Trade and Tryon cross at your feet, the founding crossroads of Charlotte, North Carolina. Two Native American trading paths converged here long before European settlement, and when Scots-Irish settlers platted a town in 1768, they laid it out around this exact intersection of Trade and Tryon streets. Trade ran east to west, moving goods between the Piedmont interior and the coast.
Tryon ran north to south, the King's Highway connecting the colonial South. The town was named Charlotte in honor of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and the surrounding county took the queen's German homeland as its name. A courthouse stood at this corner, then a succession of commercial buildings as the town grew into a city.
Look in each direction: the four quadrants created by this crossing — First Ward, Second Ward, Third Ward, Fourth Ward — still organize how Charlotteans think about uptown. The bronze statue of a town crier marks the spot. Every bank tower you see from here, every highway, every rail line in the region still traces back to these two crossing paths.