Cameron Historic Preservation, Inc. hosted a 150-year anniversary of the town’s founding in downtown Cameron on April 12.
From 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., approximately 200 attendees enjoyed folk music, food trucks, and vendors selling baked goods, homemade items, welded art, antiques and plants.
Musical performers included Cooper Marona and Friends, Chris Monhollen, Cody Conley and Faith Berryman, and the Whiskey Pines Band.
Bobby Hancock and Timmy Stelmat are lifetime Moore County residents who travel the United States, sharing their folk, rock, and bluegrass as the Whiskey Pines Band.
Whiskey Pines and Cody Conley, a Cameron resident, perform at the Cameron 150th anniversary celebration.
Visitors enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and one another. Mothers spread blankets on the ground for their toddlers, and fathers watched over the rambling youngsters in the lower field. Picnic tables filled with barbecue plates and laughter spread across the rows of chairs.
Former postmaster Bill Thomason and his wife Joyce have lived in downtown Cameron for 53 years.
“The biggest change was the hardware store closing,” Thomason said. He often attends town meetings to stay abreast of town concerns.
“The Old Hardware Store with the Dewberry Deli was owned by Pete Phillips. He was a Morton Salt distributor and stored salt in there. There used to be a grill at the gas station, and the old jail used to be back there with that old building in the woods,” Thomason said about the wood building on Goodman Street behind Rhizome Houseplants & Coffee.
“At one time, Cameron had the most descendants of any town, but they went to college and moved on,” Thomason said about the change in demographics.
Jerry Holder is a lifetime Moore County resident and said since he was in first grade back in 1953, he used to go to the barbershop in downtown Cameron, but it closed years ago.
Laura Younts lives with her husband, Mike, on a ninth-generation family farm. Her grandparents moved to Cameron from Scotland in 1791. She regularly attends town meetings. Her fields are leased to farmers now, and she offers educational field trips and grows flowers.
“I already see a revitalization in O’Sullivan’s (now Rhizomes Houseplants & Coffee), and the Old Muse building was recently purchased, and the old pharmacy building has new business plans. We went through a cycle after the older generation passed,” Laura Younts said about attendance at their fairs improving and more people enjoying Phillips Memorial Park.
Isabell Thomas, the leader who elevated Cameron to the status of the state’s antique capital, passed away in 2014, leaving behind a lasting legacy that includes The Greenwood Inn, McKeithen’s Store, Ferguson House, and the recently demolished Miss Belle’s Tea Room.
Cameron has around 300 residents and was “established in 1875 at the end of the Raleigh and Augusta Railroads, an ideal destination for business establishment including turpentine distilleries and mercantile and hotel businesses. The Town was also able to build a thriving dewberry farming and consignment operation,” according to the town’s website.
Learn about Cameron’s Historic Preservation here.
Feature photo: The Whiskey Pines Band with Bobby Hancock and Timmy Stelmat play folk music during the April 12, 2025, Cameron 150-year anniversary celebration.
~Article, photos and video by Sandhills Sentinel journalist Stephanie M. Sellers. Stephanie is also an English instructor at Central Carolina Community College. She is the author of When the Yellow Slugs Sing, Sky’s River Stone, GUTTERSNIPE: Shakespearean English Stage Play with Translation, Amagi, Amagi Study Guide, and EZ Essay Study Guide for Holocaust: A History.
To sign up for the free Sandhills Sentinel breaking news and weekly e-newsletter, please click here.
