Benson, North Carolina

Benson, in Johnston County, traces its name to Alfred Monroe Benson, who in eighteen seventy-four purchased a four-hundred-and-two-acre tract along the old Smithfield-to-Fayetteville road. For more than a decade the land sat quiet, but in eighteen eighty-six a railroad line pushed through, and within a year the town had incorporated. By the eighteen nineties, bright-leaf tobacco farming had taken hold across eastern North Carolina, and Benson developed the businesses that a growing agricultural economy demanded. Today Benson is best known for Mule Days, its annual festival held each September, which draws tens of thousands of visitors.