Charlotte is the largest city in the state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Mecklenburg County and the second largest city in the southeastern United States, just behind Jacksonville, Florida. Charlotte is the third fastest growing major city in the United States. In 2014, the estimated population of Charlotte according to the U.S. Census Bureau was 809,958, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area ranks 22nd largest in the US and had a 2014 population of 2,380,314. The Charlotte metropolitan area is part of a sixteen-county market region or combined statistical area with a 2014 U.S. Census population estimate of 2,537,990. Residents of Charlotte are referred to as “Charlotteans”. It is listed as a “gamma-plus” global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.
Charlotte is home to the corporate headquarters of Bank of America and the east coast operations of Wells Fargo, which along with other financial institutions makes it the second largest banking center in the United States. Among Charlotte’s many notable attractions, some of the most popular include the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL), the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Charlotte Independence of the United Soccer League (USL), two NASCAR Sprint Cup races and the NASCAR All-Star Race, the Wells Fargo Championship, the NASCAR Hall of Fame, Carowinds amusement park, and the U.S. National Whitewater Center. Charlotte Douglas International Airport is a major international hub, and was ranked the 23rd busiest airport in the world by passenger traffic in 2013.
Nicknamed the Queen City, like its county a few years earlier, Charlotte was named in honor of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who had become the Queen of Great Britain just seven years before the town’s incorporation. A second nickname derives from the American Revolutionary War, when British commander General Cornwallis occupied the city but was driven out by hostile residents, prompting him to write that Charlotte was “a hornet’s nest of rebellion”, leading to the nickname The Hornet’s Nest.
Charlotte has a humid subtropical climate. Charlotte is located several miles east of the Catawba River and southeast of Lake Norman, the largest man-made lake in North Carolina. Lake Wylie and Mountain Island Lake are two smaller man-made lakes located near the city.
Charlotte has become a major U.S. financial center and the second largest banking center in the United States (after New York City). The nation’s second largest financial institution by assets, Bank of America, calls the city home. The city was also the former corporate home of Wachovia until its 2008 acquisition by Wells Fargo in San Francisco CA; Wells Fargo integrated legacy Wachovia, with the two banks fully merged at the end of 2011, which included transitioning all of the Wachovia branches in the Carolinas to Wells Fargo branches by October 2011. Since then, Charlotte became the regional headquarters for East Coast Operations of Wells Fargo, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Charlotte also serves as the headquarters for Wells Fargo’s capital markets activities including sales and trading, equity research, and investment banking. Bank of America’s headquarters, along with other regional banking and financial services companies, are located primarily in the Uptown central business district.
Take some time to visit Charlotte and enjoy everything it has to offer.