Granny's Pantry # 43 Finding High Rock

Actually, one might not want others to “find” High Rock because it's so full of memories and seems so unspoiled by the 21st century as to make it a very special place.

In High Rock, the unincorporated village near where Granny and Granddaddy Cole lived, terms like urban sprawl, overpopulation, densification, consumerism and gentrification are as unfamiliar as are paved parking lots, Walmarts and fast food restaurants. This place is obscure and almost non-existent in terms of what one can learn on the Internet; it is (spoken as a compliment) a throwback to life as it was in the middle of the 20th century. [Bear in mind that this opinion is rooted in the mind of one who experienced the area as it was then and refuses to change her description now.]

High Rock proper is now, according to one source, merely “a populated place located within the Township of Healing Spring[s], a minor civil division…of Davidson County.” 

The village, and hardly that any more, is nestled below part of the Uwharrie mountain chain, near the Flat Swamp Mountain and at the foot of High Rock Mountain, the highest of the Uwharries. It is from a large rock on the side of that peak that High Rock draws its name.
At one time, High Rock proper was indeed populated.

Especially during the years from 1917 – 1928, its location about a mile from “the site of what would be High Rock Dam buzzed with activity as laborers moved into the area to help build the facility.” Work camps grew up around the area to house the 2,000 workers needed to complete the project, that took about 11 years from planning to completing the dam in 1927 and filling the lake in 1928.

High Rock was even a stop on the Carolina and Yadkin Rail Road beginning 1912. The name was changed to the High Point, Thomasville & Denton Railroad in 1924 and has since merged with the Winston-Salem Southbound Railroad. 

Today, High Rock is still populated, albeit sparsely. The work camps are gone. The only two existing store buildings, both owned by the Morgan family, are now closed.

 The railroad still has an operation in High Rock.

The village is missing two of it's citizens, the Cole sisters, who've moved to Fuquay.
A picture of the rock on the side of High Rock Mountain, for which the village and the lake were named, proved elusive in late summer.

The Rock should be right up the mountain past these green barriers, either beyond the High Rock Baptist Church or up from Uncle Ron's back yard. If only we could see past the summer foliage...which proved to be impenetrable.
I thought I might have to be content with memories of the Rock from one hike made up to the site with Aunt Ruthie and Cousin Bebo when I was about 12.

But then, while going through some of Aunt Ruthie’s plethora of beautiful paintings...

there is was!  
Or at least I have chosen to believe The High Rock is what she captured on canvas better that any picture I could take.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.   (I Corinthians 13:12)