The Fords on the Catawba

Denver sits on the west side of the Catawba, and for most of its history that meant everything depended on where you could get across the river. The state’s 1964 marker on NC 73 west of the lake, “Early Trans-Catawba History” (OO-1), marks the start of white settlement: “In 1747 Adam Sherrill and his 8 sons migrated from Pennsylvania and settled west of the Catawba River.” John Beatty had crossed by July 1749, and other families took up homesteads on the creeks that still carry their names. The crossings named for those two men, Sherrill’s Ford and Beatty’s Ford, are both under Lake Norman now (NC DNCR, marker OO-1).

The North Carolina Gazetteer says Beattie’s Ford, on the line between Lincoln and Mecklenburg counties near Iredell, was named for John Beatty, who owned land there as early as 1749. A post office called Beatie’s Ford ran nearby from 1806 to 1838 (NC Gazetteer, “Beattie’s Ford”). On the Lincoln side the ford had a road heading west, and the state notes that traces of Beatty’s Ford Road and the old Tuckaseege Road can still be seen (DNCR).

The settlers were mostly Scots-Irish Presbyterians, and they worshipped close to the ford. A history compiled by the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Vesuvius Furnace Chapter dates Unity Presbyterian Church to 1764, when it began as “Beattie’s Meeting House,” a log building put up by John Beattie near a spring and a grove of oak and hickory. Its first pastor of record, Rev. Humphries Hunter, began in 1796 and had served in the Revolution. Patriots buried in Unity’s cemetery include Col. Archibald Little and Capt. John Reid (Lincoln Herald, Mar. 17, 2024). Lincoln County now runs Beattys Ford Park on Shipley Lane, off Unity Church Road and Business 16, under a lease with Duke Energy, with a boat ramp, fishing pier and swim beach on the water that covers the old crossing (Lincoln County).

Cowan’s Ford from the Lincoln Bank

The Revolution reached the river crossings in the winter of 1781. Lord Cornwallis was chasing Gen. Nathanael Greene toward Virginia. He marched east across Lincoln County, camped at Ramsour’s Mill, and then had to get over the Catawba (NC DNCR, marker L-22). On January 31 he sent a detachment to Beattie’s Ford to make the Americans think he would cross there. The main army went for Cowan’s Ford downstream instead, where the river was about 400 yards wide (NCpedia, “Cowan’s Ford, Battle of”).

The British reached the west bank, today’s Lincoln shore, just before daybreak on February 1 and started into the water in columns, holding bayoneted muskets and long staffs (NCpedia). Gen. William Lee Davidson had about 500 militia on the far side (DNCR). Robert Henry, a local man whose handwritten narrative of the battle was published in 1891, described the river:

“The water at the Ford was fully waist-band deep, and in many places much deeper, with a very heavy pressing current.” (Robert Henry, Narrative of the Battle of Cowan’s Ford, 1891)

Davidson was shot through the chest while rallying his men, the militia broke, and the British got across (NCpedia). The delay still bought Greene time to keep retreating, and that retreat led to Guilford Courthouse and in the end to Yorktown. The battlefield went under the water when Lake Norman rose in 1963 (NC DNCR, “Creation of Lake Norman”). Marker OO-1 now stands at the McGuire Nuclear Station viewing site on NC 73 (HMdb, OO-1).

The Iron District

After the war, eastern Lincoln County became the center of North Carolina’s iron industry, and the money behind it came partly from across the river. In 1788 the General Assembly passed an “Act to Encourage the Building of Iron Works,” offering investors ten years without taxes and 3,000 acres of poor land to cut for charcoal. In 1789 Peter Forney bought a large tract at the “Big Ore Bank” in eastern Lincoln County, and his associates included Alexander Brevard, Joseph Graham and John Fulenwider (NC DNCR, marker O-9, “Iron Works”). NCpedia says Maj. John Davidson of Rural Hill, on the Mecklenburg side, bought into the venture with his sons-in-law Brevard and Graham, and that the three had bought Forney out by 1795. Graham ran Vesuvius Furnace, Brevard ran Mount Tirzah Forge, and Davidson supplied money and ironworking skill (NCpedia, “Davidson, John”).

