Five decades ago, people believed Rocky Mount’s economy was doomed when the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was closing down its Emerson Shops — a loss of more than 2,000 jobs.

But other industries came along to fill the void.

Jim Gardner’s business was one of them. In the early 1960s, he and Leonard Rawls launched the Hardee’s restaurant chain, which eventually built its headquarters in the city.

“When we started Hardee’s in 1961, everybody was down because the railroad was closing their shops,” Gardner said. “Everybody said, ‘That’s the end of Rocky Mount.’ Then Hardee’s came along. There is always something.”

Hardee’s is just one example of how the area’s economy has continuously transformed since pre-Civil War.

At one time, Rocky Mount had thriving industries in tobacco, textiles, railroads and banking, only to see them decline for various reasons. Among them: new technology, overseas competition and new ownership without hometown ties.

The city has commissioned a study to see what can be done to improve the economy. Rocky Mount has successfully reinvented the economy a number of times since the early 19th century, and officials are hoping to do it again.

In recent years, the Twin Counties’ unemployment rate ranks near the top of the state. Edgecombe’s rate was 14.8 percent in May, tied for second highest in the state. Nash County had a 12 percent rate. During the down economy, some plants have laid off employees. In March 2009, Cummins Rocky Mount Engine plant laid off 179 full-time employees.

Officials say the city is at another crossroads in its economic future. They are optimistic, despite the departure of thousands of textile jobs to companies overseas and a decline in tobacco jobs due to taxes, competition from abroad and a federal tobacco buyout program.

They say the area’s prime transportation network — with Interstate 95, U.S. 64, and U.S. 301 passing through Rocky Mount — is a major selling point. And the proximity of Rocky Mount to Raleigh and the bustling Research Triangle Park is also a plus.

Market forces and geology dictated the area’s earliest industries.

The railroad came through here because of the need to transport crops.

Textile plants moved here because of cheaper labor in a non-union state and an abundance of cotton that was grown in the area to produce the garments.

Tobacco flourished because of the area’s fertile soil. It wasn’t until the 1960s that government officials and the private sector began offering incentives to businesses to locate here.

“We had this first wave of transition where we moved from an agricultural base, a textile economy, and then we moved into another economy with more technical things,” said former Rocky Mount Mayor Fred Turnage. “That moved us to the second level. I think the challenge we face now is moving to an even different level, with more technology-oriented (industries). And we have a significant work force that is not prepared to do that.”

Tobacco a mainstay

In 1886, Sandy Thorpe’s grandfather opened Thorpe & Ricks, a tobacco processing warehouse on Falls Road in Rocky Mount. It was among the many that flourished in the following decades.

Thorpe has fond memories of the industry in its prime.

“It was more of a people business in its heyday than it is today,” he said. “Clearly, it is more mechanized (today) and employs less people.”

Today, tobacco farmers contract with cigarette companies to sell their leaf. Until earlier this decade, farmers would auction off their crop in warehouses.

“It was an exciting time for everyone — farmers (and) their families. We had foreign customers come in. Rocky Mount was vibrant when the market opened,” Thorpe said.

The aroma of tobacco wafted through the city when the market was open in the summer months.

“It was pungent,” Thorpe said.

Thorpe said the market was also a social event.

“Lots of customers stayed at the Carleton House,” he said. “The Thorpe cabin entertained people.”

Today, Thorpe is retired. In April 1999, his family sold its operations to Universal Leaf North America, which opened a major processing plant in Castalia.

The sale occurred after Thorpe Greenville Tobacco Export, Co.’s plant on Barnum Road was flooded out by Hurricane Floyd in September 1999.

Robert Minor, a tobacco salesman for Thorpe & Ricks in 1969, said the decline in tobacco sales can be traced to increased competition from other countries, particularly Brazil and Zimbabwe. Increasing taxes on cigarettes also has hurt the domestic industry, he said.

“Zimbabwe started growing tobacco, and they kept improving (the quality) and their price is much cheaper,” he said. “And our prices kept going up.”

Minor said the tobacco industry flourished in Rocky Mount and throughout the region for a simple reason: The soils produce the best quality tobacco in the world.

“It’s always been here since Jamestown (a Virginia settlement founded in 1607) in this area,” he said. “U.S. tobacco was always and still is considered the finest tobacco in the world.”

Nash County Extension Director Charlie Tyson said the number of tobacco jobs in Nash is down significantly from the industry’s heyday, but the Universal Leaf plant jobs have somewhat offset those losses.

Railroad generates jobs

The railroad industry put Rocky Mount on the map, spurring many of the city’s early downtown businesses.

Today, Bill Kincheloe owns Wildwood Lamps & Accents on Paul Street.

A few blocks away is a building that once housed Emerson Shops, a bustling train car repair and service station for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

From the late 1930s through the late 1940s, the railroad shops employed about 2,200 people.

Kincheloe, 73, has fond memories of the busy shops and the numerous businesses that sprang up as a result of them.

“When I was 2 years old, my father and I used to go down to South Rocky Mount, which is right up at the end of the street, and watch them service the trains that came through here,” he said.

