Winston-Salem, North Carolina

• 1. Introduction

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  Winston-Salem sits 200 miles from the nearest coastline, yet for a time the United States federal government designated it an official port of entry. That designation came not from geography but from appetite. The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was importing so much French cigarette paper and Turkish tobacco for its Camel cigarettes that Washington had no other choice. By 1916, this landlocked city in the North Carolina Piedmont ranked as the eighth-largest port of entry in the country.

  The city answers to two nicknames: the Twin City, for the two towns that became one, and the Camel City, for those cigarettes. Both names point to the same underlying truth: Winston-Salem is a place built by convergence. Church and commerce, tobacco and textiles, a restored Moravian village and a downtown innovation district all occupy the same few square miles.

  How two entirely separate settlements with different founding philosophies, different economies, and different governing structures grew together into a single city of nearly a quarter million people is the thread running through Winston-Salem's story. And the businesses that hatched inside its borders, from a hot sauce introduced in 1929 to an airline that once ranked among the nation's best, give that story its texture.

• 2. The Moravian Foundation

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  On the 17th of November 1753, the first settlers arrived at a site that would become Bethabara, the earliest Moravian outpost in what is now Winston-Salem. Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg had scouted the land that same year on behalf of the Moravian Church, choosing a location in the three forks of Muddy Creek. He named the tract "die Wachau," after the ancestral estate of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, the Moravians' patron.

  The land, just short of 99,000 acres, was purchased from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Bethabara grew quickly but was never intended as the permanent center. A second settlement, Bethania, opened nearby in 1759. Then lots were drawn to choose a site for the congregation's primary town.

  On the 6th of January 1766, the first tree was felled to build Salem. The name came from the Hebrew word for peace, "Shalom," after the Canaanite city mentioned in Genesis. Count Zinzendorf had chosen it before his death. Salem was designed as a congregation town: the church, a Brethren's House, and a Sisters' House surrounded a central square, all owned by the congregation itself. For many years, residency required Moravian membership. That requirement outlasted the Revolution but did not survive the Civil War.

  Salem Square and a graveyard called God's Acre have hosted a Moravian sunrise service every Easter morning since 1772. The service draws thousands each year, some traveling from overseas. Salem Academy, founded that same year of 1772 to educate young women, remains the oldest continuously operating educational institution for women in America.

• 3. Winston Rises

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  In 1849, the Salem Congregation sold land north of its settlement to the newly formed Forsyth County. The new county seat was simply called "the county town" until 1851, when residents renamed it Winston, honoring Joseph Winston, a local hero of the Revolutionary War.

  For its first two decades, Winston was quiet. The change began in 1868, when Salem and Winston business leaders pushed to link the town to the North Carolina Railroad. By the 1880s, tobacco factories multiplied across Winston, with notable operations run by Pleasant Hanes and a founder named R. J. Reynolds.

  Pleasant Hanes went on to establish a knitting company in 1900 that would eventually grow into a textile giant. His brother J. Wesley Hanes opened Shamrock Hosiery Mills in 1901, making men's socks. The two brothers' separate firms eventually merged into the Hanes Corporation, known today as Hanesbrands.

  The United States Post Office began referring to the two towns together as Winston-Salem during the 1880s. A formal post office bearing that combined name was established in Winston in 1899, with the former Salem office operating as a branch. After a referendum, the towns were officially incorporated as a single city in 1913. Robert Gray had first floated the idea at the 1876 centennial celebration, three decades before it became reality.

• 4. Reynolds and the Tobacco Empire

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  R. J. Reynolds founded his tobacco company in 1875. By the time he died in 1918, the company owned 121 buildings in Winston-Salem. His firm introduced Prince Albert pipe tobacco in 1907 and Camel cigarettes in 1913, and those brands pulled the entire city upward with them.

  By the 1940s, 60 percent of Winston-Salem's workers were employed either by Reynolds or in the Hanes textile factories. The tobacco operation demanded French cigarette paper and Turkish tobacco in such volumes that the federal government granted the city port-of-entry status despite its location 200 miles from the ocean.

  In 1917, Reynolds bought 84 acres of property and built 180 houses, selling them at cost to workers in a development called Reynoldstown. The company was shaping the city's physical fabric, not just its economy.

