Main Street, Salisbury, N.C., 1908

About this postcard

The view looks down a wide, unpaved Main Street lined with two- and three-story brick and frame commercial blocks, their storefronts shaded by awnings. Horse-drawn buggies, wagons, and teams stand along the curbs while pedestrians walk the sidewalks, and tall multi-crossarm telephone and trolley poles line both sides of the street. Salisbury, the seat of Rowan County in the North Carolina Piedmont, was laid out in 1753 and grew as a market and railroad town. By the early 1900s its business district still depended on horses and wagons, even as telephone and trolley lines were appearing along the street.