Joseph Graham (1759–1836) was a Revolutionary officer, remembered by the DAR as Mecklenburg’s first sheriff and a state senator (Lincoln Herald). NCpedia dates his Vesuvius Furnace on Anderson Creek in east Lincoln County to 1792 and says he built a house on a bluff near it (NCpedia, “Graham, Joseph”). The National Register listing (1974) gives the furnace as 1790, with the older part of the house about 1792. The site is on SR 1382 north of NC 73, between Denver and Iron Station. Since 2009 the restored house has operated as Vesuvius Vineyards (Vesuvius Furnace, NRHP summary). Graham’s son William A. Graham was born at “Vesuvius” on September 5, 1804. He became governor (1845–1849), secretary of the Navy and the Whig nominee for vice president in 1852, and marker O-25 on NC 73 near Lowesville marks his birthplace (NC DNCR, marker O-25).

Business was good for decades. The state’s Iron Works marker says Lincoln County’s iron output peaked around 1830 at about 1,800 tons, and that from 1820 to 1840 the works averaged about 900 tons a year. Most of it went into local plows, horseshoes, tools and munitions. After the Civil War the ore was running out and cheaper Northern iron took the market, and by 1880 the industry had faded. Marker O-9, first cast in 1939 at Iron Station, puts it simply: “Many iron mines and forges were operated within a radius of ten miles of this point between 1790 and 1880” (DNCR, O-9).

The ironmaster families are buried together. Graham and Brevard set aside Machpelah Cemetery as a private family burial ground in 1801, and Machpelah Church was built beside it in 1848. Its first pastor, Robert Hall Morrison, was the first president of Davidson College. The church still has its original pews and the gallery where enslaved people sat (NC DNCR, marker O-58). Machpelah Presbyterian Church was added to the National Register in December 2025 (NRHP listings, Lincoln County). The same planter families spent their summers at Catawba Springs, a resort built around seven mineral springs near Denver. Visitors were coming by the 1790s, and in 1838 Joseph Hampton built a two-story hotel with 100 rooms. Guests included the Grahams, Brevards, Davidsons and Polks. The resort closed in the mid-1860s, and its buildings were torn down in 1930 (NC DNCR, marker O-49). Ingleside, the Federal-style house Daniel M. Forney built about 1817, still stands east of Iron Station; it is privately owned and on the National Register (NC DNCR, marker O-14).

Rock Spring Camp Ground

Denver’s best-known landmark started in the woods. In 1794 Methodists held a camp meeting lasting several days at the site of Rehobeth Methodist Church. It was led by Daniel Asbury, a minister from Halifax County, Virginia, sent to organize a circuit, along with William McKendree, William Fulwood and the Presbyterian Dr. James Hall, and accounts say about 300 people were converted (Rock Springs Camp Meeting). In October 1828 the Lincoln Circuit decided to lease or buy a permanent ground (Rock Springs, “Campground Info”). On August 7, 1830, Joseph M. Monday was paid $90 for roughly 45 acres at Denver, held in trust for the Methodist Society of the Lincoln Circuit (Rock Springs Camp Meeting). The name came from two nearby springs and the rocks around them (NCpedia ANCHOR).

Services were held under a brush arbor at first. The campground says its permanent arbor was finished before the 1832 meeting. It seats 1,000, is framed with hand-hewn timbers fastened with wooden pegs, and is still used every summer (Rock Springs). An NCpedia ANCHOR article credits Rev. Henry Asbury, Daniel’s son, with building it and gives 1833 as the date (ANCHOR). In 1851 the General Assembly incorporated the ground and named a self-perpetuating board of trustees (Rock Springs).

