Lee County, North Carolina: History
=== Early history ===
The nature of the Native Americans of the land eventually comprising Lee County is not well known. People of European and African descent settled in the area in the 1740s and '50s. During the American Revolutionary War, the Wilcox Iron Works supplied iron goods for the state's war effort. In the 1850s, the state's first commercial coal mine opened in the community of Egypt. During the American Civil War, the area supplied coal and iron to the forces of the Confederate States of America.
In 1907, residents of Sanford, then in Moore County, began pushing for the creation of a new county to ease the burden of their travel to Moore's seat of Carthage. The North Carolina General Assembly passed a law creating Lee County from portions of Moore and Chatham Counties effective April 1, 1908, pending ratification in a plebiscite by the people living in the proposed county. The referendum was held on July 1, with voters approving the new county 875 to 40. County officials were installed on February 17, 1908. The county courthouse was erected on a site between Sanford and Jonesboro and occupied by county officers in early March 1909.
Lee County's population and economy steadily grew after its creation, fueled by the success of tobacco, furniture, quarrying, brickmaking, and textile industries. In 1947, the cities of Sanford and Jonesboro merged.
As Lee County continued to develop, brickmaking emerged as the dominant powerhouse of the local economy, and by the 1950s, roughly one-tenth of bricks in the United States were produced in Lee County. While brickmaking remains a large part of the county's economy, it has rapidly diversified with the introduction of the manufacturing, higher education, and healthcare industries. In the 21st century, Lee County has grown rapidly due to its stable local economy and its status as a growing suburb of Raleigh and Fayetteville, and it is now one of the fastest growing counties in the state.