Horse Shoe
Abutting the town limits of Mills River, the community of Horse Shoe, NC is that wide place in the road (known as U.S. Hwy 64 West) that you will pass through on your way from Hendersonville to Brevard.
Founded in 1889, it takes its name from Civil War Captain Erasamus P. Horseshoe (itself, a family surname derived from the profession of using a hoe to keep horses in line during plowing and other agricultural tasks, a “horse’s hoe” was often used by rural farmers to get their fields plowed in spring.) Like many city and town names in the rural, western part of the state, which had their name thrust upon them by urban legislators in Raleigh, Capt. Horseshoe had no ties to the community, and it was believed the naming honor was bestowed upon him to pay off a gambling debt owed him by the governor.
Horse Shoe contains one stand-alone U.S. Post Office (something newer incorporated towns like Mills River cannot hope to obtain in this era of postal austerity), one Subway/Citgo convenience store/gas station; two strip malls of varying and changing occupancy; at least two churches (one Baptist, one Methodist); a junk shop, Chinese restaurant, gun store, packing and shipping store; parts of a disused RR track, and some of the French Broad River, with a rafting outfitter near it.
Horse Shoe is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Henderson County, North Carolina, United States.[3] Its ZIP code is 28742.[4] As of the 2010 census, its population was 2,351.[2]
Wikipedia entry
Radio and TV legacy
One of the first area radio stations, WHOR, was located in Horse Shoe in 1940, after several speakeasy locations were converted to other uses, following the state of NC finally, begrudgingly, accepting the repeal of the 18th amendment, ending prohibition in the rest of the US in 1933, by the year of 1937 in NC. Neighboring Etowah, NC had also ventured into the now prevalent radio station craze by instituting its own station, located inside the local train station, whose call letters were WETO. The invention of amplitude-modulated (AM) radio, which allows more closely spaced stations to simultaneously send signals (as opposed to spark-gap radio, where each transmission occupies a wide bandwidth) allowed both stations to operate within close proximity to each other. However, the market of farmers and livestock was not a viable listening audience to support advertising revenue for two such stations, and in 1955, the two merged as a unified Radio and TV station with the combined call letters of WET-WHOR.
