- [Narrator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(soothing music) (upbeat music) Cherryville, North Carolina, a small town 20 minutes from Gastonia, Lincolnton, or Shelby was once a simple farming community.

Later, like many Southern towns, it bloomed when textiles dominated the Carolinas.

Sprinkle in a successful trucking company, and this Northwest Gaston County town blossomed, until it didn't.

Coming up, learn how Cherryville got started and how it grew.

Then meet some people who still see potential in this town while protecting its rich history.

Along the way, learn about a few other unique Cherryville traditions coming up on "Trail of History."

(upbeat country music) (vehicle humming) (uplifting piano music) Most mornings at Home Folks Cafe here on Main Street in Cherryville, the kitchen staff is busy, dishing out hot breakfast to local diners.

- [Shirley] I'm a long time Cherryville resident.

Spent many years to coming to the Home Folks Cafe.

It's a place where people meet to eat and greet each other.

- [Jason] In the kitchen, co-owner Janet Long keeps the food coming for the customers.

She says they're the ones who make her restaurant in Cherryville something special.

- [Janet] And it's really just Home Folks, and it's really just that.

I mean, we're all just a close knit family, and we know practically everybody comes in here.

I mean, it's an everyday thing.

(car whooshes by) (uplifting music) - [Jason] This close knit community dates back several hundred years.

Meet local historian, Gregory Payseur.

- The first settlers came from Europe, and they settled here 115 years before it became Cherryville, or Cherryville.

But some of 'em came here a little earlier than that.

They were trappers, and they were coming down the Shenandoah Trail and going back to Pennsylvania.

And then some of 'em started to settle and move here.

Most of 'em moved on to Catawba and then the South Fork, and then they came to the what's now the Northwest part of Gaston County, settled around Indian Creek.

- [Jason] At the J. Ralph Beam, Jr. Heritage Park, several early structures from the community's past have been preserved to help tell its story.

There's the old jailhouse, a smokehouse, a federal bonded liquor warehouse, a one-room school, and even the first city hall.

But what you may not know about the town is it hasn't always been called Cherryville.

- The first name of this area was White Pine.

- [Jason] Mostly a farming community, Payseur says at around the time of the Civil War, a railroad reached White Pine.

It was also coincidentally around this time that a local couple did a little landscaping at their home near the railroad tracks, and that inspired the name change.

- Elizabeth Brown and Steven started setting out cherry trees, and they were near the railroad track.

The engineers started seeing those cherry trees, and they started calling it Cherryville, or Cherryville.

(upbeat music) - [Jason] As the South exited the Reconstruction period following the civil war, it entered a period of industrialization with textiles leading the way.

Large mills popped up across the South at the start of the 20th century.

Communities in Gaston County would not be left behind and Cherryville had several mills.

(upbeat music) The textile and industries that supported the mills meant jobs.

These jobs enticed workers off the farm, driving both Cherryville's economy and population growth.

But it wasn't just mills driving that growth.

When the Great Depression hit, one local man became an entrepreneur after losing his job.

The company he started would grow into become one of the country's largest trucking companies, Carolina Freight.

(truck whooshes by) (uplifting music) Here at the corner of Mountain and 1st Streets stands the C. Grier Beam Truck Museum.

- [Kathy] We're all about the early days of trucking and specifically, we're about one organization, the trucking company called Carolina Freight and its founder, C. Grier Beam.

- [Jason] And it's at the perfect location.

- This site was chosen because this was the actual location of the first terminal of Carolina Freight, back when it was just called Beam Trucking.

And it was an active Shell service station back in the '30s.

And in 1932, as Mr. Beam was starting up his trucking company, he was blessed to have an older brother, Guy Beam, who owned and operated this service station.

Guy gave him an office, a place to park his trucks, and kinda got started from there.

(upbeat music) - [Jason] But who exactly was C. Grier Beam?

- [Stan] He grew up on a farm up in North Brook, about 10 miles from here.

And he grew up wanting to be a farmer himself.

- With a dream of becoming a farmer, Beam got a degree in agriculture.

- He had gone to Florida.

He was working on a big poultry farm, and the Great Depression broke out and he lost his job and came back home to Cherryville.

