So you might wonder why I mention my two hometowns...I grew up on a 400 acre cotton farm in unincorporated Cabarrus County, which is directly north of Charlotte NC.  We had a Charlotte telephone exchance, a Concord school assignment, and a Harrisburg rural mailing address!  Mixed personalities, I suppose. 

Cabarrus County is home to the United States' first discovery of gold, at Reed Gold Mine, http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/reed/reed.htm, in 1799.  For those of you in California, NC actually led the nation in gold production until the mid-1800s when the California Gold Rush started!  Now the mine is a local historic site and tourist attraction-you can still pan for gold and the Halloween festivities are a sight to see!

Concord is the county seat of Cabarrus County and grew up on the textile industry.  This was the home of the Cannons (Cannon Mills, then Fieldcrest Cannon, then out of business), and they were instrumental in building the community from every standpoint-business and philanthropic.   Today Concord is mostly a bedroom community of Charlotte NC-many people live here to take advantage of our excellent public schools and low property taxes.  Concord is home to the Lowe's Motor Speedway-most of the NASCAR teams and drivers-and is considered to be the center of the racing world.  A new convention center is opening in close proximity to the Speedway and we anticipate seeing more conferences and conventions take advantage of the NASCAR scene.

Harrisburg is much smaller and younger.  A rail community until incorporation in 1973, Harrisburg is still small and we like it that way!  The opening of two interchanges with I-485 has really jumped development in Harrisburg and our median income is on the rise.  Lower property taxes and super schools, plus close proximity to uptown Charlotte, make Harrisburg a smart housing choice.  Harrisburg is in the news a lot right now as we decide how to approach growth.  A Lowe's Home Improvement was just approved by planning and zoning, even though it's in direct violation of our maximum square footage rules (which are designed to prevent the big box stores from taking over), so the debate continues. 

You might ask, what has become of the family farm?  Well, we went from being 15 minutes from a grocery store to sitting right next to the largest tourist attraction in North Carolina-Concord Mills Mall (I know, it's sad that a mall surpassed the Blue Ridge Parkway but I digress!).  Half of our land has been sold to a large developer who is currently building homes from the mid $300m to over $1mm range. http://www.simonini.com/communities/christenbury.html At least they named it after our family, the Christenburys!  The other half will continue to go up in value and we'll see what happens down the road. 

I grew up here and love it here, and especially love that even though our population is over 100,000, I can still run into someone I know at the grocery store or the mall or the post office.  Give me the small town feel any day of the week!