Around the arbor stand the “tents.” They are not canvas. They are plain wooden cabins with unfinished boards and dirt floors, mostly handed down within families, and keeping a lot depends on keeping up a tent on it. Union soldiers camped in the tents during the Civil War and burned some of them, and a fire on October 30, 1973, destroyed 89 more (ANCHOR). Sources count them differently: the campground says about 255 and the National Register summary says 288 (Rock Springs; NRHP summary). The ground was listed on the National Register on September 22, 1972, with a boundary increase in 2017 (NRHP listings). The meeting has been held at Denver every year since 1830 except two, for a week around the second Sunday in August (Rock Springs Camp Meeting).

From Dry Pond to Denver

The village around the campground was called Dry Pond. Jason Harpe and Matt Boles, in Around Denver, say the name came from a small pond at what is now Highway 16 and Campground Road that dried up in the hottest part of summer (Arcadia, Around Denver). The man who renamed it was a schoolmaster. David Matthew Thompson, a Randolph County native twice wounded as a Confederate soldier, became principal of Rock Spring Seminary at Denver in 1872 and spent twelve years building it into one of the stronger schools of the period. He later led Statesville’s graded schools for almost thirty years (NCpedia, “Thompson, David Matthew”).

Thompson pushed to rename Dry Pond for the capital of Colorado, which was then seeking statehood, hoping to catch the attention of railroad planners. The sources disagree on the year. The North Carolina Gazetteer says 1873 (NC Gazetteer, “Denver”), and Harpe and Boles say the change became official in January 1875 (Arcadia). Denver incorporated in 1877 (NC Gazetteer), but the railroad never came. After years without electing a town government, Denver lost its charter by a vote of the state legislature in 1971 (Wikipedia, “Denver, North Carolina”). Today it is an unincorporated community and Census-designated place in eastern Lincoln County. The CDP counted 2,697 residents in 2020, many fewer than live in the wider 28037 ZIP code (NC OSBM LINC, 2020 Census).

The old school tradition carried into the twentieth century. Rock Springs School taught grades 1 through 12 until East Lincoln High School opened on NC 73 in 1967, after which Rock Springs became an elementary school (Wikipedia, “Denver”; Wikipedia, “East Lincoln High School”). On Business 16 north of Mundy Road, a marker at the Mundy House, built between 1850 and 1870 by descendants of the Revolutionary soldier and Methodist minister Jeremiah Mundy, tells how that family helped found the Rock Springs camp meeting. The house is now the History Center of Eastern Lincoln County (HMdb, Mundy House).

The Lake and the West Shore

Lake Norman changed Denver’s direction. Duke’s predecessor broke ground on Cowans Ford Dam in September 1959, the water rose in 1963, and the reservoir now touches Catawba, Iredell, Lincoln and Mecklenburg counties (NC DNCR). Some land ended up as islands. Lake Norman Publications reported that Governor’s Island, a gated neighborhood off Denver’s shore, was once plantation land associated with relatives of Gov. Hutchins G. Burton (1824–1827). It was set to become a peninsula until Duke Power asked to cut it off as an island, and the owners kept the right to build a bridge. In 1977 it was a goat-filled wilderness, and by 2011 more than 40 families lived there (Lake Norman Publications, Dec. 22, 2011).

The interstate across the lake set off the next wave. When I-77 opened between Charlotte and Davidson on New Year’s Eve 1975, building took off around the whole lake. Chuck McShane, in his history of Lake Norman, reports that 54 percent of Lincoln and Iredell counties’ growth from 1970 to 1975 happened on or near the lake (UNC Charlotte Urban Institute). On the west shore that growth followed the two main highways. Business NC 16 is the old highway through the village, and a four-lane NC 16 bypass runs along its southwest edge (Wikipedia, “Denver”). NC 73 carries traffic east across the Catawba toward Huntersville and I-77. WCNC has reported that the county set aside land around the NC 16–NC 73 intersection for economic development, where a Publix-anchored shopping center and apartments have since gone up, and that census estimates show eastern Lincoln County growing more than 33 percent in a decade (WCNC).

