High Point Museum creates new historic Highland Mills neighborhood walking tour

The High Point Museum is spotlighting the city’s historic Highland Mills neighborhood in a new walking tour.

The museum’s app offers a variety of guided tours from Washington Street, which was once the center of High Point’s Black life in the decades following the Civil War, to the Hedgecock Farm, a family-run self-sufficient tobacco farm, something that was once a common sight all across Guilford County.

The latest walking tour is Highland Mills, which according to the museum is one of the best-preserved mill villages in North Carolina. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places nearly a decade ago. The self-sustaining neighborhood community and cotton mill were the brainchild of industrialists J.H. Adams and J.H. Millis, who launched the project in 1913.

High Point Museum Communications Coordinator Tamara Vaughan helped produce the tour. She says it involves the voices of residents past and present.

"And so they have all of these very distinct memories," says Vaughan. "So, we’re able to add all of that into the tour. As you’re listening to the audio, it will change and you’ll get to hear an actual voice of someone who is recounting a story."

Stories of mill strikes, memorable church services, and the old Hilltop Grocery store are scattered throughout the pre-recorded guided walking tour. The roughly one-mile loop begins on Mill Avenue and takes about 30 minutes to complete. In addition to audio and interviews, the tour features images and highlights from the museum collection.