Gated Community Traditional Geocache

Pioneer families began to establish homes near the [train] depot soon after it was established. Early Gastonians seemed to agree that the best road to success was to be found in “keeping store.” Therefore the town’s first and most influential citizens were primarily merchants and tradesmen, and it was because of them that others came. Almost from the beginning, their stores were the largest and carried the widest and most up-to-date selections of merchandise in the county. Gastonia developed a reputation for being the best place to buy goods for the family or farm and quickly became a regional trading center that drew people from Gaston, Lincoln, Mecklenburg and York counties. Because of the railroads, it was also a place where traveling salesmen, known as “drummers”, stopped to service their trades throughout the region. Hotels were established to accommodate them. Before long, when people asked “What place is this?” eager citizens replied, “Gastonia. We are going to have a big town here one of these days.” One of the first to arrive, when there were only a few scattered houses in the vicinity, was John Henry Craig, a native of the Union section of the county. He had sold the railroad land at Shiloh, upon which the first Gastonia depot was located in 1873. In 1876 he opened a retail store at the new Gastonia depot location. By 1882 he had as his partner Captain James Daniel Moore, a newly arrived Catawba County native and Confederate war hero, and they operated as Craig & Moore. Separately Craig also owned a tannery and traded in cotton, buying the ginned and baled staple from local farmers and selling it to cotton merchants in larger cities. In 1887, he and his brother-in- law founded Gastonia and Gaston County’s first bank.