Qualla: Carolinas

Carolinas: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit VoodooIsland, Public domain. The name was a flattery. In 1663, eight English noblemen accepted a vast strip of New World coast from a grateful Charles II and named their prize Carolina, the Latin feminine of Carolus, meaning Charles. The king liked the gesture. The land would prove harder to flatter. Sixty-six years of arguing about defense, governance, and whether the soil should grow rice or tobacco ended in 1729, when seven of the proprietors sold back their shares and the Crown split the province in two. The Carolinas have been twin states ever since, sharing a border, a coast, and very little patience with being mistaken for each other.

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Image: VoodooIsland | Public domain

Carolinas: Before the King's Name

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johann Homann, Public domain. Long before Charles, the land carried other names. Catawba, Cheraw, Cherokee, Tuscarora — peoples whose maps did not stop at the Atlantic. Spanish soldiers from Florida built Santa Elena in 1566 on the South Carolina coast and used it as a base for expeditions that pushed inland ...

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Image: Johann Homann | Public domain

Carolinas: Two States, One Argument

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Speed, Public domain. What divides North and South Carolina is not the surveyed boundary line — though that line itself wandered for nearly three centuries before being finally settled in 2016–2017, displacing a gas station and about sixteen homes and properties in the process. What divides them is ol...

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Image: John Speed | Public domain

Carolinas: Coast, Sandhills, Mountains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. Geography ties them more firmly than politics divides them. Both states begin at the Atlantic — the long barrier islands of the Outer Banks in the north, the marsh-laced Lowcountry in the south — and roll westward through coastal plain, sandhills, and rolling Piedmont before clim...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.5

Carolinas: Money and Memory

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johann Baptist, 1663-1724 -- Cartographer Homann, CC0. Modern Charlotte sits at the geographic center of the Carolinas, straddling the metropolitan line, and has become the second-largest financial district in the United States after New York. Bank of America, Truist, Wells Fargo's East Coast operations, Duke Energy, Lowe's, Honeywel...

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Image: Johann Baptist, 1663-1724 -- Cartographer Homann | CC0

Carolinas: The Quiet South

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Precisionviews, CC BY-SA 4.0. Travelers used to the loud South of New Orleans or Atlanta sometimes miss what the Carolinas do. The accent is softer here, the food more restrained — vinegar barbecue in the east, mustard barbecue in the middle Palmetto State, tomato-based further west. The famous places are the...

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Image: Precisionviews | CC BY-SA 4.0