Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina

Mar 26, 2016 Sat0Confederate Statues

Laurie and I like riding our Gold Wing motorcycle. But it is easy to get into a rut and just ride the same roads. So to force ourselves to ride to places we would not normally visit we made a goal to visit and photograph all 100 North Carolina courthouses within 1 year.

As usual, we got a little behind. We started in July 2015 and finished 99 out of 100 by June 2018. The last courthouse was in our home county of Wake and it took us until Feb 2021 to get that final one. But we made it! This blog is about one of those visits.

Many NC courthouses were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The nomination form has some interesting facts about the various courthouse styles over the years.






Courthouse Information


Wikipedia says the following about the courthouse:

Cleveland County Courthouse is a historic courthouse building located at Shelby, Cleveland County, North Carolina. It was built in 1907, and is a two-story, rectangular, Classical Revival-style building sheathed in a smooth ashlar veneer above a rusticated first floor. It features tetrastyle Corinthian order porticoes at each of the four entrances and a three-stage cupola atop the flat roof. Courthouse offices moved to a new building in 1974, and the old courthouse houses offices, and public meeting hall. It was also home to the Cleveland County Historical Museum, which closed in 2012 and became the Earl Scruggs Center.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It is located in the Central Shelby Historic District.






County Information


The North Carolina History Project lists the following information for this county:

A southern North Carolina county, Cleveland is located in the Piedmont region, and it was culled from the original counties of Rutherford and Lincoln in 1841. The county received its name in honor of Colonel Benjamin Cleveland who served admirably at during the Revolutionary War at the Battle of King's Mountain. Shelby, Cleveland's seat of government, is also named after a Revolutionary colonel, Isaac Shelby. Grover, Earl, Belwood, Mooreboro, and Boiling Springs are other communities within Cleveland County. The John M. Moss Lake, the Broad River, Benn Knob, and the Buffalo and Suck Creeks are important tributaries in Cleveland.

The Battle of Kings Mountain, fought in the fall of 1780, was a decisive victory by the American Patriots, and it recognized a shift in British power in the South. The Patriot army, along with several mountain militia men, attacked the Loyalist stronghold atop the King's Mountain, and after several rounds of assaulting the British, hundreds of Loyalists surrendered. In addition to the death and capture of many British soldiers, the Battle of King's Mountain proved an end to Major Patrick Ferguson and a deathly strike to Loyalist morale in the South.

Formed in 1905, Gardner-Webb University is located in Boiling Springs, Cleveland County, and it is a coeducational Baptist academic university. Although the youngest North Carolina university, Gardner-Webb has grown from a small academy into a school of about 3,300 students and it offers nearly 40 undergraduate degrees. In 1942, after Governor O. Max Gardner and his wife Fay Webb Gardner made a significant donation to the school, the college became known as the Gardner-Webb Junior College. In the early 1990s, Gardner-Webb graduated from a junior college into a university.

One of the most alluring historical facts about Cleveland County remains the "Shelby Dynasty." The Shelby Dynasty or Shelby Ring was a North Carolina political machine that remained a powerful influence on North Carolina politics for twenty years from 1929 until 1949. Shelby native O. Max Gardner started the political faction's dominance after his election as North Carolina Governor. Gardner's brother-in-law, Clyde R. Hoey, another native of Shelby, would win the governor's election in 1936. However, the Shelby Ring started to lose its power after World War II because North Carolina suffered from poor public school facilities and numerous ill-repaired roadways. The 1948 election of the liberal-minded W. Kerr Scott marked an end to the conservative Shelby political machine.

A famous, albeit controversial, native of Shelby is author Thomas Dixon, Jr. Dixon's The Clansmen (1905) became the primary source for the notorious film, Birth of a Nation (1915). Dixon was born on January 11, 1864, the young boy grew up in Shelby and he was educated at the Shelby Academy. After graduating with high honors from Wake Forest in 1879, Dixon moved to New York to begin an acting career, but he later moved to Shelby where he entered politics, practiced law, and became a widely recognized orator. In 1905, Dixon revamped one of his novels that advocated for the expulsion of African-Americans from the United States, and developed the book into a play called The Clansman. The Birth of a Nation, an epic film produced by D.W. Griffith, was a movie version of Dixon's original play.

The Shelby City Hall (1939) and the Rogers' Theatre Block (ca. 1930s) are important historical landmarks in Cleveland County. In addition, the King's Mountain Fire Museum and the Cleveland County Arts Council are cultural attractions in the region, and some cultural events hosted annually by Cleveland County include the Belwood Antique Tractor and Engine Show, the Ham Fest, and King's Mountain July Fourth.

The top industries in Cleveland include agricultural, manufacturing, and mining. Some agricultural products grown in Cleveland are soybeans, apples, cotton, and livestock. Textiles, vehicle cabs, refrigerator systems, and "jaws of life." Iron, quartz crystal, and graphite are all found and mined in Cleveland County.






Our Experience


We loved this courthouse. The town takes great pride in their building. It appeared the building and grounds took up an entire block and was well maintained. We could picture ourselves on a blanket under a tree with a good book for an afternoon of reading or people watching. The building houses the Earl Scruggs Center so I think we will be back here.

Also the concrete along one of the walls had imprints of children's hands which I thought was a very nice touch. We liked this place.

Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:01:35 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:02:53 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:03:56 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:05:27 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:05:46 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:06:30 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:06:57 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:07:15 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:08:21 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:10:04 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:11:08 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:12:25 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:13:14 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:14:19 AM EDT Altitude: 885 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:15:22 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:16:08 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:16:22 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina
Mar 26, 2016 Sat 11:16:26 AM EDT Altitude: 884 ft Camera: X100TDisplay on Google Map
Cleveland County Courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina



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