Wade, NC

Wade is a Cumberland County town in northeastern North Carolina, with 638 residents in the 2020 census. U.S. 301 runs through the town between Fayetteville and Dunn, about twelve miles in either direction, while the Cape Fear River lies to the west. The town’s roads move through flat coastal-plain fields and old church country, with Interstate 95 close enough to tie Wade into the wider Fayetteville and Sandhills travel map. The nearby river and long-established congregations give the highway town a deeper local setting.

The deepest local landmark is Old Bluff Presbyterian Church, northeast of town on Old Bluff Church Road. Its congregation was organized in 1758, making it the first Presbyterian congregation in Cumberland County, and the present building dates to about 1858. The church’s spring and the nearby Cape Fear River preserve the landscape that drew Scottish settlers into the region. Wade is a North Carolina town where a colonial-era congregation, a river road, a historic spring, U.S. 301, and the Fayetteville–Dunn corridor meet.