Fort Mill: The Catawba Nation's Gateway Town

Fort Mill takes its name from two colonial-era artifacts: a British stockade built in the seventeen fifties to protect the Catawba people from rival tribes to the north, and Webb's Mill nearby. The Catawba had lived along this stretch of river for centuries before Scots-Irish settlers began filtering south from Pennsylvania in the seventeen fifties, and the two groups coexisted in an unusual proximity. Thomas Spratt, one of the first European arrivals around seventeen sixty-one, was known for his close relations with the Catawba Nation.

The town itself was formally incorporated in eighteen seventy-three, growing around the Nation Ford crossing on the Catawba River, a historic ford used long before any European arrived. Today Fort Mill has become one of the fastest-growing communities in the Carolinas, a suburb drawn north toward Charlotte, though its original namesake fort has long since vanished.