Greensboro a Gate City Again?

Governor John Motley Morehead, whose home Blandwood is operated by Preservation Greensboro as a museum, would be pleased.

North Carolina’s restored and historic railway stations, like ours here in Greensboro (image, right), might soon be getting a workout. With $8 billion of the recent Federal stimulus package reserved for the development of intercity high-speed rail service, our state’s prior investment in passenger rail service has positioned us for an infrastructure-improvement windfall. Greensboro’s historic station and others like it were recognized with an award by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2007. Though they are already well-used, their popularity could rise in the near future.

The Southern Political Report says:

Despite “tremendous untapped potential” in Texas and Florida, the work which has already been done to develop the Southeast corridor leaves North Carolina and its partner Virginia as the only Southern states likely to benefit directly from this portion of the stimulus package, Capon said.

The result, over decades, could be as crucial to the development of the economic spine of the emerging piedmont megapolis as the old coast-to-piedmont line was to the opening of North Carolina.

Governor Morehead of Greensboro is remembered for being “the Father of Modern North Carolina” as illustrated by his interest in improving education, social services, and transportation …including the approval of the famed North Carolina Railroad during his administration. His influence led the path of the railroad through Greensboro instead of Asheboro, an older city 25 miles south and more directly in-line between destinations Raleigh and Charlotte. By the turn of the twentieth-century, Greensboro was such a railway hub that it was dubbed North Carolina’s Gate City, a name that remains to this day.

And perhaps soon, apt again.