Winston-Salem is a city in and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. It anchors the Winston-Salem metropolitan statistical area, which is located in the west-to-southwestern area of the Piedmont Triad region. The Winston-Salem Metropolitan Area had an estimated population of 712,206 in 2025. The city of Winston-Salem is located in the northwestern Piedmont Triad region, where the city had an estimated 249,545 residents at the 2020 census and an estimated population of 257,271 in 2025, making it the fifth-most-populous city in North Carolina and the 90th-most-populous city in the United States.
Winston-Salem was created in 1913 through the consolidation of Salem, a Moravian settlement established in 1766, and Winston, established in 1849 as the seat of the newly formed Forsyth County. The city developed as a major center of tobacco and textile manufacturing and banking, associated with companies including the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Hanes, and Wachovia. Its economy later diversified, with health care, education, research, manufacturing, and other services becoming major sectors.
The city is home to higher-education institutions such as Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem State University, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Salem College, and Forsyth Technical Community College. Its historic sites, museums, and cultural events include Old Salem, the Reynolda House Museum of American Art, NCMA Winston-Salem, and the National Black Theatre Festival.
History
Various tribes, such as the Cheraw and the Keyauwee, inhabited the area. Followers of the Moravian Church had interacted with Cherokees. The city of Winston-Salem is a product of the merging of the two neighboring towns of Winston and Salem in 1913.
History of Salem
The origin of the town of Salem dates to 1753, when Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg, on behalf of the Moravian Church, selected a settlement site in the three forks of Muddy Creek. He called this area "die Wachau" (Latin form Wachovia) after the ancestral estate of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
The land, just short of 99,000 acres (400 km2), was subsequently purchased from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville.
On November 17, 1753, the first settlers arrived at what would later become the town of Bethabara. This town, despite its rapid growth, was not designed to be the primary settlement on the tract. Some residents expanded to a nearby settlement, called Bethania, in 1759. Finally, lots were drawn to select among suitable sites for the location of a new town.
The town established on the chosen site was given the name of Salem (from "Shalom", Hebrew meaning "Peace", after the Canaanite city mentioned in the Book of Genesis) chosen for it by the Moravians' patron, Count Zinzendorf. On January 6, 1766, the first tree was felled for the building of Salem. Salem was a typical Moravian settlement congregation, with the public buildings of the congregation grouped around a central square (today Salem Square). These included the church, a Brethren's House, and a Sisters' House for the unmarried members of the congregation, which owned all the property in town. For many years, only members of the Moravian Church were permitted to live in the settlement. This practice had ended by the American Civil War. Many of the original buildings in the settlement have been restored or rebuilt and are now part of Old Salem Museums & Gardens.
Salem was incorporated as a town in December 1856. Salem Square and God's Acre Cemetery, the Moravian graveyard, have been the site of the Moravian sunrise service each Easter morning since 1772. This service, sponsored by all the Moravian church parishes in the city, attracts thousands of worshipers each year, some from overseas.
History of Winston
In 1849, the Salem Congregation sold land north of Salem to the newly formed Forsyth County for a county seat. The new town was called "the county town" or Salem until 1851, when it was renamed Winston for a local hero of the Revolutionary War, Joseph Winston. For its first two decades, Winston was a sleepy community. In 1868, work began by Salem and Winston business leaders to connect the town to the North Carolina Railroad. By the 1880s, there were many different tobacco factories in the town, with notable ones owned by Pleasant Hanes and R.J. Reynolds. Pleasant Hanes founded Hanes (formerly called Shamrock Knitting Mills) in 1900.
Merger of Winston-Salem
Robert Gray, as a featured speaker at the 1876 centennial celebration, was the first to mention the two towns as one. In the 1880s, the US Post Office began referring to the two towns together as Winston-Salem. In 1899, after nearly a decade of contention, the United States Post Office Department established the Winston-Salem post office in Winston, with the former Salem office serving as a branch. After a referendum the towns were officially incorporated as "Winston-Salem" in 1913.
The Reynolds family, namesake of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, played a large role in the history and public life of Winston-Salem. By the 1940s, 60% of Winston-Salem workers worked either for Reynolds or in the J. Wesley Hanes textile factories. The Reynolds company imported so much French cigarette paper and Turkish tobacco for Camel cigarettes that Winston-Salem was designated by the United States federal government as an official port of entry for the United States, despite the city being 200 miles (320 km) inland. Winston-Salem was the eighth-largest port of entry in the United States by 1916. In 1917, the Reynolds company bought 84 acres (340,000 m2) of property in Winston-Salem and built 180 houses that it sold at cost to workers, to form a development called "Reynoldstown". By the time R.J. Reynolds died in 1918, his company owned 121 buildings in Winston-Salem.
In 1920, with a population of 48,395, Winston-Salem was the largest city in North Carolina.
In 1929, the Reynolds Building was completed in Winston-Salem. Designed by William F. Lamb from the architectural firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, the Reynolds Building is a 314-foot (96 m) skyscraper that has 21 floors. When completed as the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, it was the tallest building in the United States south of Baltimore, Maryland, and it was named the best building of the year by the American Institute of Architects. The building is well known for being the predecessor and prototype for the much larger Empire State Building, which was built in 1931 in New York City.
In 1892, Simon Green Atkins founded Slater Industrial Academy, which later became Winston-Salem State University, a public HBCU. In 1956, Wake Forest College, now known as Wake Forest University, moved to Winston-Salem from its original location in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Winston-Salem was officially dubbed the "City of Arts and Innovation" in 2014.
