EERILY EMPTY Old Western Ghost Town Of Love Valley NC: No Cars Allowed-Cowboy Capital

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]And today, my adventure begins right here at the corner of Highway 64 and Highway 901, just outside of the small North Carolina town of Mocksville, which if you did not know, is the hometown of three-time Super Bowl winning champion coach for the Washington Redskins, Coach Joe Gibbs. A lot of people don't know that and I just thought I wanted to just put that out there. My goodness, that is a lot of stuff, isn't it?

[00:00:29]Look at all this stuff. A lot of it just looks to be just farm equipment.

[00:00:35]So good morning, my friends. Welcome back to the channel Hitch Hiking Yeti here. I'm so excited today. Why? Because I'm going to take you along with me to this little old abandoned, eerily empty ghost town.

[00:00:54]A western town on top of that and no cars allowed, only horse and buggy is allowed down Main Street in town.

[00:01:03]But unfortunately, this town has really went downhill over the last decade. It has had all kinds of water issues and like sewer issues and it has caused a lot of the the little stores and the saloon and stuff like that in the in this western town to close down. I can remember this town back in the '90s and even the early 2000s, for that matter, being a just packed God with people having a good time, especially if you like horseback riding.

[00:01:33]That is what Love Valley is all about.

[00:01:35]It is about cowboying up. And it was a thriving place, but it has really fallen on hard times. I've made several videos there um over the years and each year I always like to try to go there and do just a check-up visit, just to see if anything's changed and see what's happening. And that's what we're going to be doing today. We're going to be driving over through North Iredell and and making our way over to Love Valley. And on the way, I do want to just kind of show you some of the the old farmsteads along the way that is growing up. They're abandoned. This used to be a very prominent farming community, like dairy, hog farming, chicken, tobacco raising, all that kind of stuff used to be a big thing through the '50s, '60s, and even into the '70s.

[00:02:23]And then as the '80s came along, I think from what I read about a little bit of the history of this place, even I grew up very close to here. My my mother's side of family, you know, was raised and they grew up in northern Iredell and and and did a little bit of farming of their own. And um but it has really went downhill mainly because of prices of land going up and then the big farms, the big like people that had, you know, thousands and thousands of cows and thousands of hogs, you could not compete with their prices.

[00:02:55]So, a lot of the small farms started kind of dwindling out through the '80s and into the '90s. And uh there's definitely some relics left behind over there we're going to go check out as we drive toward Love Valley. All that being said, I know this is a very lengthy intro.

[00:03:10]Thanks for hanging out with me today. I really do appreciate it. We'll probably don't have to stop and get us a coffee on our way. I do think there's a gas station, like a 7-Eleven. We're going to have to go score us a coffee because it's Sun just rose about 30 minutes ago.

[00:03:23]So, I'm definitely needed some coffee.

[00:03:25]Let's go ahead and get started. Let's have a good day today. This is going to be a awesome morning, I do believe.

[00:03:31]Now, this is some of the stuff that I'm talking about here. Look how grown up this is.

[00:03:36]There is a old farmstead home right beyond all that green foliage. You can see it in there, but this is what I'm talking about. This part of the county is pretty wild.

[00:03:49]How the old farmhouses, a lot of them have just kind of wilted away, you know?

[00:03:59]And just right next door to that farmhouse is another one that's well on its way to being grown up, probably very similar.

[00:04:06]You know, look at that big old porch that place had. That was awesome.

[00:04:11]Right back there in that greenery is a old looks like a single wide trailer, some more structures back there. That was probably where tenants would work, you know, people that help run the farm.

[00:04:23]That was probably their home.

[00:04:25]And sometimes when you think you've seen it all, you find somebody has actually got a old payphone booth in their front yard.

[00:04:34]Look at these pretty horses out here.

[00:04:36]Hey, good morning.

[00:04:39]How you doing?

[00:04:42]I love animals.

[00:04:44]And right here is another little piece of property.

[00:04:49]Some old barns, all grown up, nature taking it back over.

[00:04:55]And look at these old silos right here.

[00:05:06]Now, this right here is a real gem.

[00:05:09]Jones Grocery.

[00:05:11]My grandma, my mom, they used to go in there and buy sausage, like breakfast sausage, from time to time.

[00:05:18]But unfortunately, it's been closed down for nearly two decades now. And that old Coke machine out front looks pretty rustic. That's probably all original.