And like so many men of that era, trying to find something they could do to make a living, he spotted a 1931 Chevrolet pickup truck down in Lincolnton, North Carolina, and talked to his dad into going with him to the bank and working out a loan to buy that truck for $500.

- [Jason] And with a truck like this one here at the museum, he started hauling coal and produce.

- From 1932 to 1937, it was simply called Beam Trucking Company, but in 1937, he incorporated, and that's when it became Carolina Freight Carriers.

He started out with a ton and a half state body box trucks, and he operated those trucks for a while and eventually got to using tractors.

We have a 35 International back here, which was one of the first tractors that he had.

And as he acquired more companies, he acquired different types of trucks.

Of course, whatever they had, and slowly built his company.

Of course, this is all transpiring during the Great Depression, really tough time to try to start a business.

And through the Great Depression through World War II, the gas shortages of the '70s, all the different things that happened all through the years, and he was able to keep building his company.

- [Jason] Eventually the company outgrew the gas station.

Highway 150 in Cherryville then became home for Carolina Freight as it navigated the ups and downs of the trucking industry.

- When deregulation happened, I believe it was 1980, you know, a lotta trucking companies really got in trouble.

You know, even though everybody had foreseen that coming, it was just a hard thing to deal with, and Mr. Beam, he was always moving forward, always finding an answer, always finding a way to make it work.

- [Jason] But sometimes even the best journeys come to an end, and in 1995, Carolina Freight was forced to cease operations.

(upbeat music) While you no longer see a Carolina Freight truck on the highway, here at the museum, C. Grier Beam's story and the trucking company that he built lives on.

- Today, it stands as a beacon of what Carolina was able to accomplish.

It's a nonprofit museum where people, with free admission.

they can come in and see these trucks.

We have 14 trucks in here, and they can read and learn and study about what really happened with Carolina Freight.

And he'd had a huge impact on the town of Cherryville through the years.

We have two trucks that are really rare.

We have a 45 Mac that I go to a lotta truck shows and I've never even seen another one.

(upbeat music) We have an N model Mack back there that was one of 800 built in 1958.

And I don't know the exact number of those trucks that are left on the market, but there can't be many.

- [Jason] Another prize piece in the collection, the Carolina sign that once stood proudly outside the Cherryville headquarters.

- [Kathy] Mr. Beam loved his town and loved the people, and he attributed his success of Carolina Freight to the people who he employed.

(slow acoustic music) - [Jason] As one might expect, many lifetime residents here in Cherryville have a sense of nostalgia for their hometown.

Meet Vickie Spurling.

- [Vickie] Asking me about Cherryville is, I mean, you won't hear anything bad because I love it.

I love this town.

I love everything about it.

When we were younger, my husband wanted to move a few times, and I would never leave here.

I love it here.

I like the small, hometown atmosphere.

- [Jason] Raised in Cherryville, Vickie remembers a different Main Street.

- Well, downtown was actually busy back then.

When I was young, I used to walk to town with my grandpa, and we had certain stores that we would visit every time we came, and there were always tons of people on the streets.

We had several drug stores and they had fountains where they fix ice cream and drinks and made foods.

We had a lotta textiles back then.

So I think the textile part of the town is probably what kept it so busy.

And you know, you didn't go out of town to buy things back then.

So you bought feed and seed here, you bought ice.

We had a ice plant.

But we had more specialty shops.

We had small little mom-and-pop grocery stores.

It's not like it is today.

You know, you don't see as many people on the streets as you did back then, but it was very busy.

Every store was full.

There was a business and you didn't see vacant buildings.

Every building had a business in it.

So it was a lot different back then.

It was a lot busier.

- [Jason] For most of the 20th century, Cherryville's economy was connected to textile mills and Carolina Freight.

But with the loss of both of those industries in the 1990s, it was a perfect storm of bad news for the small Gaston County town.

- I think that's why you see so many empty buildings and empty mill buildings around town is because it did make an impact because those businesses drew people, not only that lived in Cherryville, but from surrounding areas to have a reason to be here.

I mean, at lunch, you really can hardly find anywhere to eat that you could get in and out in your lunch hour, because there was so many people eating downtown.

