You can scroll through the entire archive, or sort and filter the materials by various categories, using the controls in the top left corner of the page. The archive is accessible through a data visualization tool called Prospect. Developed by the Digital Innovation Lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, Prospect is a plugin for the WordPress platform that allows users to visualize, analyze, and present information in powerful ways.

The materials in our collection come from local community members, the Gaston County Museum of Art and History,  the UNC Libraries, and universities and archives elsewhere in the  the country. Do you have relevant historical materials we might want to digitize and add to the archive? Can you provide information or tell us stories about items in the collection? Contact us; we’d love to hear from you!

The creation of the archive was made possible by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, which digitized and hosts many of its materials. The NCDHC is supported by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources and housed in UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library.  Led by Elijah Gaddis, staff and students in the Digital Innovation Lab have located and researched the materials, categorized and described them, and constructed and managed the databases of information that make them available for research and exhibition.