  In 1929, the Reynolds Building was completed. Designed by William F. Lamb of the firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, it rose 314 feet across 21 floors and served as the tobacco company's headquarters. The American Institute of Architects named it building of the year. It was the tallest building south of Baltimore at the time, and it became the direct predecessor and prototype for the Empire State Building, which Lamb's firm completed in New York City in 1931. Moravian star images now decorate the Reynolds Building's lobby, a quiet sign of the city's two founding traditions sharing the same landmark.

• 5. Businesses Born in Winston

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  The C. Winkler Bakery was commissioned in 1799 and is notable for Moravian cookies. The congregation brought Christian Winkler of Pennsylvania in to operate it in 1807. His family ran the bakery until 1929, and it continues today as part of Old Salem.

  Texas Pete hot sauce was introduced by T. W. Garner Foods in 1929. That same year, Quality Oil Company was organized to distribute the then-little-known Shell Oil Company, and one of seven original Shell service stations opened under its ownership in 1930.

  In 1934, Malcolm Purcell McLean formed McLean Trucking Co. in Winston-Salem. The firm drew strength from the tobacco and textile industries headquartered there and grew into the second-largest trucking company in the nation.

  Krispy Kreme opened its first doughnut shop on South Main Street in 1937. Piedmont Airlines was formed in 1948 out of the old Camel City Flying Service. It made its first commercial flight out of Wilmington, North Carolina, on the 20th of February 1948, operating out of Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem. Piedmont grew into one of the top airlines in the country before USAir purchased it in 1987.

  Wachovia Bank and Trust was formed in 1911 through the merger of Wachovia National Bank, founded in 1879 by James Alexander Gray and William Lemly, and Wachovia Loan and Trust, founded in 1893. First Union purchased it in 2001, eventually becoming Wells Fargo by 2009, and the Wachovia name was retired in 2011.

• 6. Arts, Music, and Campus Life

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  Winston-Salem founded the first arts council in the United States in 1949. That body, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem Forsyth County, grew out of the concentration of art schools and performance venues already present in the city.

  Drive-In Studio, a recording space owned by Mitch Easter, guitarist for The dB's and Let's Active, operated in his parents' garage from 1980 to 1994. The studio became a touchstone of the early indie rock scene in North Carolina. R.E.M. recorded its debut EP, Chronic Town, there in 1981. Other artists who recorded at Drive-In include Pylon, Suzanne Vega, Game Theory, and The Connells.

  Baity's Backstreet Music Garden, a live-music venue on Baity Street, was established in 1982 by Tim Mabe. The Ramones, R.E.M., Guns N' Roses, and Blue Oyster Cult played there before the venue burned down in 1993.

  Simon Green Atkins founded Slater Industrial Academy in 1892; it later became Winston-Salem State University, a public historically Black university. Wake Forest College moved to Winston-Salem from its original home in Wake Forest, North Carolina, in 1956. The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, the first public arts conservatory in the country, also calls Winston-Salem home. The city was officially designated the "City of Arts and Innovation" in 2014.

  Wake Forest University's soccer program made four consecutive final-four appearances from 2006 through 2009 and won the NCAA championship in 2007.

• 7. A City Remaking Itself

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  Public and private investment totaling $713 million created the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter in downtown Winston-Salem. Governed by the Wake Forest School of Medicine, the district hosts 90 companies, more than 3,600 workers, 1,800 degree-seeking students, and over 8,000 workforce trainees. It covers more than 330 acres and contains over 1,900,000 square feet of office, laboratory, and educational space.

  In 2019, the Innovation Quarter became one of the first nine steering committee members of the Global Institute on Innovation Districts. The employment picture in Winston-Salem has shifted substantially: health care and social assistance now account for 29 percent of jobs in the area, while manufacturing has fallen to 10 percent. Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist employs 11,750 people, making it the largest employer in the city.

  The tobacco workforce tells a different story. Reynolds employment has fallen from a peak of nearly 30,000 to under 3,000, though the Winston-Salem area remains the primary international manufacturing center for Reynolds cigarette brands.

  On the 31st of January 2022, a fire broke out at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant in North Winston-Salem. The facility held over 600 tons of ammonium nitrate, and roughly 6,500 residents from 2,500 homes within a one-mile radius were evacuated. The episode was a reminder that the industrial history of this inland port city still runs close to the surface.