North Carolina's Three largest metropolitian regions?

[monsoon]

^ Doesn't look like a ship canal (to small), though I can't quite make out the respective size in the pic.

[nowensone]

I should not have used the term "ship canal" as I was not referring to ocean going vessels obviously, just the ones that transport on rivers. The canal pictured would hardly support more than a large raft, and looks more like an agricultural/water transport canal.

[monsoon]

I should not have used the term "ship canal" as I was not referring to ocean going vessels obviously, just the ones that transport on rivers. The canal pictured would hardly support more than a large raft, and looks more like an agricultural/water transport canal.

[nowensone]

NYC is kind of an anomaly here, and could still grow and trade via the ocean as well as up the Hudson, transportation and immigration for an interior city in NC without a major river would not grow quickly using the methods you describe above, and not many would even bother to do this to the level required to create a major city. Where as a host of other cities along the Mississippi and it's tributaries did because they could move quickly with much larger loads, even before the steamboat. And is what also made New Orleans so important as the downstream "exit point" for these cities. Wilmington wasn't really going to be an exit point for anything much because a horse pulling a barge up and down the Cape Fear was going to be time consuming and inefficient at best.

EDIT - I believe steamboats were common since at least the 1820's.

[wagwa2001l]

As an additional point of talk both Wilmington and Winston (two one time holders of largest NC city) were known to have long standing anti-growth policies in place... Winston resluted from RJR and Hanes essentially running the city and not wanting additional manufactureres to come in and compete for Labor. (As an interesting side note in talks on this subject some have claimed that there was no appreciable middle class in Winston until the 60s when Westinghouse moved to the city and created midmanagment... prior to that the classes in Winston were mainly line workers and their bosses). Wilmington - I am not sure as to the exact reason behind it... i don't know that in both cases the powers that be felt that too much growth would destroy the charcter of the city. Its hard to see now... but in those days the amount of power that the "players" had over city growth and activities was immense.

I agree to some extent that larger is not always better. Actually, with the proliferation of chains it is incressigly becoming the case that larger cities are simply melding into "big city" and losing the individual charcteristics which made them distinguishable.

In NC for example Charlotte and Raleigh are becoming much more alike than they are diffrent while the truly personable cities... ones whihc are retaining their individual flavor.. Asheville or Davidson for expample have also maintained citiy size.