The west bank
Sherrills Ford, Terrell and Denver
The west side of the lake has a longer written history than the east and far fewer people know it. Everything here starts with a rock shelf in the river shallow enough to walk cattle across.
Adam Sherrill, 1747
The state highway marker on NC 73 west of the lake — erected in 1964, while Cowans Ford Dam was going up — reads: “In 1747 Adam Sherrill and his 8 sons migrated from Pennsylvania and settled west of the Catawba River.” He was born in 1697 and died on May 4, 1774, and received a land patent in 1749 for acreage on the west bank. Catawba County’s own planning documents say European settlement of the county originated here, up from the best rock-shelf crossing of the river, which took his name.
The same marker essay names the others who came in those years: Andreas Killen, Robert Leeper, Jacob Forney, Pieter Heyl, John Clark, each settling on a waterway that still carries his name, and Henry Weidner, whose homeplace on Clark’s Creek was little changed from 1750.
A granite boulder of about five tons stands at the ford, dedicated on August 2, 1929 before more than five hundred Sherrill descendants. Its inscription commemorates “the crossing of the Catawba River by Adam Sherrill the pioneer with his eight sons and others in 1747, at the ford which bears his name.”
Terrell
A few miles away, the crossroads at Terrell has a documented sequence that reads like a model of how a Piedmont community assembled itself. Rehobeth Methodist Church was organized in 1791, among the oldest Methodist congregations west of the Catawba in North Carolina. Dr. Littleton T. Coleman built the district’s oldest surviving house in 1854. Miles Whitfield Sherrill put a cotton gin at the crossroads in 1869. Thomas Franklin Connor opened a general store in 1885 and built a Stick-style house designed by Charles H. Lester the following year. The present Rehobeth building went up in 1889.
In 1893 a post office was established in Connor’s store and the crossroads was formally named Terrell, after a minister of Rehobeth Methodist Church. The Terrell Historic District has eleven contributing buildings, among them the store and post office of about 1891, the Coleman house of about 1854, the 1889 church and the 1932 cotton gin, rebuilt after a fire.
Catawba Springs
East of Lincolnton stood one of the antebellum South’s fashionable watering places. The state marker calls Catawba Springs a recreational and social center before 1861. Guests came from the 1790s to the mid-1860s. Joseph Hampton built a two-story, hundred-room hotel in 1838; where the resort had housed sixty or seventy people in cabins, it could then take about five hundred. The patrons were the planter families of the Carolinas — Grahams, Brevards, Alexanders, Caldwells, Davidsons, Polks — with some from Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, and Davidson College students besides.
The war ended the class of people who filled it. Catawba Springs closed in the mid-1860s and the buildings were demolished in 1930. The hotel register from 1838 to 1854 survives in the Southern Historical Collection at Chapel Hill.
Dry Pond becomes Denver
Denver in east Lincoln County was called Dry Pond, for a small pond at what is now Highway 16 Business and Campground Road that went dry in high summer. The name was changed to Denver in 1873 as a growth strategy aimed at the railroad industry, an effort led by a local school principal named D. Matt Thompson, and taken from the capital of Colorado, then petitioning for statehood. John A. Kids became the first postmaster in October 1874.
Denver incorporated as a town in 1876 and lost its charter in 1971, and it is an unincorporated census-designated place today. Much of this Denver detail rests on a single source, so treat the finer points as reported rather than settled.
Rock Springs
Rock Springs Campground near Denver has been holding a camp meeting since 1794, when Daniel Asbury, a Methodist minister from Virginia, led the first gathering in the woods near Rehobeth. Some three hundred people were converted at that first meeting. The site was bought in 1830 and incorporated in 1851. The arbor at its center was raised in 1833 under Reverend Henry Asbury from hand-hewn timbers assembled with wooden pegs; it was shingled at first and got a metal roof in 1891, and it is still in use.
