Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina, and the Carolinas, and the 20th largest in the United States, with a population of approximately 651,101 (2005 estimate). The Charlotte metropolitan area (MSA) had a 2006 estimated population of 1,594,799. As of 2005, Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury had a combined statistical area (CSA) population of 2,120,745. The city is at the center of one of the fastest growing metropolitan regions in the United States, with an average influx of around 20,000 newcomers into the region each year over the past decade.
Charlotte is the county seat of Mecklenburg County, and is located in south-central North Carolina, quite near the South Carolina border. Charlotte and the surrounding regions experienced nothing short of explosive growth in the population, business, construction, research/education, medical, service, agricultural, real-estate, and financial sectors since the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s; in the opening years of the 21st Century, Charlotte's economy continues to boom because the city's population continues to increase rapidly and shows no signs of abating soon. Charlotte is also home to numerous Fortune 500 company headquarters and over time has become the second-largest banking/financial center in the United States, trailing only New York City in terms of headquartered assets.
Nicknamed The Queen City (a moniker it shares with Cincinnati, Ohio), Charlotte was named in honor of Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III of England. Charlotte is also known as the "Hornet's Nest," and informally/locally as "The City of Churches" (for the extremely dense concentration of churches within the city's limits) and "Tree City USA" (still being amongst the greenest when compared to many other major American cities). After being driven out by the fierce opposition of the city's citizens to British occupation during the American Revolution, General Cornwallis wrote that Charlotte was "a hornet's nest of rebellion." A resident of Charlotte is referred to as a Charlottean (shar-la-tee'-uhn).
Charlotte was founded in the mid-18th century at the intersection of two Native American trading paths. One of which ran north-south Great Wagon Road, and is followed closely today by U.S. Route 21, and a second that ran east-west along what is now modern-day Trade Street. In the early part of the 18th century, the Great Wagon Road led settlers of Scots-Irish (who were mostly Presbyterian and founded many churches) and German descent from Pennsylvania into the Carolina foothills.
In 1755, early settler Thomas Polk (uncle of United States President James K. Polk) built a home at the crossroads of a Native American trading path and the Great Wagon Road. This became the village of "Charlotte Town," incorporated in 1768. The crossroads, perched atop a long rise in the piedmont landscape, is at the heart of modern Uptown Charlotte. The trading path became Trade Street, and the Great Wagon Road became Tryon Street, in honor of William Tryon, a royal governor of colonial North Carolina. The intersection of Trade and Tryon is known as "The Square" or simply "Trade & Tryon."
Both the city and its county are named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German-born wife of British King George III. The loyalty to King George and his consort was short-lived, however. On May 20, 1775, townsmen allegedly signed a proclamation that later became known as the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. It is said a copy was sent, though never officially presented, to the Continental Congress a year later. There is no generally accepted historic proof of the so-called Meck-Dec, and many doubt it ever existed, yet the supposed date of the Declaration appears on North Carolina' state flag). Eleven days later the same twenty-seven townsmen met to create and endorse the Mecklenburg Resolves, a set of laws to govern the newly independent town.
Charlotte was a site of encampment for both American and British armies during the Revolutionary War, and during a series of skirmishes between British troops and Charlotteans the village earned the lasting nickname "Hornet's Nest" from a frustrated Lord General Charles Cornwallis. Charlotte was an ideological hotbed of revolutionary sentiment during the Revolutionary War and for some time afterwards, a legacy that endures today in the nomenclature of such landmarks as Independence Boulevard, Independence High School, Independence Center, Freedom Park, Freedom Drive, and the former NBA team Charlotte Hornets.
In 1799, twelve-year-old Conrad Reed went fishing one Spring morning and brought home a "rock" weighing about 17 pounds, which the family used as a bulky doorstop for three years before it was recognized by a jeweller as near solid gold and bought for a paltry $3.50. This discovery was the first verified gold-find in the fledgling United States; in time, as word of the find trickled out, Reed's discovery became the genesis of the young nation's first gold rush. Many veins of gold were subsequently found in the area by miners and fortune-seekers throughout the 1800s and even in to the early 1900s, thus the founding of the Charlotte Mint for the sole purpose of minting local gold in to US currency in the late-1830s. The state of North Carolina "led the nation in gold production until the California Gold Rush of 1848", although the total volume of gold mined in the Charlotte area was dwarved by subsequent rushes. Interestingly, some locally based groups in the city and surrounding areas still pan for gold occasionally in local (mostly rural) streams and creeks. The Reed Gold Mine was the nation's first gold mine, and it operated until 1912. In 1837 the U.S. Congress established a branch United States Mint here because of the gold deposits found in the area. The Charlotte Mint was active until 1861, when Confederate forces seized the mint facility at the outbreak of the Civil War. The mint was not reopened at the end of the war, but the building survives today, albeit in a different location, and now houses the Mint Museum of Art.
The city's first boom came after the Civil War, as a cotton processing center and a railroad hub. Population leapt again during World War I, when the U.S. government established Camp Greene north of president-day Wilkinson Boulevard. Many soldiers and suppliers stayed after the war, launching Charlotte into an ascent that eventually overtook its older and more established rivals along the arc of the Carolina piedmont.
The city's modern-day banking industry achieved prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, largely under the leadership of financier Hugh McColl. McColl transformed North Carolina National Bank (NCNB) into a formidable national player that, through a series of aggressive acquisitions, would eventually become Bank of America. Another hometown bank, First Union, experienced similar growth, and is now known as Wachovia. Today, measured by control of assets, Charlotte is the second largest banking headquarters in the United States after New York City.
Charlotte's penchant for looking ahead -- a drive for economic development that kicked into particularly high gear during the mid-to-late 20th century -- has created something of a historical apathy in the city {{fact}, evidenced by the destruction of a series of landmark buildings as the city's downtown has expanded. Historically-driven preservationists often struggle to maintain old-city landmarks in the face of modern-minded boosters.
Famous natives of Charlotte include evangelist Billy Graham, pop music stars K-Ci and JoJo of Jodeci, R&B singer Anthony Hamilton, R&B singer Sunshine Anderson, pro wrestling legend Ric Flair, actor Randolph Scott, U.S. presidents James K. Polk (Pineville) and Andrew Jackson (born near the line between North and South Carolina), independent filmmaker Ross McElwee, humorist Rich Hall, film critic Molly Haskell, musican Prairie Prince, artist Romare Bearden, actress Berlinda Tolbert (of The Jeffersons) and Emmy-nominated actress Sharon Lawrence ("NYPD Blue"). Novelist Carson McCullers wrote her best-known work, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, while a resident of the city, and W.J. Cash wrote his seminal "The Mind of the South" in a downtown apartment building.
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