- [David] In the '90s, when a lot of the economy died out and the trucking industry that was vital for the town and the hosiery and other mills left, it left so much vacancy that a lotta people pulled out the big stores, the Belks, the Roses.

And so, downtown was a lot of deserted buildings, and it had just almost had like a ghost town feel, which a lot of Main Street towns in North Carolina went through.

(slow instrumental music) - [Jason] Over the past decade, Cherryville's city leaders, business owners, and private investors started working towards revitalizing Main Street.

They've used a combination of grants, city-funded infrastructure work, and private investments.

Downtown director David Day oversees the town's Main Street program.

- Cherryville is going through a Renaissance.

As you said, we've talked about earlier, so many changes have happened.

And this all began probably about 2014 when the city of Cherryville joined in with the North Carolina Main Street Program.

And the Main Street Program is vital for the small towns (truck whooshes by) and what they encourage you to do with your small towns and your Main Streets, instead of tearing them down, malls are becoming a thing of the past, and they're empty and people don't feel as secure.

So the Main Street is giving the energy and the enthusiasm and the training throughout North Carolina for these towns to invest money back into their heritage and into these buildings.

- [Jason] But for property owners to receive a grant, they must follow certain guidelines.

- Cherryville Main Street Program has what we call Architectural Review Board.

And so, we are encouraging citizens to fix up their facades.

We want them to do them historically correct, as much as possible.

For example, like if your building has never been painted, we don't want you to paint it.

If it has paint on it that you can get off, we want you to get it off.

If you can't get it off, then we allow painting.

And so, we have some historical guidelines that people have to deal with to be able to get help.

And the city of Cherryville has set aside some money to give these owners and tenants grants, matching grants.

They have to spend money to get us to spend money for the grants.

(upbeat music) - [Jason] According to Vickie Spurling, one local investor took a chance on a neglected building along Main Street.

Things then took off from there.

- In 2018, he purchased the building, and he committed to fixing that building up.

And then from there, it snowballed.

So now he owns about 12 buildings in the historical district of downtown, and he has plans to renovate all of those.

His vision is that if we bring people to live in downtown, that we can bring business downtown.

If we can get more people here, we can make Cherryville a destination.

So the two-story buildings that house, we have plans to renovate those, to put housing on the second level.

At 200 East Main, we've already done that.

We have two apartments and people moved in immediately.

The Belk building that we're working on now, it's gonna have four apartments.

- [Jason] The work certainly wasn't easy.

It often takes a little bit more than just a splash of fresh paint.

- You would not believe how many roofs we've already put on.

These buildings were just falling apart because all the roofs were leaking.

I would say that 2/3 of the roofs in Cherryville were just in terrible shape.

- [Jason] David says energy towards revitalizing Main Street has been contagious.

And that other building owners have also done renovation work to their properties.

- As you can see down the street, we have buildings that have been painted, buildings that have been updated, buildings that have been restored interior, exterior.

- [Jason] Maintaining the historical integrity is key to the Main Street program.

But so too is helping Cherryville evolve.

Vickie says she and the investors share a common goal.

- Our goal, his goal, and my goal is to turn Cherryville around to where we're busy all the time.

We have a lot of people downtown.

(cheerful piano music) - [Jason] At Butter Me Up on Main Street.

- [Rebecca] We are fixin' to make a massive pot of chicken and dumplings.

- [Jason] Owner Rebecca Goins and her staff know what their customers like.

- Chicken and dumplings in hands down their most favorite.

I make it like my grandma used to make it, and we sell out of it every day.

We do soup, salads, paninis, wraps.

All of it's fresh.

We do it all daily.

And then if they want something sweet, then there's no limits.

We usually have at least 20 to 25 options.

Hopefully, we are just putting smiles on people's faces when they're hungry, or they have that sweet tooth going on, that we can give them what they need.

- [Jason] Rebecca says it's a lot of work, but she's got the right crew working alongside her.

- I have a wonderful team here of young ladies, and they do an amazing job, and we're all in it.

Nobody can do this by themselves.

We just make it happen.

