffith’s boyhoodhome. Below: Three of the most popular charactersin the show were played by Andy Griffith (Sheriff AndyTaylor), Don Knotts (Deputy Barney Fife), and RonHoward (the son Opie Taylor).

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The MountainsRegion

Travelers from the east see North Carolina’smountains long before they cross intothem. The mountains begin at the BlueRidge, which sometimes towers from than1,000 feet over the nearby Piedmont hills.

As you read, look for:• the features of the Mountains region• vocabulary terms elevation, bald, cove

The MountainsRegion


Opposite page, above: The BlueRidge Parkway, begun during theNew Deal era of the 1930s, takestourists to most of the famous sitesin the Mountains region. It has a45 mile-per-hour speed limit.Below: The views of the nearbymountains from parkway overlookscan be spectacular.

the piedmont region - amazon s3 · from the north near roanoke rapids southwest past ra-leigh and...

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