Tabor City, NC

Tabor City sits at the southern tip of Columbus County, just north of the South Carolina line and roughly 30 miles from North Myrtle Beach. The 2020 census counted 3,781 residents. Its place in the Carolina Border Belt comes from farming and produce: tobacco markets, warehouses, sweet-potato work, and the roads that bring growers in from both states. US 701 runs through the town, giving the commercial center a direct north-south connection toward Whiteville and the coast. The North Carolina Yam Festival is the town's signature gathering, held each October and now more than 75 years old.

The old train depot becomes a small museum during festival season, while the restored 1870 Tabor Schoolhouse keeps an earlier rural school in view. South Columbus High School and Tabor City Elementary keep education in the town's daily mix, and the library serves as the festival headquarters in fall. Tabor City is a farm-market town with a beach-route address, where the crop calendar and the October festival still bring the wider border region into town.