- [Jason] Making it happen right here on Cherryville's Main Street, Rebecca says, as a teenager, things looked quite different.

- I went to high school here and middle school, and I'm rarely remember even coming down Main Street because there wasn't much here.

You know, it was just a bunch of empty buildings.

- [Jason] Now, Butter Me Up makes its home downstairs in what was once a Western Auto store.

Upstairs, there are a couple new apartments.

- You know, the brick walls are a reminder of all the things it's been in history.

And that was just so important to me 'cause it's such a connection to where we came from to where we are today, You know, nothing's forgotten.

All these people that worked and had dreams in these buildings, they still exist.

It's just in a different shape now.

- [Jason] Rebecca had lots of options on where to open up her new business, but she went with her heart.

- A lotta people advised me, "Don't go to Cherryville.

"Don't do it."

You know, there's nothing really there, but for me, this is home.

You know, this is where I can go down the street and everybody's family, so why not do it right here?

These are the people that I love.

These are the people I wanna give something to.

So there was no question that this was the only place that we wanna be.

- [Jason] And she says she's not done yet.

- This place is gonna be amazing.

I have such a vision for my own ideas, my own dreams and things that I wanna bring to Cherryville.

My husband and I are looking to put at least two to three more businesses here on Main Street.

And I think that the Cherryville that you see right now in five years from now, it's just gonna be something so completely different.

And people were just gonna be dying to come here.

And the people that live here are gonna have something to be so proud of.

- [Jason] Rebecca is part of the next generation of entrepreneurs on Main Street.

She says giving these historic buildings new life is about more than just brick and mortar.

- I went to high school and middle school with the same people who are teaching my children.

And it doesn't matter if we go to the ballpark or to a restaurant here in Cherryville or to Walmart, it's a family reunion wherever you go, you know?

So it's just, that alone, it just gives a sense of belonging and pride that you want raise your family here.

You know, you want to be a part of this great thing that's happening.

And in that itself, that's what's here.

(uplifting music) - [Jason] Residents of Cherryville have taken notice of all the changes along Main Street.

- [Rocky] I love it.

(laughs) Getting Main Street lookin' good, getting all the activity going on, all the buildings being refurnished, it really looks good.

I wasn't sure anything like this would ever happen, so I'm tickled to death.

- [Scott] You know, I can remember back in the '60s and '70s and '80s when we had Belk stores, and Main Street was the place to go and it was crowded.

There were some times after the mid-'90s when we had some manufacturers and stuff leave, it got kinda quiet.

So I love seeing the hustle and bustle.

- [Jason] Also on Main Street is the Cherryville Historical Museum.

It repurposed the former city hall as its new home with exhibits like this antique fire truck.

The museum also has a large social media presence, which is used to share Cherryville's stories and traditions.

One of those traditions dates back centuries, the annual New Year's Shooters.

- [Jon] It was brought here by some German settlers.

We're really not sure of the year.

We have traced it back.

And I have documentation in a book from the year 1006 that talks about the New Year's Shoot.

So it goes back a long, long way.

It's been in Cherryville ever since there's been a town here.

So some German settlers came here.

They had that tradition that had been passed on to them.

It was all about scaring away evil spirits and shooting over the crops to produce a bountiful new year.

And it's just carried on ever since then.

- [Jason] Jon Abernethy serves as the treasurer of the Cherryville Shooters.

- It happens right at midnight is the very first shot.

And it goes on for 16 to 18 hours.

Then we go out into the surrounding communities out into the some of the smaller, very close surrounding communities.

And we have shots we've been shooting at for hundreds of years for the same family.

We usually have about 50 different shots.

At any given shot, you usually have around 200, 250 people shoot.

And normally, we'll get out there, and then we'll have one or two that start.

And then we may have a line of 20 and just bam, bam, bam down the line.

- [Jason] The guns used are loaded only with black powder.

And Jon says his group always stresses safety.

- Most of these guns are Revolutionary War muskets.

I have several original guns.

They are prone to blow up because they're hundreds of years old.

You can buy reproductions now.

And a lotta folks are going to those reproductions, but just because they're safer, we have a safety officer where we train the proper way to hold a gun, load a gun.

