Horner’s Rural Route
Rural Route is a new Business North Carolina column authored by veteran journalist Bill Horner. He will focus on key issues in less populated parts of the state.
My admittedly hazy recollection from TV’s make-believe Mayberry is that Siler City — where Barney would make the occasional foray, and where Andy was once ticketed for fishing without a license — was a pretty robust place.
Today, in the real Siler City in western Chatham County, there’s still a sense of the homespun, such as jars of Mt. Olive pickles regularly left by fans who visit the gravesite of actress Frances Bavier, who’s interred at Oakwood Cemetery. Bavier portrayed Aunt Bee, to Sheriff Andy Taylor and bumbling Deputy Barney Fife, on “The Andy Griffith Show,” the ‘60s sitcom.
Idyllic Mayberry was indeed the stereotype — or for some, the epitome — of rural North Carolina. Siler City is, in many ways, a modern approximation: a relatively poor, formerly industrial-rich town fighting for traction, stability and identity.
With one caveat: Wolfspeed and Toyota are creating ground-shaking development to the tune of about $19 billion.
Mayor Donald Matthews, who’s lived in Siler City for most of the last 60 years, is a bit flummoxed when other N.C. mayors lack a clear sense of what’s happening in his neck of the woods.
“We haven’t gotten to the point where we’re really on their radar,” Matthews told me.
A typical reaction?
“‘Oh, you’re from Siler City? Isn’t that where Aunt Bee lived?’ Something of that nature.”
Bavier, a New York City-bred stage actress, retired to, and died, in Siler City. Born near Central Park, it was her portrayal of a dowdy homemaker for a rural sheriff and his precocious, tow-headed son that earned her fame. Thirty-five years after her death, “Andy Griffith” reruns stream nearly around the clock. At Oakwood Cemetery, Bavier’s TV character’s name is etched, just beneath her own, onto a towering granite tombstone — a kind of paean, along with the pickles, to what once was.
One only needs to leave her gravesite, turn left onto U.S. 64 and drive two minutes to see Wolfspeed’s bustling site, which puts Siler City in the shadow of two of the largest economic development projects in state history.
Durham-based Wolfspeed has pledged 1,800 jobs at its $5 billion silicon carbide plant. Less than 15 minutes further west on U.S. 64, in Randolph County, Toyota’s $13.9 billion battery manufacturing plant is expected to create an additional 1,500 jobs.
Not that there aren’t blustery headwinds. In mid-November, Wolfspeed dismissed CEO Gregg Lowe and is cutting 20% of its staff after reporting a $282 million quarterly loss. Toyota faces a sluggish electric vehicle market amid fears that President-elect Donald Trump will eliminate the $7,500 tax credit for EVs. And Siler City has its own issues, such as a water-related moratorium on construction and a new wastewater treatment plant that won’t be operating until 2027.
Still, we’re talking billions of dollars of investment. A tenth of that would be a game-changer for any small town or rural community.
Tune-up time
The area around Siler City is one of the poorest in the state. Bucolic it’s not. U.S. 64 through town is a mishmash of fast
food joints and convenience stores and small, slightly dilapidated strip shopping centers. The old downtown area has plenty of character, and some refurbished spaces, but also unkempt, vacant storefronts.
The town of 8,043 inhabitants isn’t technically rural, if you base it on the N.C. Rural Center’s qualification of fewer than 250 people per square mile. The U.S. Census Bureau, though, defines rural as “an area that is not urban,” and while Siler City has a rural feel and a distinct measure of charm, it simultaneously feels old and a bit run down.
So naturally there’s real enthusiasm that the Wolfspeed and Toyota tides will buoy the town. That’s particularly evident at The Chatham Rabbit, the town’s social hub and coffee shop, where Matthews, the mayor, holds court most Tuesday mornings.
The Rabbit shares space with an arts incubator and the workshop of boutique luthier Terry McInturff, who’s made guitars for rockers Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Shop co-owner Brooke Simmons remembers telling customers more than a decade ago that the day would come when Siler City wouldn’t be recognizable.
“People said, ‘That’s never gonna happen in our lifetime.’ And it’s just what’s happening here,” she says.
The COVID-19 pandemic represented the first shift. People wanted space, Simmons says, and while some were attracted to Pittsboro and the high-end neighborhoods closer to Chapel Hill, others flooded to western Chatham. Then came industry: VinFast announced its $4 billion EV plant in Moncure at Chatham’s eastern edge in March 2022, followed six months later by Wolfspeed. Both came after Toyota’s announcement of the Liberty site in 2021.
Nothing’s been the same since.
“Literally every single state in this country is represented in Siler City now,” Simmons says. “Whereas, before, if somebody came in who was trendy or young, I would seriously joke with them and say, ‘Have you been abducted? Are you OK? Like, how did you get here?’ Because it was so weird. I mean, you knew every single person who came in here. And now I still know 90%, but every day there are people here that I have never seen before.”
The affable Simmons says she still queries newbies who come to the Rabbit to order lattes and cold brews, but the changes in Siler City aren’t just in new faces and construction. Matthews, the mayor, is enthused about momentum and new initiatives, including a visitors center and the hiring of people to promote the community. The town has signed a service agreement to merge with Sanford’s TriRiver Water for water and sewer. Downtown-wide
Wi-Fi is on the horizon.
Fairyland
In early 2023, Siler City business leaders, frustrated that so much of the focus in Chatham was on Pittsboro, took action. They hired Josh Harris, the former athletic director at the local high school, to become the town chamber’s first executive director. Nearly 120 businesses have since joined.
Harris sees the organization’s role as to help small businesses prepare for the opportunities and challenges posed by population growth.
“I mean, it’s kind of a cliché, but it’s a great place to live and enjoy your time, and raise your family,” he says. “What happens in the next 10 years, ultimately, is a little unknown, and it’s hard to predict. But the potential is there.”
Harris is leaning hard into downtown and retail development. But he recognizes Chatham’s farming roots and the need to preserve agriculture and grow agribusiness. His family’s Harris Homeplace Farm, in nearby Snow Camp, sells grass-fed meats directly to consumers.
“We have the potential to become more of a generational community, with multiple generations of families here,” Harris says. “I graduated high school here, and a lot of my graduating class isn’t here anymore. So one of my goals is helping to turn that tide a little bit.”
Taking on the role of the new chamber’s leader gave him more of a realization of what legacy means.
“I’m the sixth generation on our family farm, and our family’s been here a long time. So we’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. I thought, I need to get my hands involved in this because I want this to be a great place to live in 30 years — not for me, but for my kids.”
It might still be a Siler City that Bavier, or Aunt Bee, for that matter, would recognize. “I, like a child, came here looking for a fairyland,” the actress once said. She told another interviewer: “I fell in love with North Carolina, all the pretty roads and the trees.”
Simmons, over at the Chatham Rabbit, said it’s simple:residents still want community.
“They want somewhere to land, and people to talk to.” ■
