Great Horse, Wonderful Rider

During the last half of the 18th century, German, Dutch, and Scots- Irish families from the Colony of Pennsylvania migrated south and settled in the Cherryville area. Land grants made by King George III of England date back to 1768, and as early as 1792 Governor Samuel Ashe of North Carolina made grants in and around "White Pine", as the settlement was known at the time. A village began to develop at a crossroads of the Morganton-to- Charleston road, closely followed by modern Highway 274 / Mountain Street, and the Old Post Road, a main thoroughfare between Salisbury, North Carolina, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. In 1862, the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad (later known as the Carolina Central Railroad) reached White Pine. Construction of the railroad westward from Cherryville was interrupted by the Civil War, so that throughout the war Cherryville was a western terminus of the railroads in North Carolina.