THE DISPATCH
June 3, 1908
NEW TOWN DOWN IN
NORTH CAROLINA
INDUSTRIES ALREADY
LOCATED THERE
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Denton, N. C.-----North Carolina is to-day regarded as the livest, most progressive, and the most aggressive state, industrially speaking in the Union. There is more railroad building, more town building, more factory building, more school house building, more good road building, and, in short, more progress and more industrial “git up and git” to be seen in this state than in any Commonwealth of the United States. This statement is made advisedly, and the blanket has not been stretched.
Towns are growing up as if by magic, and the town from which I am now writing is only a sample of what is going on in various parts of the state.
NOT ON THE MAP YET
An investigator will not find Denton on the map, because Denton has sprung up since the map-maker got in his last work; but all the same Denton is here, and it is a live, energetic and progressive town of nearly 500 people, with streets laid off, factories at work, others being built, a hotel in full blast, schools in operation, churches already built and others going up, a railroad depot, livery stables in operation, sawmills buzzing, and other enterprises getting under way, a bank organized and ready to open business with ample capital, as soon as a home can be built.
Denton is the child of a new railroad. The Carolina Valley has been completed from Thomasville, a distance of twenty miles. The road will be extended on the one side, to Wadesboro, there to connect with the Seaboard Air Line and the Atlantic Coast Line, and the other side to High Point, thence to Winston-Salem, connecting there with the Norfolk and Western and the Southern. It already connects with the Southern at Thomasville.
Denton already has five woodworking establishments, among them a large planning and sawmill, a spoke and handle factory, two factories making knockdown chairs, a shuttle block factory, and a roller flouring mill. There are located here seven retail stores, two wagon shops, a large livery and sale stable, and a nice and well-kept little hotel. The Denton High School is quartered in a splendid building erected for the purpose and a thoroughly competent corps of teachers is in charge. The very first thought of the people of the new town was to provide ample school and church facilities, and already there are three church organizations in the town—a Protestant Methodist, a Methodist Episcopal church, South, and a Baptist church.
Denton has an advantage and a bright prospect in the fact that it is located far enough away from competing towns, being twenty miles from Lexington, twenty-seven from High Point, twenty from Thomasville and 13 from the new electric power town of Whitney on the Yadkin river. It is in Davidson county and right in the heart of the North Carolina furniture making belt, the undeveloped lumber supply of the Piedmont section being at its door.
A billion feet of lumber lie in the immediate neighborhood. This timber is the majestic pine, oak, walnut and hickory, the ideal furniture raw material. In addition there is a plenty of poplar and other tastere timbers from which are made butter dishes, fruit baskets and boxes, etc. The electric power to be supplied from the great plant at Whitney on the Yadkin, which is second only to Niagara if not its equal, is only 13 miles from Denton, and will be conveyed here by wire, furnishing power to run any amount of machinery for large and small industries.
Labor is plentiful and the complaints so often heard in other localities about scarcity and unreliability of help and never heard and probably will not be for a long time, and wages are low. The reason for these two facts are apparent.
The cost of living here is low, because a splendid farming country surrounds which supplies the town now and will for many years, with all that is to be eaten, and then the genial and healthful climate make doctor’s bill few and far between. Freight rates are low, and when the railroad shall be extended they will be still lower. All things conspire to make Denton the ideal furniture-manufacturing centre and indeed the home of varied manufacturing enterprises, especially the smaller industries. Being surrounded by the finest grain producing section in the South, there is every reason to expect Denton in the near future to be a great flour and corn-milling town. That in time it will be a cotton milling centre and a furniture making emporium no one now doubts. The power is in easy reach, labor is plentiful, cheap, and of a high grade, living is cheaper than in any nearby competing town, school advantages are superb and church facilities are already assured and there is no reason under the sun why Denton shall not in a reasonable, length of time, outstrip many of its ambitious neighbors. It will be on the next map that shall be made of North Carolina, and it will be there in a great shape. Denton is a coming town.
Frank W. Woodson
Transcription property of Denton Library,
Davidson County Public Library System