Since Andy left, Mount Airy has acquired an interstate highway, a bypass, two golf courses, two industrial parks, a jetport and a set of manufacturers whose perspective is more global than local. Some months, its retail sales exceed Chape l Hill's. Still, it's not a quirk that Mayberry, the quintessential small town, was nurtured on Tar Heel turf. Andy Griffith grew up in a state that does not have an Atlanta or a Boston or an Indianapolis. In fact, no state in the union has a smaller percentage of its people living in a single urban center.
Small towns are the state's specialty.
Four hundred and eighty have fewer than 15,000 residents. The reasons are historical, Wake Forest University history professor Paul Escott says. In the 1800s, mills were bu ilt along rivers and creeks that provided them power. Some were built in farming communities that preceded them, others in places where villages grew up around them. So the mill villages didn't wither and die when electricity unleashed the looms from their dependency on water power.