Qualla: Goldsboro, North Carolina

Goldsboro, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. On January 24, 1961, a B-52 Stratofortress broke up in mid-air over Faro, North Carolina, twelve miles north of Goldsboro. Two hydrogen bombs fell out of the disintegrating aircraft. Each carried a yield of 3.8 megatons — roughly 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. One parachuted to the ground partly armed. The other crashed into a soybean field and broke apart; most of it was recovered, but the piece containing uranium sank into the swampy earth and stayed there. In 2013, a declassified document revealed that on one of the bombs, three of four safety mechanisms had failed in flight. A single low-voltage switch was the only thing left between Goldsboro and a thermonuclear detonation. The Air Force eventually bought the land where the second bomb lies, so that no one would dig.

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Goldsboro, North Carolina: From Waynesborough to Goldsborough's Junction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Southern Foodways Alliance, CC BY 2.0. Wayne County was formed in 1779, and the first county seat — a town called Waynesborough — grew up around the courthouse on the east bank of the Neuse River. It thrived through the 1830s. Then the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad came through in the early 1840s, several miles away,...

Image: Southern Foodways Alliance | CC BY 2.0

Goldsboro, North Carolina: The Railroad That Brought the War

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Cotugno, CC BY-SA 3.0. The railroad gave Goldsborough its livelihood and its strategic importance. The Wilmington and Weldon line ran supplies from the Atlantic port at Wilmington northward to Confederate armies fighting in Virginia. Both sides knew it. In December 1862, Union General John Foster led t...

Image: James Cotugno | CC BY-SA 3.0

Goldsboro, North Carolina: The Black Second and the State Hospital

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. After Reconstruction, Wayne County sat inside what political historians remember as the Black Second — North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, named for its majority-Black population. The Second elected four Republican African Americans to Congress in the 19th century, three...

Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Goldsboro, North Carolina: Seymour Johnson and the Bomb

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994, Public domain. In April 1942, the US Army Air Forces opened Seymour Johnson Field on the eastern outskirts of Goldsboro. The base was named for a Navy pilot from Goldsboro who had been killed in 1941. It became Seymour Johnson AFB in 1947 when the Air Force became an independent service. The ba...

Image: Department of Defense. American Forces Information Service. Defense Visual Information Center. 1994 | Public domain

Goldsboro, North Carolina: Pork, Pulpits, and Andy Griffith

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Goldsboro Milling Company is now among the largest pork producers in the United States. The city is also a major turkey producer. The Borden Manufacturing Company, the First Presbyterian Church, the L. D. Giddens jewelry store, Goldsboro Union Station, and several private homes a...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain