- Title
- Our State
-
-
- Date
- January 2002
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
Our State
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tar heel towns
by Susan L. Comer
Red Cross
At the crossroads between the Charlotte-Albemarle corridor
lies a quiet community whose traditions run as deep as its red clay soil,
and its inevitable growth is met with bittersweet anticipation.
Mike Hinson’s most
vivid memories are
of car rides taken
with his
grandfather
through the gently rolling
countryside around Red
Cross. “As soon as
he’d crest the hill,”
says Hinson, “he'd
always switch the car off
and put it in neutral and we
would coast down the hill to
save gas.” Hinson recalls how
they’d come to a complete halt
before his grandpa knocked the
four-speed Corvair station wagon
back into gear. "You know, gas was¬
n't really high back then.” he laughs,
“but I guess he wasn’t in a hurry."
Folks in Red Cross still aren’t in a
hurry, and lush green pasturelands still
beckon those partial to a slow Sunday
car ride. But the fast life is fast
encroaching. N.C. Highway 24117 is
already tour-laned from Charlotte,
some JO miles away, to within four
miles of the crossroads, and the next
phase hits home, bringing with it the
inevitability of development. As the
local tax base grows more attractive,
residents wonder how long before
annexation comes calling?
The short answer is — they’re not
waiting to find out, choosing, instead,
to move forward with a bid for incor¬
poration. As Mike’s father, J.D. Hinson,
explains, “We don’t care to live in a
town, but if we’re gonna live in a town
we’d like for it to be our town."
Mud pics from the sky
In the mid- 1 700s. Red Cross was
part of a vast, grassy plain rich in tim¬
ber and water resources. Given its
many attributes, the area saw an ample
migration of Dutch, Scotch-lrish, and
German settlers from Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, and those of F.nglish
descent from Virginia and the Cape
Fear River Basin.
Among the German immigrants who
settled in Red Cross in the early 1800s
via Pennsylvania were the ancestors of
Heath Hahn. “My great-great grand-
lather had the opportunity to purchase
600 acres of land just on the south
side of this community." says I lahn
who, today, lives on a portion of that
land. When heavy rains fell on the
native red soil, the
wagon trails became
^ almost impassable.
“People began to
refer to these cross¬
roads as ‘Red Cross’
due to conditions
that existed there,"
he says.
In the early
1900s, the cross¬
roads was relocated
about two-tenths of
a mile to the north and
west. The roads were
paved around 1925. Then,
in 1929, D.A. Hinson —
grandfather of Mike, father of
J.D. — completed construction on a
brick two-story building at the new
crossroads, with a general store on the
ground floor and living quarters for his
family on the second floor. In addition
to selling gas, groceries, and dry goods,
the elder Hinson became a dealer for
Oldsmobilc and for Case at the Red
Cross Store. “Kept one car and one
tractor," laughs Mike Hinson, who
now sells antiques and collectibles
inside the historic structure.
D.A. Hinson gradually expanded
into more enterprises — and built
more buildings — including a seed-
cleaning business. “At that time," says
J.D. Hinson, “lespedeza was a big
money crop in this area." (Lespedeza,
a clover relative used for forage and
soil improvement, doesn't grow locally
anymore.) He recalls hauling a lot of
seed to Raleigh, Fuquay-Varina, and
I 8 Our State January 2002
