Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina and the 20th most populous in the United States. Nicknamed the Queen City, Charlotte is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. Charlotte is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and is also the second-largest banking center in the country, trailing only New York City in terms of headquartered assets.

History

Charlotte was founded in the mid-18th century at the intersection of two Indian 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 Presbyterian and founded many churches the oldest of which being Sugaw Creek Presbyterian 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 an Indian trading path and the Great Wagon Road, which became the village of Charlotte Town, incorporated in 1768. The crossroads, perched atop a long rise in the piedmont landscape, is the heart of modern Uptown Charlotte. The trading path became Trade Street, and the Great Wagon Road was named 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. Both the city and its county are named for Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German 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. A copy was sent, though never officially presented, to the Continental Congress a year later. Though Thomas Jefferson would deny having borrowed content from the Mecklenburg declaration, his 1776 Declaration of Independence featured language similar to the Charlotte document (today there is no generally accepted historic proof of the so-called Meck-Dec, and many doubt it ever existed, yet the date of the Declaration appears on the North Carolina state flag). Eleven days later the same 27 townsmen met to create and endorse the Mecklenburg Resolves, a set of laws to govern the newly independent town.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte played a critical role during the Revolutionary War. It was a site of encampment for both the American and British main armies, and during a series of skirmishes between British troops and feisty Charlotteans the village earned the lasting nickname "Hornets Nest" from a frustrated Lord General Charles Cornwallis. Charlotte was an ideological hotbed of revolutionary sentiment, a legacy that endures today in the nomenclature of such landmarks as Independence Boulevard, Independence High School, Freedom Park and Freedom Drive. In 1799, 12-year-old Conrad Reed went fishing one spring morning and brought home a rock weighing about 17 pounds, which the family used as a doorstop for three years before it was recognized by a jeweller as gold. It was the first verified find of gold in the fledgling United States. The nation's original gold rush was on, and many veins of gold were subsequently found in the area. The Reed Gold Mine was the nation's first, and it operated until 1912. Uptown Charlotte is literally and figuratively built on gold mines. Charlotte's history as a financial center is extensive. 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.