04/26/2020
BLACKANKLE, Montgomery County North Carolina
There are three communities in North Carolina that have this unusual name, Cleveland, Robeson, and this one in Montgomery and this one is not even on the atlas. Located on Blackankle Road, they do have a sign marking the site and the former Blackankle Country Store building is still there but the sign is gone. Located 10 miles from Troy and west of highway 220, it is a half mile from the Randolph County line and three miles from the Moore County line. All three Blackankles have different origins as to how they were named and one is that local gold miners would go into town with dirt on their ankles and no shoes and they were easily picked out among the people in town and were called 'blackankles'. Another is that the local soil is so dark that farmers would get their feet dirty brown when plowing and another is from the fact that local moon shiners would set fire to local brush to distract the law from finding their stills and their feet got black from all the ash they walked through. The Blackankle Bog Preserve is located near here in Montgomery County and that is a historic and natural site of 284 acres owned by The Nature Preserve. (2042)