Badin, NC

Badin is a town in Stanly County at the southern end of Badin Lake, below the Uwharrie Mountains. The 2020 Census counted 2,024 residents. In 1913, the French company L’Aluminium Français began building a dam at the Narrows of the Yadkin River and planned a town for the aluminum workers and engineers. The town was named for company president Adrien Badin; in 1915, the unfinished project passed to Aluminum Company of America, later Alcoa. Narrows Dam was completed in 1917, and Alcoa’s Badin Works operated at the site until 2002.

Badin’s streets still show that industrial beginning. French Colonial houses, apartment blocks, company buildings, and rock-lined drainage channels sit within the Badin Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1983. The Badin Museum keeps the aluminum story close to town, while the lake landing, beaches, Uwharrie National Forest, and nearby Morrow Mountain State Park connect the old power project to present-day recreation. Badin is a place where a planned company town, a working dam, and a lake community occupy the same small map.