Winston-Salem is at a crossroads, really. Let’s remember a time when travel was via oxen cart, horseback, or on foot. A map was an important tool, and the one drawn by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s father, documenting the Great Wagon Road was one of the first based upon first-person surveys.
Salem, founded in 1766, was the southern terminus of the Great Wagon Road. Travel in the 1700s was arduous, but you could say that this Road was a super highway of its time. It connected Philadelphia and the Moravian settlements of Bethlehem and Nazareth in Pennsylvania to the southern outpost in Salem. People were flowing south and goods from North Carolina were headed north.
Textiles became a vital part of the economy in Salem in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The Single Sisters Choir had a successful business weaving linen and sewing leather gloves, which were needed for everyday life in Salem and the excess could be sold to other settlers. Soon, bigger mills and automated weaving looms found a home in Salem processing both wool and cotton.
In the late 1800s, tobacco warehouses and processing plants began cropping up. It was a central place for farmers to bring their crops for sale and manufacturing. These warehouses and plants grew into an empire and set Winston-Salem, as the town became known in 1913, up as a center for manufacturing and finance.
As time passes, many things change. Tobacco fell out of favor and much of the textile business has moved away, but that hasn’t squelched Winston-Salem’s will to survive and excel. With the same industriousness of the turn of the 20th century, Winston-Salem is fueling its drive toward the future with a past rooted in the arts and a determination to find a better way to do things. When innovation and arts come together, they create a synergy that is exhilarating and a city that is vibrant, alive, and welcoming.
The Mast Store in Winston-Salem is in a building that was once the largest retailer in town. Today, we hope you’ll find an experience that hearkens back to “the best place to get it.”
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We Can Do This
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Mast Store believes in recycling. And recycling on a grand scale - that’s why we have homes in historic buildings along bustling Main Streets in vibrant downtowns. We recycle internally, too, like using the back sides of our white paper for accounting forms or documents that will remain in-house. But we know we can do better … and we want to help others do better, too. That’s why we spent an afternoon at the Watauga County Recycling Center – to learn the best practices to keep the recycle loop looping. -
Hot Trends for Cool Fall Days
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It’s hard to believe that it’s time to make the closet changeover from summer to fall. If you choose carefully among last year’s trending styles, you can update your look by adding a few key items from this year’s emerging course. Let’s get started. -
Mast Store Celebrates Friends' Day September 7, Donates 10% of Sales to Community Partners
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The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines friend as “a favored companion; one that favors or promotes something.” Woodrow Wilson once said, “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” The Mast Store is pleased to count several active community groups among our circle of friends, and on September 7th, we’ll introduce you to some of them and will make a donation to support their efforts. -
7 Essentials for Back to School
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It seems like back-to-school time comes faster and faster every year. The summer fun has just begun, and then it’s time to pore over checklists and see what still fits in the closet. We’ve put on our thinking caps, inverted and multiplied, and come up with the least common denominator list of essentials that most anyone headed back to class will need.
The location of the Mast Store in Winston-Salem has a history going back before its opening in 1928 by the Brown-Rogers-Dixson Hardware Co. In fact, Mr. Brown, was in on the ground floor of the Twin City’s growth. His idea that hardware might be an important need to address eventually led to the opening of the city’s largest retail space.
*Photo courtesy of the Forsyth County Public Library Photograph Collection.
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