Moore County, NC: Resort and working-class communities all affected by power outage

The firearms attack on at least two electrical substations in Moore County on Saturday night took out power to most homes and businesses across the county, officials said, affecting nearly all of its 103,000 or so residents.

Moore County covers about 706 square miles in the small but geologically distinctive region of North Carolina known as the Sandhills, about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh.

It was originally occupied by Indigenous people, including Siouan. English, Scots and German settlers began arriving in the area around 1739. The county was formed in 1785 and was named for Alfred Moore, a militia officer in the Revolutionary War who later served as the state’s attorney general and spent five years on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Early industry in the area came from the plentiful longleaf pine forests: lumber, turpentine, resin and pine tar. After the Revolutionary War, a gun factory was built in the town of Robbins and a carriage factory was established in the small county seat of Carthage.

After the Civil War, the Raleigh & Augusta rail line was laid through the Sandhills, making it easier to export lumber and other products. Towns sprang up along the rail line every 10 miles or so. The town of Aberdeen preceded the rail line but benefited from its passage through the town.

In the late 1800s, as the wealthy residents of northern industrial cities began looking for healthful places to retreat to, resort developers welcomed them to Shaw’s Ridge, which was later incorporated as Southern Pines.

The Village of Pinehurst was built out of 6,000 acres of prickly pasture land by James Walker Tufts in 1895 and touted a “complete resort,” with the Holly Inn hotel and a golf course, electricity and a telephone system. Tufts added the larger, 250-room Carolina Hotel in 1901.

Tufts hired renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead to lay out the village in a New England-style design with a central village green and curving, tree-lined streets that emanate out.

Guests at the resort included John D. Rockefeller, John P. Morgan, Annie Oakley, Will Rogers, Amelia Earhart, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Theodore Roosevelt and Warren Harding.

Golfers have come from all over the world to play at Pinehurst, and the resort has hosted three U.S. Open championships, one U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Amateur Championships, a PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup.

The U.S. Open will return to Pinehurst in June 2024.

Demographically, Moore County skews slighter older than North Carolina as a whole, wealthier, and more white. It has become a retirement destination, and besides golf it’s known for having good medical facilities.

The county also is home to many military and civilian workers at U.S. Army Base Fort Bragg in neighboring Cumberland County, home to the 82nd Airborne and Special Operations. In addition, many military officers retire to Moore County after their service.

The county also is a destination for horse lovers, owing in part to the Walthour-Moss Foundation, which has 4,000 acres just outside Southern Pines where riders can enjoy miles of sandy trails and may even spot an endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.

Not everyone in Moore County is wealthy; about 9% of the population lives in poverty, creating some stark contrasts between the resort community of Pinehurst, the town of Southern Pines, and more working-class neighborhoods and communities.

Today the biggest industries in Moore County are health care, tourism and retail businesses as well as some manufacturing.