(Above Image: North Carolina Map - Physiographic Map of North Carolina, 1906 by Thomas L. Watson.  North Carolina Maps, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Location and Patterns of Trade

 

Mecklenburg County is situated in an area of North Carolina known as the "Piedmont Plateau."  Geographically, North Carolina's Piedmont section lies between the state's eastern sandy coastal plain and the western Blue Ridge Mountains.  The Piedmont is characterized by its rolling clay hills. The town of Charlotte, Mecklenburg's county seat, was established along the well-worn routes of two ancient American Indian trading paths, later used by European traders who bartered with the area's indigenous population.  These paths became offshoots of the colonial "highway" known as the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, which brought settlers down from Pennsylvania through Virginia, to North and South Carolina and into Georgia.  Mecklenburg County was settled by Scots-Irish Presbyterians seeking the opportunity to acquire large tracts of land where they could form settlements.

Geography determined patterns of trade during the settlement period, and these patterns persisted in the isolated region of the North Carolina Piedmont throughout the early nineteenth century.  Trade in North Carolina flowed along a system of road and waterways, destined for coastal ports in Virginia and South Carolina.  The Catawba River, which runs along Mecklenburg County's western edge, directed the flow of traffic south.  Land routes typically followed the direction of the river.  Mecklenburg County borders the South Carolina counties of York, Lancaster, and Chester.  Because of its location, the county's trade naturally flowed south eventually reaching Charleston, South Carolina, the South's largest coastal port.

 

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