Antebellum Era

What now stands as the seat of Lee County began as North Carolina's western frontier. Home to Native American hunters and farmers, a vast wilderness was filled with roaming buffalo and thriving wildlife. Settlers began pushing into the region decades before the American Revolution, with migrating colonists from Virginia and coastal regions of North Carolina, as well as Scottish immigrants arriving in America through the port of Wilmington. Population estimates for early Lee County are complicated by the fact that “Lee County” did not exist as a separate political entity until the 1910 census; reconstructed 1860 population figures for the section of Chatham and Moore counties which later formed Lee County suggest a total population slightly in excess of 5000 people at the end of the antebellum period. For over a century, life remained traditional and rural with the predominance of settlers living along the Deep and Cape Fear Rivers until intersecting railroad lines transformed the area forever.

The first line successfully built into Lee County was the Western Railroad, chartered in December 1852 to connect Fayetteville and the Deep River Coal Field. In the fall of 1860 the line was completed to Evander McIver's plantation on Big Buffalo Creek. McIver's Depot was established at this location, and workers began blasting the McIver Cut through a brownstone ridge that lay between the depot and the village of Egypt, recently established at the heart of the coal field. Although some coal was being hauled to McIver's Depot and transported over the line by December 1861, Confederate authorities considered it imperative that work be completed to Egypt and consequently provided assistance to the railroad's owners. In September 1863, the Western Railroad finished its line to Egypt. Coal production boomed after the War; in 1869, thirty-nine rail cars were devoted exclusively to carrying Egypt coal to the port at Fayetteville. The Western Railroad was reorganized as the Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railway Company in 1879; the same year it completed a four-mile extension from Egypt to Gulf. In later years, the CF&YV extended to Greensboro and Wilmington, providing enhanced shipping facilities to Lee County farmers and industrialists.

Raleigh entrepreneurs were keenly aware of the profits the Fayetteville-based Western Railroad stood to gain from Deep River coal. In 1855, they chartered the Chatham Railroad and planning began for the construction of a line from Raleigh to Gulf. As originally projected, the road would have also linked Raleigh to the navigation works on the Deep River. The line was built into the area by 1870, but it took a more southerly route through the center of Lee County toward the vast timber reserves of the Sandhills.

In 1871, the tracks of the Chatham Railroad, now reorganized as the Raleigh & Augusta Air Line Railroad (R&A), intersected those of the Western Railroad at a sandy ridge northwest of Jonesboro. By 1877 the R&A, which was controlled by the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad Company, had reached the North Carolina-South Carolina line. The crossing of these two important rail lines set the stage for a period of unprecedented agricultural and industrial development. Over the following decades, lumbering and naval stores production consumed the county's pine forests, coal mining rebounded at Egypt, and Lee County became a nationally significant supplier of architectural brownstone. Freed from slavery, the county's African-American citizens established farms, churches, and business districts, starting on the long hard road toward fuller participation in civic and economic affairs.