At the time, the railroad employees were among the better paid in the area.

“We’d go out to supper every night. There was a hotel down there, a drug store, a photo shop, which is gone,” he said. “But this whole area was railroad people.”

The Emerson Shops closed when the trains no longer had to stop in Rocky Mount for coal and water.

“In the late 1940s and early 1950s, they rapidly switched from steam to diesel locomotives, and (trains) would run farther without service,” Kincheloe said.

The shops even had a hospital for employees that opened in February 1922, with operating rooms, doctors and nurses.

The tracks first came to Rocky Mount after the directors of the Wilmington & Raleigh Railroad decided to build northward instead of westward as originally planned.

On Jan. 3, 1834, residents of Wilmington secured a charter for construction of the Wilmington & Raleigh Railroad. But after Raleigh residents would not agree to help fund the project, it was decided to build the tracks instead toward Weldon in Halifax County, crossing Tar River near Rocky Mount.

The railroad tracks that spurred the shops and a major passenger depot first opened in Rocky Mount in 1839.

In 1840, a train of cars en route to Wilmington stopped in Rocky Mount to import some “Old Nash” apple brandy for special toasts at opening festivities of the new railroad line.

A banking merger

In the 1990s, Rocky Mount became a banking center after two longtime rival banks merged and built a headquarters here.

But that changed in 2008, when a Canadian bank that at first decided to keep the headquarters here moved it to Raleigh.

For decades, Peoples Bancorp and Planters Corp. were fiery competitors in Rocky Mount.

Planters, which was formed in the early 20th century, had catered to farmers and longtime Rocky Mount residents. Peoples Bancorp was formed during the Great Depression to cater to a younger crowd, former bank chief executive officer Bob Mauldin said.

In 1990, the two banks merged to form Centura Bank.

But in 2001, Centura was bought out by RBC Bank, owned by Royal Bank of Canada that was establishing its U.S. banking franchise.

RBC kept its headquarters here for several years, but in 2008 moved it into the new RBC Plaza tower in downtown Raleigh.

RBC still has operations here, but the departure of the headquarters doesn’t sit well with Mauldin, who served as chairman of Centura before retiring in 1997.

“It’s an evolutionary process,” he said.

But Mauldin said if Bentonville, Ark., can serve as the headquarters for Wal-Mart, Rocky Mount certainly could have remained the headquarters for RBC Bank.

“They never would have moved if I would have stayed on, but I can’t stay forever. I retired,” he said.

An incentives plan

Starting in the 1960s, Nash and Edgecombe counties hired economic development coordinators. State and local governments offered financial incentives to companies.

Former Mayor Turnage had a bird’s eye view of the efforts, serving as city attorney in the early 1960s before being elected mayor in 1973.

He said officials knew they had to do something after the railroad’s Emerson Shops began closing down in the late 1950s.

“They were a major employer,” Turnage said. “The community sort of felt like the world was going to end economically.”

But the economy rebounded.

“People began to wake up. Textile mills and tobacco and agriculture hadn’t begun to deteriorate at that point, so they were still part of (the economy),” Turnage said. “In the early 1960s in particular, Rocky Mount became much more involved and aggressive in econonomic development.”Former Rocky Mount Mayor John Minges and former Nash Economic Development Coordinator Bill Rose worked well together in recruiting industry, Turnage said.

Local people formed a non-profit organization to pay for a building on Atlantic Avenue for Barcalounger, a furniture manufacturing plant that operated for decades until closing last year.

In the late 1960s, another intense recruiting effort snared Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company.

“It was a major coup for this area,” Turnage said.

The community tried to make employees who had moved from the company’s headquarters in Chicago feel at home, Turnage said.

“We created hospitality committees. A couple of women would meet with wives of employees and take them around,” Turnage said.

The next big industry lured to the area was Consolidated Diesel, which is now Cummins Rocky Mount Engine plant.

“The community raised money to provide them the site they are on,” Turnage said.

Former Hardee’s executive Jack Laughery headed up the committee of volunteers who raised $1 million for the land.

Working in Rocky Mount’s favor at that time was the fact that North Carolina is a non-union state, which made it appealing to owners of companies in the Northeast who were having to pay higher union wages, said John Gessaman, the president and chief executive officer of the Carolinas Gateway Partnership.

“The difference in labor costs was huge,” he said.

When textiles left, officials searched for replacement industries that didn’t require much skilled labor. But many of those businesses left, too. A Black & Decker plant opened in Tarboro in 1970, but the company moved its operations out of the country in 1996 for cheaper labor.

“There are a whole bunch of industries that were recruited here that are entirely gone,” Gessaman said.

More than 14 years ago, the counties joined forces with the private sector by forming the Partnership, a public-private industry recruitment agency that attracted companies such as QVC, Inc. to the area. In 1999, QVC opened a $35 million home shopping channel distribution center at the Kingsboro industrial site just over the Edgecombe County line.

Gessaman said there is lot of potential for a new niche industry to develop in the Twin Counties. “Food processing has been the biggest growth industry in this area since 2000,” he said.