We definitely preach, you never put the cap on the nipple of the gun until you're ready to walk out there and shoot.

That way, that gun can't go off.

So we've taken a lotta steps to make sure that we're all safe and nobody gets hurt.

- [Jason] Jon says it was his father-in-law that first got him involved in this uniquely Cherryville tradition.

- I think it's more of a family.

I mean, some of these folks, I only see once a year.

It's almost like a big family reunion.

And then we'd go around to our rest of our family and shoot for them.

It is about tradition, and it is about carrying on things that have been passed down.

But it's also about fellowship and being together and seeing folks and checking on 'em.

So it's more about family, I would say.

(upbeat acoustic music) - [Jason] The New Year's Shooting isn't the only tradition folks in Cherryville hold tightly onto.

For many, Farley Field is a field of dreams for kids playing American Legion baseball.

- We take it serious.

We love it, and we draw pretty good crowds at night.

Gives you a place to go and something to do.

And I think it draws the communities together.

- [Jason] Nationally, American Legion baseball got started in the 1920s when veterans were looking for a way to give back to their communities.

- They wanted to help the youth when they came back from World War I, World War II.

So they do several things.

American Legion baseball is probably their biggest program and this is all the posts in the country.

They get together and each post forms their own team, if they want to.

- [Jason] In Cherryville, American Legion baseball took off and according to historian, Gregory Payseur, it's something that town is known for all over.

- And anybody in the state, I think, would tell you that when they talk about baseball, they think of Cherryville, and Cherryville's had some good American Legion teams.

1953, they had thousands of people at the ball field.

They have more people at the ball field probably than the population of Cherryville.

People would come from everywhere to watch the games and you have to remember, they wasn't no videos.

There wasn't no TV that just came out.

There wasn't no computers.

And people loved to go to baseball games, and it became part of the culture of Cherryville.

- [Jason] And some of those winning baseball teams helped ingrain the sport into the town's culture.

- We won the state in 1953.

We won the state in 1981.

And I think it was '97, '98 that we won again.

- [Gregory] I think as long as there's a Cherryville, there's gonna be baseball.

(upbeat acoustic music) - [Jason] Now there's one more uniquely Cherryville tradition.

It's a food tradition that dates back to around the 1950s and might go great after a baseball game.

It's the diet busting Lottaburger.

- When I was growing up in middle school and junior high and high school, the thing to do was to get outta school and go to Black's Grill or Scottie's or the Shake Shop or Home Folks and get a Lottaburger.

It was just a pastime.

Hey, I'll meet you at Home Folks to get a Lottaburger.

It's just something that's been a part of our life, you know, culture around here, my whole life.

- [Jason] While no one knows exactly sure how the water burger came to be, there's some lure behind the sandwich.

- A guy ordered a sandwich one day, and when he got it, he looked at it and it was extra thick.

He says, "Wow, this is a lotta burger."

- [Jason] At Home Folks, it comes with... - It's a hamburger with cheese, and then it's got slaw, tomato, mayonnaise and then pickles on top.

(upbeat country music) - [Jason] And at Pat's Drive-in, owner Malcolm Parker offers the Lottaburger traditionally or as a half and half.

- [Malcolm] Half and half is basically half Lottaburger and half Po'boy.

It's slaw, tomato, and pickle on the Lottaburger side and lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise on the Po'boy side, and that comes with fries also.

- [Jason] But no matter how you like your Lottaburger, it's certainly part of the unique history and culture of Cherryville.

(upbeat music) Historic Cherryville today is experiencing a Renaissance.

But Jon Abernethy says the core of the town is the same.

- Cherryville is a close knit community.

Anytime there's somebody in need, I've I've seen this community pull together and do some amazing things for some folks that are going through some hard times.

You know, you hear people say, "Well, you know, I wouldn't wanna live in a small town "because everybody knows everybody's business."

Well, that's kinda true, but when there's a need, we rally.

- [Jason] From early Colonial Era farming to textile town and headquarters of a national freight company, the town of Cherryville continues to reinvent itself while holding on to its rich history and what makes it Cherryville.

We thank you for watching this episode of "Trail of History."

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] A production of PBS Charlotte.

(soothing music)