|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Company Shops Station, Burlington Charlotte's History Tied to the Tracks
|
Charlotte's
History Tied to the Tracks
The
North Carolina Railroad Company expresses its apprecation for use of
the Local support rallied and assisted in raising financing for the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad. Businessmen recognized the service was the key to possibility. Charlotte’s leaders had been fighting to get a railroad since 1825. Although it did not seem logical to powers in the eastern part of the state to extend a railroad to town from that direction, practical Chalotteans knew what they wanted. The railroad brought people and goods. More important, it carried Mecklenburg produce and cotton to market. When the first passenger freight train of the Charlotte and South Carolina Railroad arrived in 1852 from Columbia, South Carolina, it was the celebrated marvel of the century. Crowds met it cheering. After Chalotteans invested to get this first line from Columbia north to Charlotte, western interests proposed to continue it to Danville, Virginia. Eastern opponents saw a funnel draining off resources into Virginia and South Carolina. As a consequence, the North Carolina Railroad connecting Charlotte to the east became a reality in 1856. Most of the subsequent progress in Charlotte is owed to the presence of the railroad and the aggressive personal funding and lobbying to assure its rout this way. John Springs exhibited the typically farsighted business determination at work in the early Mecklenburg. He and others like him rode out the sporadic national bad times and capitalized on the good with extraordinary success, as recorded by Katherine Wooten Springs from voluminous family records and letters in The Squires of Springfield. Springs’s descendants founded and own interests in the diverse Springs Mills Empire. view
the photos-->
|
||
| Contact • Home | |||
