In honor of our 14th birthday this week (May 12th is officially when digitalnc.org went live!) we thought we’d do a fun post to explore one of the real quirks of working with materials from so many different places around North Carolina – the phenomenon of towns and counties with the same name being separated by miles and miles geographically. We tried to brainstorm as many as we could but we welcome any additional suggestions!
Towns at One end, Counties at the Other
- Albemarle, NC is in Stanly County, not Albemarle County (which used to exist but no longer does!)
- Beaufort, NC is in Carteret County, not Beaufort County
- Cherokee, NC is in Swain and Jackson Counties, not Cherokee County
- Columbus is in Polk County, not Columbus County
- Davidson, NC is in Mecklenburg County, not Davidson County
- Hendersonville is in Henderson County, but Henderson, NC is in Vance County
- Hertford, NC is in Perquimans County, not Hertford County
- Jackson, NC is in Northampton County and Jacksonville, NC is in Onslow County – neither are in Jackson County
- Macon, NC is in Warren County, not Macon County
- Madison, NC is in Rockingham County, not Madison County
- Rockingham, NC is in Richmond County, not Rockingham County
- Scotland Neck, NC is in Halifax County, not Scotland County (thanks to a reader for contributing this one!)
- Washington, NC is in Beaufort County, not Washington County
- And a fun bonus one – not a county or town – but! Wake Forest University is of course in Winston-Salem, NC not Wake Forest, after moving there in the 1960s.
We’d also like to thank the following town/county pairs that are conveniently in the same place:
- Camden, NC is in Camden County
- Currituck, NC is in Currituck County
- Durham, NC is in Durham County
- Gastonia, NC is in Gaston County
- Gatesville, NC is in Gates County
- Halifax, NC is in Halifax County
- Lincolnton, NC is in Lincoln County
- Nashville, NC is in Nash County
- Rutherfordton, NC is in Rutherford County
- Warrenton, NC is in Warren County
- Wilkesboro, NC is in Wilkes County
- Wilson, NC is in Wilson County
Can you name any others? If you want to check out all 100 counties of content on our site, visit our county browse page on DigitalNC!