[00:05:28]But yeah, a lot of the farmers here in the area, especially hog farmers, used to sell their meats to that store.

[00:05:37]Oh man, that is so good. Look at that classic truck and that old Flying Service sign right there.

[00:05:45]That is awesome.

[00:05:48]That is definitely a relic.

[00:05:51]Oh, what do we have here?

[00:05:54]Look at this old Gulf gas station right here.

[00:06:01]Oh my gosh, that's awesome. Look at these old pumps.

[00:06:05]That is awesome.

[00:06:07]Man, there is all kinds of hidden treasures from the past here in North Iredell.

[00:06:17]And that's what I've been doing today.

[00:06:18]I've just been kind of hitting little side roads off of Highway 901.

[00:06:24]Just checking out areas that looks, you know, kind of farmish.

[00:06:29]>> [laughter] >> And just finding all kinds of little neat stuff.

[00:06:36]So now I'm about to get back on 901 and we're going to make our way a little bit further to the uh northwest out 901 into the small community of Union Grove, North Carolina.

[00:06:51]Okay, and this is the town of Union Grove. And right here is the famous Burger Barn.

[00:06:57]I actually showed that place off one time in one of my snow videos.

[00:07:03]And we're going to kind of pull in right here at this Exxon 7-Eleven.

[00:07:09]And I'm going to pick up a item that I need.

[00:07:12]And that's it. We have coffee.

[00:07:15]The world's a better place now.

[00:07:18]So as I'm driving along here, I do want to let you know, not everybody is hurting financially in these areas. Even though there's some abandoned places, there's some really nice places, too. As a matter of fact, this property right here with this white picket fence and this gate, this here used to be the property of NASCAR driver, Jamie McMurray.

[00:07:40]And uh you got to go back into the 2000s when he bought this property and fixed it up. Right there is the front gate.

[00:07:46]But uh yeah, old Jamie Mac used to live right there.

[00:07:52]And not too far from Jamie McMurray's old house, notice this fence line right here. Pretty fancy, right? Very long.

[00:07:59]Look at the rock work on these pillars.

[00:08:02]This right here was Jamie's well, half car owner.

[00:08:07]This was Felix Sabates's property.

[00:08:11]He owned all this. And he's got a mansion built way back over that hill you can see on Google Maps.

[00:08:17]And uh he's actually sold this place. I don't think he owns it anymore, but it took a long time for him to sell it. But when Jamie McMurray was driving for Felix Sabates and I think Chip Ganassi, they was partnerships. But that's when the driver of Jamie Mac and Felix both lived in these areas. So it had to be back in the mid-2000s.

[00:08:44]And what a gate. Look at the gate.

[00:08:49]I got to kind of move quick because somebody's, you know, right behind me.

[00:08:55]Okay, so I made my way over here to the corner of Wilkesboro Highway and Mountain View Road.

[00:09:01]And right here is the signage for the town of Love Valley.

[00:09:06]Cowboy Capital.

[00:09:09]Right there. And you can go to www.lovevalley.com for more information. Established in 1954.

[00:09:18]So let's hit on out here.

[00:09:22]All right.

[00:09:24]And I have made it up here to Love Valley, North Carolina.

[00:09:29]And uh yeah.

[00:09:32]This is kind of what we're going to be looking at today. Look at this old place right here.

[00:09:36]This here at one time was known as the Blacksmith Cove. Vacation in comfort house cabin for rent right here and I would imagine probably no one has stayed in this structure in in quite some time.

[00:09:53]So, the next thing I want to do is walk down the street.

[00:09:57]And as you can see they do have a parking area here.

[00:10:01]And this is where you park your vehicle and then you just walk straight right there.

[00:10:05]And that enters you into the downtown main street area and that is where there is no cars allowed. It is only horseback, wagon, carriages, things like that that are allowed in the town limits.

[00:10:20]And they do have accommodations here still.

[00:10:23]Miss Kitty and it says they got vacancy.

[00:10:28]And it is open.

[00:10:29]So, they do have a place here as a some type of a hotel that you can stay at if you want to visit the area and maybe do some horseback riding. And there is the famous sign of Love Valley.

[00:10:42]Ain't that cool? Look at this place.

[00:10:49]This place is so awesome.

