Image: Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Willets, NC

Description: The Mount Pleasant Baptist Church is the most recognizable structure in the community of Willets, located along US Highway 74 between Sylva and Balsam. Constructed around the turn of the 20th Century, the charming wood-frame church was built at a time when Willets was a thriving railroad stop, with a post office, three-room schoolhouse, and several stores and businesses around the railroad depot, as well as a sawmill, founded by the area’s namesake, A.P. Willets, which provided an economic driver to the area. However, the area’s fortunes declined during the Great Depression, as the lumber industry and the local economy took a big blow. The post office was closed in 1934, followed by the local Schoolhouse in 1951, which further accelerated the decline of the area. Today, the Mount Pleasant Church is one of only a few structures remaining from the area’s heyday, with a few houses and two old stores still standing, and is a minor landmark to travelers on the four high-speed lanes of US Highway 74, whom often don’t give it or the community where it is located a second thought.
Title: Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Willets, NC
Credit: Own work
Author: Warren LeMay
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes