Good To Be King Traditional Geocache

This cache has been archived.

NCreviewer: This cache appears to be missing or unmaintained. I am archiving this listing since there's been no response from nor action by the cache owner within the time frame requested in the last reviewer note.

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Hidden : 5/30/2018
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:


King Street - Downtown Albemarle Historic District

Good park and grab or walk from other caches downtown. This cache is in a small, 3 inch box. It has only a log in it so you will need a pen. This isn't a heavily traveled street, but there are no sidewalks around the cache so be careful. 

Congrats to Genomac1 FTF! As the mills prospered and expanded in the late 1800's and early 1900's, Albemarle's population grew steadily, spurring the development of the town's commercial areas and creating the need for residential areas surrounding downtown. At the end of the century grand dwellings began to rise along West Main Street and Pee Dee Avenue. In the heart of the town, one-, two-, and three-story brick buildings housing dry goods stores, hardware businesses, furniture concerns, and professional offices quickly replaced the early frame structures. Initially, commercial development occurred along South Second Street. Nine edifices built in 1898 survive along the west side of the street in the Downtown Albemarle Historic District, including five built by physician and real estate developer Dr. 0. D. King. Tied directly to the new mills in town was "the Big Store", a retail business established in 1898 in a two-story brick building on the corner of West Main and North First streets to cater to the employees of the Efird and Wiscasset mills. By 1900 Albemarle's population had reached 1,382. New industrial concerns had opened including Albemarle Roller Mills, Albemarle Furniture and Manufacturing Company, I.W. Snuggs Planing and Mill, and R.L. Sibley Planning Mill. The establishment of these plants coincided with the opening of new commercial enterprises in downtown Albemarle, such as Efird Dry Goods Store and P.J. Honeycutt Furniture & Mortuary. The 1902 Sanborn Fire Insurance maps indicate that a drugstore, shoe store, bank, post office, hardware store, jewelry store, grocery store, bakery, and five-and-dime store were operating on the west side of South Second Street. A law office occupied the second floor of the King Building at the corner of West Main and South Second streets. Just a few years into the new century, Albemarle stood as the center of civic, commercial, and industrial activity in Stanly County. The town boasted three textile mills, two building material factories, a furniture factory, roller mill, ice plant, saw mills, banks, two newspapers, two hotels, and thirty-two shops and stores. By 1908 several additional businesses had opened downtown, including a barber shop, bottling works, restaurant, laundry, men's clothing store, and a marble cutting operation. The town's population grew to more than 2,100 citizens by 1910. The Winston-Salem Southbound Railroad's commencement of passenger and freight service to Albemarle in 1912 further added to the potential for the downtown's commercial growth. Community life in Albemarle was bolstered in the first decade of the twentieth century with the construction of churches for Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. In 1907-1908, on the south side of Main Street, Francis Eugene Starnes and .Doctor Franklin Parker built the Opera House/Starnes Jewelers Building, one of Albemarle's most distinctive surviving commercial buildings of its era, with retail space on the first floor and a performance hall above. Downtown's next major growth phase began around 1915 and was spurred on by the expansion of Wiscasset Mill in 1918 and growth in other area industries and businesses. During this decade, Albemarle took on a more "citified" appearance_ with the addition of several new buildings. In 1922, Lowder Hardware established itself in a new building, The Enterprise moved into a new building on South First Street containing state-of-the-art steam presses, and the modestly scaled yet handsome building at 141 West Main Street was constructed with retail space on the first floor and offices above. Two years later, J. W. Efird built the Morgan Furniture Building for his son-in-law, Finch Morgan, who opened Morgan Furniture there. Dr. W. C. Fitzgerald, a local dentist, built the Fitzgerald Building in 1927. Stanly Hardware took over Farmers Hardware in 1922 and in 1930 expanded to occupy both storefronts of its building on South Second Street. In a long established trend, professional offices continued to occupy the upper floors. According to Donna Dodenhoff in Stanly County: The Architectural Legacy of a Rural North Carolina County, "Even after the great stock market crash of 1929, and the onset of hard times, joint federal, state, and local public works projects allowed Stanly County to continue making progress in agriculture, education, housing and in the quality of life for both urban and rural dwellers." Carolina Power and Light Company's construction in 1928 ofthe dam that created Lake Tillery brought jobs as well as recreational opportunities. In 1930, approximately twelve percent of Stanly County's population of 33,216 lived in Albemarle, which boasted 3,493 residents. The Winston-Salem Southbound discontinued passenger service three years later, but freight service endured as demand increased. Albemarle's economy remained relatively healthy through the worst of the Depression and experienced renewed growth through the recovery era and beyond, into the 1950s. In the surrounding county, agriculture continued to contribute to that growth despite employing an increasingly smaller percentage of residents as industries such as Alcoa, at Badin, and the power company at Lake Tillery expanded. With the development of Quenby Mall in 1960, downtown Albemarle began to be depleted of retail outlets. Professionals and businessmen already had started relocating their offices from the upper floors, and as other shopping centers were built outside the historic central business district, the downtown area continued to decline, hastened by shrinkage of the textile industry in the county and throughout the state into the 1990s. A number of area industries that diversified remained in business, but most textile manufacturing jobs moved outside the country. Since the mid-1990s, however, strong local efforts to capitalize on Albemarle's wealth of historic buildings in the downtown area have resulted in the rehabilitation of several properties and a trend of revitalization that shows no signs of abating. Several new investments in downtown, including Pfeiffer University, small scale industry and several new retail and residential re-use projects have begun to revitalize this once thriving area of downtown.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Gurer vf bayl bar-jnl lbh jvyy svaq guvf bar.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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