[00:10:51]Check out this sign right here. Town of Love Valley, no motorized vehicles on Main Street, no open containers or referring to alcohol, no horses on the boardwalks.

[00:11:06]And you can definitely see some hoof prints. So, there have been people here riding horses here recently.

[00:11:14]Just have to watch where we step because you know, horses do tend to defecate from time to time and lots of it.

[00:11:24]So, Love Valley is one of the most unusual towns here in North Carolina, a real life cowboy town tucked into the brushy mountains of Iredell County, founded in 1954 by a contractor and dreamer by the name of Andy Barker.

[00:11:44]The town was built to look and feel like a real Old West frontier settlement.

[00:11:48]Barker loved Western movies as a child and wanted to create a Christian cowboy community where horses, not cars, ruled the streets.

[00:12:00]And speaking of Andy Barker, look at this sign right here.

[00:12:05]Love Valley, a cowboy and a cowgirl dream come true.

[00:12:11]Created by And right there it is.

[00:12:17]There's the creator, Andy Barker.

[00:12:19]Awesome. I just noticed the seating out here. That is definitely from a church church pew that they're using.

[00:12:27]Right here's a cool little share-a-book library.

[00:12:34]Which I recently heard a horror story about one of those share-a-book libraries.

[00:12:42]Somebody told me they they went and and and grabbed a book out of it and took it home.

[00:12:50]And they got bed bugs from the book. Oh my god, that would be terrible. That would be absolutely terrible. Which is my wife says I'm just going to donate my books. I'm not going to be taking no more books out of those, but it did happen. I've never thought about that before. Have you ever heard of anything like that before? Absolutely crazy.

[00:13:10]So, the first structure built here in Love Valley was the church, which is right across the way there, right there in the center of the screen.

[00:13:19]And it showed how important faith was to the Barker's vision.

[00:13:24]Soon after came the rodeo arena, which is located right here. You can actually see some of the seating down there.

[00:13:32]And uh there's actually people down there right now on horseback kind of showing somebody maybe a child how to ride for the first time, which is really cool. Love Valley officially became an incorporated town in 1963, which leads us into the next big thing and it has something to do with this awesome rodeo arena right here. And it has nothing to do with rodeoing. So, as we look at the arena seating right here, Love Valley also became nationally known in 1970 when it hosted the Love Valley Rock Festival, a massive music event that headlined by the Allman Brothers. Tens of thousands of hippies and music fans flooded the tiny cowboy town.

[00:14:14]Local residents were shocked by the crowds and the festival become part of North Carolina folklore. So, some of you might be wondering is how does this cowboy town end up with a rock festival?

[00:14:28]And if I remember correctly, it's been a while since I've read the story, but if I remember correctly, Andy Barker's daughter, you know, this is 1970, so Woodstock had just happened and she wanted to go to Woodstock and he was like, "Oh, no, you ain't going to that craziness."

[00:14:47]So, to kind of make it up to her, and it might even been for her birthday if I recall, possibly, he said, "We just have a little music festival here. Won't be You know, he wasn't planning on like it being ginormous like what it ended up being."

[00:15:01]But, he ended up having this little music festival and there was already some kind of big music event going on down south somewhere, maybe in Georgia.

[00:15:10]And and I'm just going off the cusp here.

[00:15:13]And this is just a rough outline of of how the story went, but I will definitely put a link down the description below to my other Love Valley videos where I think I covered a little bit better in that one because I was studied up on it, but um they the Allman Brothers got wind of it.

[00:15:29]They come and when they come being a big band like they were, other bands from that same event just followed them.

[00:15:35]It was just another reason to have another party.

[00:15:38]And and uh maybe use drugs and have a good time. That's what they did back then those hippie days. So, uh all those people showed up here and instead of just friends of the family showing up, all this green, there's some photos online. I try to dig them up, but all this area this grass area up in these woods over here, the woods looked a lot different back then. That was all people. Just thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I mean, it was straight up insanity.

[00:16:05]And I remember reading stories about the people living here in Love Valley. They didn't know what to think about it because hippies were everywhere. They were people camping out in people's yards.

[00:16:18]They were people There's a pond over here on the way to the church. They were out there skinny dipping in the pond, taking baths and stuff. I mean, it was free love, baby, right here in cowboy town.

[00:16:30]Okay, so I made it up the hill from the rodeo arena. I wanted to show you right through this little archway right here.

[00:16:37]And this here is the town itself.

[00:16:41]So, it's not a very big town, but I did want to show you that arena real quick.

[00:16:47]And this right here to the right, I used to have friends. They were into riding horses and stuff and their families were big horse riders.

[00:16:56]And I remember them telling all kind of interesting stories about their times here at the Silver Spur Saloon.

[00:17:04]And uh I think it got pretty wild here in this old building from time to time.

[00:17:09]People partying, dancing, you know, cowboying it up in there.

[00:17:17]Yeah, but not no more.

[00:17:20]It is very dormant.

[00:17:24]You can see all the the hitching posts, I think they call these.

[00:17:28]All through town here where people would tie their horses up as they went inside and went in these little shops and things like that, got some food, drinks.

[00:17:41]Interesting times.

[00:17:43]One of the town's most famous features is the automobiles are largely banned from Main Street.

[00:17:52]Visitors often ride horses through town or travel by wagon making it feel like stepping into a Western movie set.

[00:18:01]Rodeos, trail rides, horse camping became major attractions over the years and Love Valley earned the nickname Cowboy Capital of North Carolina.

[00:18:18]Other than dog barking from time to time, it's very quiet. So, over the decades the town attracted celebrities, politicians, and Western enthusiasts.

[00:18:29]Barker himself even ran for governor of North Carolina twice. Despite modern changes, Love Valley has an intentionally kept its rustic Western appearance. Many visitors today still come for horseback riding, rodeos, camping, nostalgic feeling of the Old West.

[00:18:50]Just like we're doing today.

[00:18:52]Not a big horse person. I think they're beautiful creatures.

[00:18:56]Just not crazy about riding them, but I do like coming up here looking at this old Western town. Kind of walk around here to the front. Might peek into the window of the now said church.

[00:19:07]And uh wouldn't be a fun video if we didn't get into some of the numbers of this town that I have pulled.

[00:19:14]And uh so let's go ahead and get into the numbers of population.

[00:19:19]Populations here in Love Valley is 122 souls.

[00:19:23]And the median age is 55.

[00:19:27]4 Let's walk over here and take a little peek inside [snorts] the church.

[00:19:38]That's what it looks like. There you go.

[00:19:41]It's cute. So with this church being here, I wonder if they're still using the original church that we're going to go to see in a little bit.

[00:19:50]This church is called Grace Church.

[00:19:52]I guess on Sundays at 9:30 if you show up you can go in and uh and enjoy the sermon.

[00:20:01]So now we're going to look at demographics.

[00:20:04]96.61% is white.

[00:20:08]3.39% is American Indian.

[00:20:13]And then when we look at the income index, income per capita here in Love Valley is 26,609 which is quite a bit below North Carolina and the national average.

[00:20:25]And then the median household income is only 31,813 dollars.

[00:20:31]And as you can see that is well below the 71,390 of North Carolina and the 81,333 of the national.

[00:20:42]Scroll down a bit to the bottom and we see the poverty level here is quite high. 34.7% well above North Carolina and the national average.

[00:20:54]Now let's look at crime. Crime here in Love Valley is 3,514 per 100k will experience a crime. Or that also the best way to look at that is 3.5 people out of 1,000 will actually experience a crime.

[00:21:11]When we look at that in percentages, you can see total crime is 66% above the national average.

[00:21:18]Violent crime is 57% above the national average.

[00:21:22]And property crime is 68% above the national average.

[00:21:28]So, I walked up here onto the porch at the Silver Spur.

[00:21:32]Looking at some of these signage they have up here. Cowboys Place.

[00:21:37]Well, come on in.

[00:21:40]Check this one out.

[00:21:42]Public drunkenness prohibited.

[00:21:48]I bet that was an issue from time to time. I used to hear that. I don't know how true it was, but you know how it is.

[00:21:54]Spitting on the sidewalk prohibited.

[00:21:58]Penalty $5 to $100.

[00:22:04]Department of Health.

[00:22:06]All right. So, I just spoke to a local and I asked him I said, "When did they change this into a church?" And he said it's just been recently.

[00:22:16]He said this used to be the town jail.

[00:22:19]In matter of fact, the old bars for the jail are in this little museum over here. And he said we were we were more than welcome to go in and go check it out. So, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

[00:22:32]Let's go see what we can see.

[00:22:34]He just opened it. Awesome.

