Charlotte history

Charlotte, NC - History

 The Charlotte area was first settled during 1755.  Thomas Polk was traveling with the family of Thomas Spratt and stopped there to build his house at a Native American intersection for two trading paths between Catawba River and Yadkin River.  One of these paths went from north to south and was a part of the famous Great Wagon Road.  The other path went from west to east.  During the early years of the 1700s, the Great Wagon Road was the leader of German and Scot-Irish settlers to North Carolina from Pennsylvania.  Within only the first few 10 years after the Polks settled, the area began to grow into a community that was officially incorporated as the town of Charlotte in 1768.  The crossroads then turned into the heart of what we know as Uptown Charlotte today.

 Surveyors began to mark off new streets for the town in 1770 for further development in the future.  Both Charlotte and the county are named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who was the German wife of King George III.  They named the town after her hoping that it would win them some favor among the crown, however, the tension between Charlotte and the United Kingdom only got worse.  In 1775, on May 20th, the townsmen were said to have signed a proclamation, which is now known to be the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, which was copied and sent to the Continental Congress one year later but never arrived.  The declaration's date appears on the state flag of North Carolina.  Eleven days after that, the same men met together in order to endorse and create the Mecklenburg Resolves, which were laws for governing the new and independent town. 

During the Revolutionary War, Charlotte was the encampment site for both the British and American armies.  The town earned the nickname of Hornet's Nest during some skirmishes between Charlotteans and British troops, of which came from Lord General Charles Cornwallis.  This legacy continues to endure today in some of the city's landmarks, including the former Charlotte Hornets, which are the city's former NBA team.  The first boom of Charlotte came following the Civil War, with a processing center for cotton and a hub for a railroad. 

 Many years later, in 1989, the city was struck with destruction from Hurricane Hugo.  There was massive property damage, and many people went without power for weeks.  Cleaning up the city took months to finish.  Since Charlotte is a little more than 200 miles inland, many residents who lived in the Carolinas went to Charlotte to wait out the storm.  In 1989, the city was unprepared when the storm hit, because no one anticipated a hurricane to go that far inland.