Synergy Materials
Despite overwhelming community opposition, proposed Yadkin County mine clears first hurdle
Dean Swaim, the stern chairman of the Yadkin County Planning Board, stifled an outburst with a whack of his gavel. “You will respect the board,” he told the roughly 200 people who had just released a collective groan. A vote was pending to rezone land for a controversial rock quarry, proposed for a 498-acre tract in Hamptonville — and it didn’t appear to be going the residents’ way.
Yadkin County residents dig in for a fight against a proposed mine near homes, elementary school
After living all over North Carolina, Terry and Joyce Long finally came home. In 2020, they bought a tract of land in Hamptonville adjacent to property that had been in Joyce’s family for five generations. Joyce grew up in this Yadkin County town of just 6,100 people, and now she and Terry could raise their four children here, a quiet, rural idyll of forests and farms and night skies that light up with stars.