Place:Canton, Haywood, North Carolina, United States

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NameCanton
Alt namesBufordsource: USGS, GNIS Digital Gazetteer (1994) GNIS37005192
Pigeon Riversource: USGS, GNIS Digital Gazetteer (1994) GNIS37005192
TypeTown
Coordinates35.535°N 82.837°W
Located inHaywood, North Carolina, United States
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Canton is the second largest town in Haywood County, North Carolina, United States. It is located about west of Asheville and is part of that city's metropolitan area. The town is named after the city of Canton, Ohio. The population was 4,227 at the 2010 census.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

This area was long settled by succeeding indigenous cultures. What is known as the archeological Garden Creek site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is located on the south side of the Pigeon River, approximately seven miles west of Canton. It was inhabited from 8000 BCE by successive cultures of indigenous peoples. Villages were developed in the Middle Woodland (200-600 CE) and The Southeast Appalachian Mississippian culture ((1000 to 1450/1500 CE) periods. The historic Cherokee people were the most recent Native Americans to occupy this area, which was part of their homelands in the western Carolinas, southeastern Tennessee, and northeastern Georgia.

The prehistoric peoples built a total of four earthwork mounds at the site. Three have been excavated, the last two platform mounds in the 1960s prior to residential development.

European Americans did not begin to settle here until the late 1780s, following the American Revolutionary War, United States independence, and gaining cessions of land to the US by the Cherokee. By 1790, Jonathan McPeters was farming the banks of the Pigeon River at the site where Canton developed. Around 1815 the first church was built in what was to become Canton; it was called the Locust Old Field Baptist Church. "Old Field: is a common term referring to areas cultivated or occupied by the Cherokee people, as this was known to be part of their traditional homelands.

Canton was founded in 1889 as "Buford". Later that same year, the name was changed to "Vinson". The name was changed to "Pigeon Ford" in 1891, and to "Canton" in 1893. The town was named for Canton, Ohio, the source of the steel for the bridge that was built across the Pigeon River.

Canton's river location enabled the development of industry that used water power.

Peter G. Thomson had built Champion Coated Paper Company of Hamilton, Ohio into one of largest manufacturers of paper in the United States. He visited Western North Carolina in 1905 looking for a location for a pulp mill to supply his company. The area had large forests that would supply timber. Leaders of communities farther to the west tried to convince Thomson to choose their areas. While the timber supplies were greater to the west, Thomson wanted areas with more spruce and settled on Canton, which had the type trees Thomson wanted, enough land for a mill, and the Pigeon River to move logs to the mill. Thomson later realized the river did not have enough of a slope, so railroads were used to move logs instead. Construction on the mill began in 1906. Many of the workers also had farms that they had to return to, so immigrants were hired to do much of the work.

Canton had 350 people when work began.[1] When the Champion Fibre Company mill opened in 1908,[2] it had about 1000 employees and resulted in other related jobs being created, including construction of neighborhoods such as Fibreville, with 60 homes for employees. Thomson had great respect for the workers, believing those who had wealth should provide jobs for those who needed them, and began an annual Labor Day celebration in 1906, which continued a hundred years later.[1]

When Champion owners decided to close the plant in 1997 because of environmental issues, the employees purchased the plant and formed Blue Ridge Paper Company. Under an ESOP, the employees owned a 45% stake in the new company. It has since been sold. The plant is now owned by Evergreen Packaging. The Blue Ridge Southern Railroad serves the plant and has a small railyard next to it.

The Canton Main Street Historic District and Colonial Theater are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On August 17, 2021, Tropical Storm Fred flooded the town near the Pigeon River. As of June 2022, many buildings surrounding the river are still not usable as a result of the storm. In nearby Cruso, six people died as a result from the flooding, many of which at Laurel Bank Campground.

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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Canton, North Carolina. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.