Welcome to Historic Salisbury, North Carolina

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Salisbury combines a long, colorful history with a variety of preserved and reused historic buildings. 

Founded in 1753, Salisbury was a frontier town that knew the great and near-great historic figures of early America. Daniel Boone started his wilderness journey from here in 1769. Andrew Jackson studied law in this town and was admitted to the bar here in 1787. George Washington stayed in Salisbury on his famous Southern Tour in 1791. 

During the War Between the States, a major Confederate prison was located here, and now a small national cemetery near the center of town is the resting place for soldiers from that war and later wars. With the establishment of the railroad in 1855, Salisbury became a mainline town that gradually attracted industry and grew as a governmental, judicial, and commercial center for this area of Piedmont North Carolina. 

Currently, Salisbury has ten historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places, a total of 1,204 commercial, industrial, and residential buildings. 

Salisbury is proud to have major buildings and elements of a southern town of a century or more earlier, including two courthouses (1855) (1912); the railroad passenger station (1908); an early theater (1915); church structures from 1828; the fire house (1896); the old post office (1913); a roller mill (1896); a lively commercial downtown with buildings largely intact from another era; and preserved older residential neighborhoods, several of which join the commercial downtown.