Thanks to funding from a community contributor and nominations from the State Archives of North Carolina and Red Springs Historical Museum we are pleased to announce that nearly 800 new issues of The Red Springs Citizen are now available on our website!
These new papers, ranging from 1950 to 1964, capture life in Robeson County. Red Springs, NC, named for the red pigment in the local mineral springs, became an agricultural hub in the southern part of the state. Farmers planted a variety of fruits and vegetables that were sold both locally and across the United States.
Several issues of The Red Springs Citizen from the summer of 1960 highlight Red Spring’s Produce Center. Located on Raeford Road, the Center hosted farmers who brought in their produce for grading and packaging before shipment. Most of the produce was cucumbers which sold for $1 a bushel.
The Produce Center, part of the Farmers Cooperative of Red Springs, sold its cucumbers to a company in Philadelphia, where they were processed into pickles and sold along the eastern seaboard. The co-op sold 15,428 bushes of cucumbers for a total of $14,332.80 in June alone. The Farmers Cooperative was an extremely successful venture, selling a variety of produce to support local farmers.
To learn more about Red Springs, visit the town website here.
To explore more materials from North Carolina Community Contributors, visit their contributor page here.
To view more newspapers from across the state, visit our North Carolina Newspaper Collection linked here.
