Mark Wilson explores Camp North End’s industrial history with Queen City News
Mark Wilson, professor in the Department of History, was interviewed on Queen City News for ‘Secrets, Missiles & Murals: A look into the century-old history of Camp North End.’
Charlotte’s Camp North End is a 76-acre historical industrial site now home to shops, restaurants, food trucks, walking paths, gardens and over fifty murals.
The site was first developed a century ago, when the Ford Motor Company built a factory in 1924. Thousands of employees assembled more than 300,000 Ford Model T and Ford Model A cars via assembly lines.
In 1941, the U.S. Army purchased the property for a WW2 logistics hub, and workers manufactured supplies for training camps. Then after fifteen years, Camp North End began covertly manufacturing missiles. The property was surrounded by barbed wire fences until a few years ago.
“This site is a really remarkable site in terms of Charlotte’s industrial history, even U.S. industrial history,” Wilson said. “Charlotte is actually a piece of the nuclear warfare in the early Cold War,” Wilson said. “This was an extremely important, high-profile, very expensive program. It’s one of the centerpiece U.S. weapons programs during the Cold War.”
Watch the interview and read the article article via Queen City News.