On January 31, 2022, a major fire broke out at the Winston Weaver fertilizer plant in North Winston-Salem. The facility contained over 600 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical with a noted history in industrial accidents, leading fire officials to warn that it posed a severe risk of detonating and according to fire chief William "Trey" Mayo, "one of the worst explosions in U.S. history". Emergency officials urged an evacuation of approximately 6,500 residents from 2,500 homes within a one-mile radius. Ultimately, the ammonium nitrate did not explode, and firefighters successfully mitigated the hazard before reducing the evacuation zone on February 3, allowing residents to return to their homes. In the aftermath of the disaster, the cause of the fire remains "undetermined" due to the extensive destruction of evidence, and the company subsequently settled multiple class-action lawsuits brought by displaced residents and local businesses.
Notable early businesses
- In 1799, the C. Winkler Bakery, noted for its Moravian cookies, was commissioned, and in 1807, the congregation brought in Christian Winkler of Pennsylvania to operate the bakery; his family owned and operated the business until 1929. It continues to operate today as part of Old Salem.
- In 1875, R. J. Reynolds founded R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, later famous for branded products such as Prince Albert pipe tobacco (1907) and Camel cigarettes (1913). Other brands that it made famous are Winston, Salem, Doral, and Eclipse cigarettes. The Winston-Salem area is still the primary international manufacturing center for Reynolds brands of cigarettes, although employment is down from its peak of nearly 30,000 to under 3,000.
- In 1901, Hanes's Shamrock Hosiery Mills in Winston-Salem began making men's socks. Shortly afterward, his brother Pleasant Henderson Hanes founded the P.H. Hanes Knitting Company, which manufactured men's underwear. The two firms eventually merged to become the Hanes Corporation, now known as Hanesbrands, manufacturing textiles.
- In 1906, the Bennett Bottling Company produced Bennett's Cola, a "Fine Carbonic Drink". The name was changed to Winston-Salem Bottling Works in 1915.
- In 1911, Wachovia Bank and Trust was formed by the merger of Wachovia National Bank (founded in 1879 by James Alexander Gray and William Lemly) and Wachovia Loan and Trust (founded 1893). The company was purchased by First Union in 2001, which changed its name to Wachovia. Wachovia was purchased by Wells Fargo in 2009, and the Wachovia name was retired in 2011.
- In 1928, Miller's Clothing Store was opened by Mrs. Henry Miller. Miller's Variety Store operated at the same location at 622 North Trade Street until closing at the end of 2016. Miller's was the first store in Winston-Salem to offer bell-bottoms in the area in the 1960s. Miller's was listed by Playboy magazine in 1968 as a popular place to shop.
- In 1929, the local T.W. Garner Foods introduced Texas Pete, a popular hot sauce.
- In 1929, Quality Oil Company was organized in December 1929, initially to launch a distributorship for the then-little-known Shell Oil Company.
- In 1934, Malcolm Purcell McLean formed McLean Trucking Co. The firm benefited from the tobacco and textile industry headquartered in Winston-Salem, and became the second-largest trucking firm in the nation.
- In 1937, Krispy Kreme opened its first doughnut shop on South Main Street.
- In 1948, Piedmont Airlines was formed out of the old Camel City Flying Service. The airline was based at Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem but marked its first commercial flight out of Wilmington, North Carolina, on February 20, 1948. Piedmont grew to become one of the top airlines in the country before its purchase by USAir (later US Airways, merged with American Airlines in 2015) in 1987. American Airlines maintains a reservation center in the old Piedmont reservations office.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau's 2020 gazetteer, the city has a total area of 133.87 square miles (346.7 km2), of which 132.68 square miles (343.6 km2) is land and 1.19 square miles (3.1 km2) (0.89%) is water. The city lies within the Yadkin–Pee Dee River Basin, draining mainly via Salem Creek, Peters Creek, Silas Creek, and Muddy Creek.
Winston-Salem, which was considered to be the center of the state in several "time periods," have re-developed in being west of the core-central hub of the eastern adjacent Greensboro-High Point metropolitan area in recent years, with the Winston-Salem Metropolitan Area being adjacent to the Appalachian Mountains. The city of Winston-Salem is also located in the northwest Piedmont area of North Carolina, situated 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the exact geographic center of the state.
Less than 30 miles (50 km) north of Winston-Salem are the remains of the ancient Sauratown Mountains, named for the Saura people who once lived in much of the Piedmont area, including what is now Winston-Salem.
Winston-Salem currently includes Interstates 40, 74, and 285, with the designs of continually connecting the city to broader regions. The city of Winston-Salem is located 16 miles northwest of High Point, 25 miles west of Greensboro, and 69 miles northeast of Charlotte.
Neighborhoods and areas
The city of Winston-Salem consists of 66 constituent neighborhoods, covering 25 ZIP codes. Winston-Salem is the 84th-largest city by area in the United States and the fifth-largest city in North Carolina by population.
Downtown
Downtown, the central business district of Winston-Salem, is the largest in the Piedmont Triad region. With a population around 14,000 and a workforce over 27,000, downtown Winston-Salem is a hotspot for growth. Fourth Street, the "main drag", consists of bars, restaurants, retail, hotels, and luxury residential units. The area is surrounded by Northwest Boulevard to the north and west, Salem Parkway to the south, and U.S. Route 52 to the east. Downtown features attractions such as Innovation Quarter, Truist Stadium, Old Salem, and the Benton Convention Center.
West End
One of the most notable neighborhoods in the city, West End features the West End Historic District, which covers an area of 229 acres and is predominantly residential. Most of the buildings in West End were built between 1887 and 1930. Major thoroughfares in West End are West End Boulevard, Northwest Boulevard, and West First Street, which leads into downtown Winston-Salem. The neighborhood offers an urban lifestyle, with shops, parks, restaurants, and services all located within the neighborhood.