Catawba Springs
Lincoln County, Lincoln County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Catawba Springs. Fashionable "watering place," a recreational and social center prior to 1861. The hotel stood five miles northeast.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Before the Civil War, Catawba Springs was a fashionable "watering place" where planters and townsfolk gathered to socialize and take the mineral waters. Such resorts were centers of antebellum Southern leisure and society. The hotel that anchored it stood five miles northeast.
Why it matters
Mineral-springs resorts were a distinctive feature of nineteenth-century American social life, drawing travelers long before modern tourism.
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