Places to See Today

• Rock Spring Camp Ground, 6831 Campground Road. NRHP 1972, boundary increase 2017. The 1830s arbor and the tent rings are here, and the camp meeting runs each August (Rock Springs).
• Mundy House / History Center of Eastern Lincoln County, 4353 N. NC 16 Business, with its family marker (HMdb).
• Beattys Ford Park, 8335 Shipley Lane. County lake access close to the drowned ford (Lincoln County).
• Marker OO-1, “Early Trans-Catawba History,” at the McGuire Nuclear Station viewing site on NC 73. Cowan’s Ford marker L-22 and the Davidson monument are just across the river in Huntersville (HMdb; DNCR).
• Vesuvius Furnace (NRHP 1974), SR 1382 north of NC 73. The restored Graham house now operates as a winery (NRHP summary).
• Machpelah Presbyterian Church and Cemetery (NRHP 2025), 226 Brevard Place Road, Iron Station, with marker O-58 (DNCR).
• More state markers nearby: O-49 Catawba Springs (NC 73 at Tuckers Campground Road), O-25 William A. Graham (NC 73 at Amity Church Road), O-14 Ingleside (NC 73 east of Iron Station) and O-9 Iron Works (NC 27 at Iron Station) (DNCR, Lincoln County markers).
• Other NRHP listings near Denver: the William A. Graham Jr. Farm (Kidville), Ingleside (Iron Station), Tucker’s Grove Camp Meeting Ground and Mount Welcome (Lowesville). Most are private, so view them from public roads (NRHP listings).

Sources

• NC DNCR, Highway Historical Marker OO-1, “Early Trans-Catawba History”
• HMdb, “Early Trans-Catawba History” (OO-1 location)
• North Carolina Gazetteer, “Beattie’s Ford”
• North Carolina Gazetteer, “Denver”
• Lincoln Herald, “Unity, Machpelah Presbyterian churches and their ties to the American Revolution” (DAR Vesuvius Furnace Chapter, Mar. 17, 2024)
• Lincoln County, Beattys Ford Park
• NC DNCR, Marker L-22, “Battle of Cowan’s Ford”
• NCpedia, “Cowan’s Ford, Battle of” (Jerry L. Cross, Encyclopedia of North Carolina, 2006)
• Robert Henry, Narrative of the Battle of Cowan’s Ford (D. Schenck, 1891), Project Gutenberg
• NC DNCR, “Creation of Lake Norman Altered Landscape”
• NC DNCR, Marker O-9, “Iron Works”
• NCpedia, “Davidson, John” (Chalmers G. Davidson, 1986; rev. 2022)
• NCpedia, “Graham, Joseph” (Max R. Williams, 1986; rev. 2023)
• Wikipedia, “Vesuvius Furnace” (citing NC SHPO nomination LN0012 and NRIS)
• NC DNCR, Marker O-25, “William A. Graham”
• NC DNCR, Marker O-58, “Machpelah Cemetery”
• NC DNCR, Marker O-49, “Catawba Springs”
• NC DNCR, Marker O-14, “Ingleside”
• NC DNCR, Lincoln County marker index
• Rock Springs Camp Meeting, home page (history)
• Rock Springs Camp Meeting, “Campground Info”
• NCpedia ANCHOR, “Rock Springs Camp Meeting” (article provided by DenverNC.com, 2009)
• Wikipedia, “Rock Springs Camp Meeting Ground” (citing NC SHPO nomination LN0008)
• Wikipedia, NRHP listings in Lincoln County (from the National Register Information System)
• Jason L. Harpe and Matt Boles, Around Denver (Arcadia, 2016), publisher’s description
• NCpedia, “Thompson, David Matthew” (Homer M. Keever, 1996)
• Wikipedia, “Denver, North Carolina”
• Wikipedia, “East Lincoln High School”
• NC OSBM LINC, 2020 Census DHC summary (Denver CDP)
• HMdb, “Mundy House”
• Lake Norman Publications, “The evolution of Governor’s Island” (Dec. 22, 2011)
• UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, “I-77: Expressway to prosperity” (2014; excerpt from Chuck McShane, A History of Lake Norman)
• WCNC, “Fear, excitement among mix of emotions for eastern Lincoln County growth”