Around the arbor stand roughly 258 rough cabins called tents, with unfinished wood and dirt floors, many handed down through generations of the same families. The meeting still runs for a week around the second Sunday in August and draws ten to fifteen thousand people. Sources differ slightly on the arbor’s date and the number of tents.
After the lake
Before Lake Norman, eastern Catawba County was farms along the river bottoms with textile mills at Long Island and Monbo, lumber, and iron and cement refining. Both of those mill villages are now under the water, a story told in the communities Lake Norman covered.
The county’s own small area plan is blunt about what followed: when the lake was created in 1963, Marshall Steam Station was built, cheap energy drew industry, and the lake’s 143 miles of Catawba County shoreline became the main driver of residential development. The Sherrills Ford planning area went from 7,656 people in 1990 to 10,519 in 2000, a rise of 37.4 percent, with households up 42.6 percent. About half the population now lives within a mile of the lake or the river — near-urban density in an unincorporated area, which is exactly the tension the plan was written to manage.
The census reflects the change awkwardly. Sherrills Ford was its own census-designated place with 941 residents in 2000; since 2010 it has been folded into the “Lake Norman of Catawba” CDP along with Terrell, Monbo and Long Island, which counted 8,658 people in 2020.
The crossing, checked
Everything on this side of the lake traces back to one river crossing in 1747, and to a great deal of family tradition that has been repeated until it sounds like documentation.
| The claim | What the record supports |
|---|---|
| Where the Sherrills came from | Sources disagree: Pennsylvania on the state highway marker, Lancaster County then Maryland then Augusta County on one account, Virginia on another, northeastern Maryland on a fourth. All of them agree on the 1747 crossing with eight sons, and that is what this article says. |
| The monument | A granite boulder about six feet tall and five tons in weight, dedicated on August 2, 1929 before more than 500 Sherrill descendants. Its original site was later submerged. |
| Terrell | Named in 1893 after a minister of Rehobeth Methodist Church. The historic district has eleven contributing buildings, the oldest the Coleman-Caldwell-Gabriel House of about 1854. |
| Denver | Formerly Dry Pond, renamed in 1873. The finer detail — the school principal who led the effort, the 1874 first postmaster, the 1876 incorporation and the 1971 loss of charter — rests on a single account and is given here as local record rather than established fact. |
| Rock Springs | The arbor is dated 1832 or 1833 depending on the source, and the rough cabins known as “tents” are counted at roughly 258 or 288. Both ranges are printed here because neither can be resolved. |
| Population today | There is no standalone census figure for Sherrills Ford. Since 2010 the area has been counted inside the Lake Norman of Catawba census-designated place: 7,411 in 2010 and 8,658 in 2020. |
Frequently asked questions
Who was Adam Sherrill?
A Pennsylvania settler who crossed the Catawba River with his eight sons in 1747 and received a land patent on the west bank in 1749. The ford and the community carry his name.
What county is Sherrills Ford in?
Catawba County. Since 2010 the census has counted it within the Lake Norman of Catawba CDP, together with Terrell, Monbo and Long Island.
Why is Denver, NC called Denver?
It was renamed from Dry Pond in 1873 after the capital of Colorado, as a strategy to attract railroad interest. The effort was led by a local school principal, D. Matt Thompson.
How old is Rock Springs Campground?
The camp meeting dates to 1794. The arbor at its center was built in 1833 and is still used for the annual August meeting.
What was Catawba Springs?
A fashionable antebellum resort east of Lincolnton, with a hundred-room hotel built in 1838. It closed in the mid-1860s and the buildings came down in 1930.
Sources for this article
The quiet side of the lake still needs a lawyer
Catawba and Lincoln County families are often told to look for counsel in Charlotte. Adkins Law is closer than that, and handles cases in both counties.
Adkins Law, PLLC · 9620 Sherrill Estates Road, Huntersville, NC 28078
Keep reading
This article is local history, offered for general interest. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Historical accounts are drawn from the sources listed above; where sources disagree, that is noted in the text. For advice about your own situation, speak with a licensed North Carolina attorney.