And so it was that the first full day of the Leadership Lake Norman Class XV's progression toward graduation involved an ambitious tour of education and history of the Lake Norman region. The day began and ended with an emphasis on Davidson College, sandwiching a filling of historical significance of north Mecklenburg and Lake Norman itself.
Usually passed unnoticed by traffic along Gilead Road in Huntersville is a key piece of history, the Hugh Torrance House and Store. It is the oldest standing store in North Carolina and is one of Mecklenburg County's few remaining 18th-century structures. The store is adjacent to the original home place, which was modified over the years to accommodate a growing family.
The tiny store offered early north Meck residents the basic essentials of tools, soaps, candles, tea and more. Next to the store was another essential of the era, one of the area's first known pubs, where home-distilled spirits were sold and consumed.
But as important as running a business was, education was highly respected in the Torrance household. A charter member of the Davidson College Board of Trustees (1836), James Torrance, Hugh's son, paid $100 on a $500 subscription to the "Manual Labour School," as Davidson College was first known. He continued payments on his subscription until 1839.
He was a member of the Davidson College building committee and also served on one of its financial committees. Between 1841 and 1844, he paid $60 annual interest on a pledge to endow a professorship at the college. He fulfilled his endowment pledge in 1845 by giving a certificate for 10 shares of stock in the Bank of North Carolina.
William Latta Torrence was the first of James Torrance's sons to have access to college. He was one of the first students at Davidson College and later attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
Today, Davidson College stands as a bastion of liberal arts education, and over the decades, its basketball program has periodically put the tiny town on the national map. The spacious campus is home to only 1,800 students, and while the vast majority of them hail from out of state, the local bonds they make are enduring. From the modern Baker Sports Complex, to the historic Johnston Gym rehabbed as the Student Union, to one of the oldest buildings on campus — the laundry that offers free laundry service for all students and to town residents for a fee — Davidson College was the impetus for the Town of Davidson to exist, and is the cultural center for northern Mecklenburg.
The college has close ties to Davidson Day School, one of several top private and charter schools in the area. The school, which was the second stop on the day's tour, has rapidly grown to include all grades, and next year will move its high school students to a new campus just across the Iredell County line. With its pre-K program and plans to expand its reach to even younger ages with a day care program, students could spend their entire childhood in the hallways of Davidson Day.
To the modern-day resident of northern Mecklenburg, Lake Norman is not just our local playground but also an easily identifiable descriptor of the region. But the real reason Lake Norman exists is McGuire Nuclear Station. The 30-year-old facility is easily viewed by boat from the lake near the Cowan's Ford dam or by car from N.C. 73 at the Mecklenburg/Lincoln county line, but taking a peek behind the gates is an opportunity reserved for the fortunate few, not including the 1,200 or so employees who work there.
Security is extraordinarily tight, as it should be, and serious-looking security personnel — the station's own police force — are omnipresent. But it's the security professionals you don't see who secure the facility's perimeter, one that uninvited guests are prohibited from penetrating.
Standing just outside one of two buildings housing giant turbines that are powered by adjacent nuclear reactors, beneath the handful of wires that carry 2,200 megawatts of power away from the station, is nearly unimaginable, as is the fact that the plant's output represents 44 percent of the total nuclear power generation in North Carolina.
As important as McGuire is to local employment and the energy grid, the 32,500-acre lake that was built to provide cooling water for the reactors is the single most significant factor in the growth of the region. Lake Norman provided an identity to what was otherwise a nondescript area of the North Carolina Piedmont, allowing it to be more than just some place north of Charlotte.
Just south from McGuire along a bend of the Catawba River that is now a portion of Mountain Island Lake is Historic Latta Plantation, the home site founded by Irish immigrant James Latta. Latta began assembling land along the river in 1799, eventually acquiring more than 700 acres, a portion of which remains as the historic home site and county park on Sample Road. Latta, who built his fortune as a traveling merchant, demonstrated the determination and ambition that were essential to the success of free enterprise that served as the foundation of the beginnings of Mecklenburg and the nation.
Commerce in the Lake Norman region is rooted in its founders, its early entrepreneurs, its schools and its lake. Individually, each element is significant. Collectively, they are essential.
