The Most Impossible Rise of a City Ever: Charlotte, North Carolina

In 1799, a twelve-year-old boy pulled a seventeen-pound gold nugget from a North Carolina creek. His family used it as a doorstop. Two centuries later, the city nearest that creek — Charlotte — controls more banking assets than anywhere in America except New York. This is the story of how a town with no port, no river, and no geographic advantage became the unlikely banking capital of the United States. From the Charlotte Mint and the cotton mills of the New South, through one obscure North Carolina banking law, to Hugh McColl's ruthless acquisition spree that turned a regional bank into Bank of America — the full history of Charlotte, North Carolina. Sources: Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875–1975 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) Howard E. Covington Jr. and Marion A. Ellis, The Story of NationsBank: Changing the Face of American Banking (University of South Carolina Press, 1993) Ross Yockey, McColl: The Man with America's Money (Longstreet Press, 1999) FDIC Division of Research and Statistics, History of the Eighties — Lessons for the Future, Vol. I (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 1997) Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission, property surveys and historical records, charlottelandmarks.org The Charlotte Observer archives, 1886–2024