Yadkin College, NC

Yadkin College is a Davidson County census-designated place nine miles northwest of Lexington, on the wooded bluff above the Yadkin River. The 2020 census counted 377 residents. Despite its name, the community is not in Yadkin County; the river forms the nearby county boundary and gives the place its name. U.S. 64 and Koontz Road provide the main approach, with the old village spread across hillsides, fields, and woods.

The college opened in 1856 as Yadkin Institute, a Methodist Protestant school for young men, and was rechartered as Yadkin College in 1861. It closed during the Civil War, resumed classes in 1867, admitted women in 1878, and continued through several academic forms until the campus closed in 1924. The Yadkin College Historic District includes the 1856 college building, houses from the late nineteenth century, a church, cemetery, and former school sites. Yadkin College is a small river community whose built landscape still holds the outline of an ambitious school town.