Troutman

Troutman sits between Mooresville and Statesville at the quiet northern end of Lake Norman. It is the smallest town I regularly work in and the one buyers most often have not heard of until I bring them here.

It began as a farming crossroads. Settlers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland arrived in the 1750s. John Jacob Troutman became one of the largest landowners in the area, close to two thousand acres, and his family started the local businesses, including a wagon workshop at the crossroads that people simply began calling Troutman’s. The name stuck. The railroad came through in the mid-1800s and the old depot still stands west of town.

The reason to buy in Troutman is Lake Norman State Park, and it is a genuinely strong reason. The park covers over 1,300 acres with thirteen miles of shoreline, a sandy public swimming beach, and its own separate 33-acre lake for fishing and paddling. There are more than thirty campsites with tent pads and grills. Nowhere else on this lake gives you that much protected public shoreline, and because it is protected, the view from the water on that side is not going to fill up with houses.

Morningstar Marinas at Skipper’s Landing handles wet and dry storage year round, with rentals, fuel, a clubhouse and picnic areas. For a lot of buyers here that is the practical alternative to paying for a private dock.

Zootastic Park is the local surprise: hundreds of exotic animals, a petting zoo, and camp programmes, which is not what anyone expects to find in a town this size.

Schools are Iredell-Statesville Schools, one of the twenty largest districts in North Carolina, with a wide spread of programmes including International Baccalaureate, an early college high school, a career and technical school and a visual and performing arts magnet. For a small town, the range of options a Troutman family can access is unusually good.

On work, Troutman is largely a commuter town. Mooresville, Statesville, Huntersville and Cornelius are all a short drive, and I-77 and I-40 are both close, so people here tend to work somewhere else and come home to quiet. There is some local manufacturing, including a computer-controlled routing equipment maker, and a large home improvement distribution presence.

Be straight with yourself about what you are buying. Troutman is rural. Shopping, restaurants and healthcare mean a drive to Mooresville or Statesville. What you get in exchange is space, a state park at the end of the road, and prices that have not caught up with the south end of the lake. For the right buyer that is an excellent trade, and for the wrong one it is a long winter.