Carowinds: Built on the State Line

The theme park beside the interstate is literally split in two by the North Carolina and South Carolina state line. That was the whole point. Charlotte businessman Earl Patterson Hall spent four years planning Carowinds after a trip to Disneyland in nineteen fifty-six, and he deliberately sited it on the border to symbolize the unity of the two Carolinas.

When the park opened on March thirty-first, nineteen seventy-three, Miss North Carolina and Miss South Carolina cut the ribbon together. Rain poured all day and more than six thousand people still showed up. The original park had seventeen rides and seven themed sections, each one evoking a chapter of Carolina history, from the Colonial Queen's Colony to the frontier outpost.

A monorail followed later that year. Today the park is owned by Six Flags and has grown considerably, but the state line still runs straight through the midway, exactly where Hall drew it.