[00:22:37]1985 Okay. So, we are in the museum now.

[00:22:43]They got some old photos of Love Valley from the years.

[00:22:49]Some Some of the cowboy events.

[00:22:51]All right. There's some people locked up in the jail.

[00:22:55]>> [laughter] >> That is so cool.

[00:23:00]>> [snorts] >> Now, I don't know you a lot of these people that are in these photos. I'm sure they're very prominent people to the community.

[00:23:09]Jet Barker benefit rodeo event to benefit a sick man.

[00:23:17]And right here is the bars for the jail that the gentleman outside talking to me was telling me about.

[00:23:24]Two sets of them.

[00:23:27]Yeah, that's cool.

[00:23:30]Pretty awesome.

[00:23:38]Interesting I thought went up from a distance when I seen this gentleman right here. There used to be a character on TV when I was growing up called They could name I think his name was Fred Kirby.

[00:23:48]And I he had a TV show on like Saturdays, I believe, or Sunday mornings. I can't remember which, but I seen this white He used to have like this red jacket on or something that had these white, you know, little decorative designs on it very similar to that. Okay, so this is really cool. Look right here it is the Love Valley thing.

[00:24:08]Love Valley Rock Festival, July 16th-18th, 1970.

[00:24:15]Look at the dang streets. Look at all those hippies.

[00:24:19]Oh my gosh.

[00:24:21]That is awesome.

[00:24:24]Holy and they was even selling t-shirts.

[00:24:27]How cool is that?

[00:24:29]If you was ever going to make a western style movie, this would be a great set to use. It's kind of cool for me a just a country boy from North Carolina able to walk through a old western style town like this.

[00:24:45]The old board planks, >> [snorts] >> old boardwalk like this. I mean, it sounds cool when these guys are here in their cowboy boots changing along, clickety-clack.

[00:24:57]It's awesome. You can't find places like this just anywhere.

[00:25:02]They're special. So, that would pretty much conclude our little tour through the town of Love Valley, North Carolina.

[00:25:07]And I got to admit, for the first time in several years, I definitely feel like things are heading the right direction here. I see I've seen some improvements today. And the most important thing, I seen a little bit of life today being breathed back into this little community. So, hopefully they're getting some things turned around. I'm sure that would make Andy Barker very, very happy.

[00:25:29]And speaking of Andy Barker, we are going to head over to the original structure that started this whole town off, the church. And then we're going to wrap up our vlog today.

[00:25:39]I've had a great morning. It's been a lot of fun. I hope you guys have enjoyed learning a little bit about this little old Western town. They do not make them like this every day. So, I thought this would be a fun little you know, fun little road trip to come over here and check out Love Valley, North Carolina once again and just keep up with the improvements and some of the things that are happening here.

[00:25:59]So, let's go ahead and make our way over to the church now.

[00:26:02]And by the way, I really appreciate you watching. Thank you so much. I hope you have enjoyed today's video. And just right when I leave, there's some horseback riders riding in the town.

[00:26:14]How cool is that?

[00:26:17]Okay, so earlier we was talking about the hippies bathing in a pond and skinny dipping and so on and so forth. This is the pond.

[00:26:26]This was the pond that I was referring to, right there.

[00:26:30]>> [laughter] >> Get them dang hippies out of here.

[00:26:36]All right, welcome to the church here in Love Valley. This is the first building that they built here.

[00:26:44]And this here is called the Love Valley Presbyterian Church. And this old church is got quite the rustic look, but very well taken care of considering the age and how few people are in this town now.

[00:26:59]I'm not even sure if they still have services here every Sunday or not, but I like to think so.

[00:27:07]But as we wrap things up today, we can walk over here and you can see the grave site of the Barkers.

[00:27:16]Andy Barker is buried right here next to his his wife.

[00:27:21]And I think that other grave might be his son.

[00:27:24]But right here I think is Andy Barker. It actually says Geter Andrew Barker Jr.

[00:27:32]He was a World War II veteran in the army.

[00:27:36]July 4th, 1924 is when he was born and he died on August 11th, 2011.

[00:27:43]Says great hopes make great men.

[00:27:48]And then this right here, I believe is his wife.

[00:27:51]And she just passed away in 2018 and she was also a World War II veteran.

[00:27:59]Loving wife, mother, and grandmother.

[00:28:04]And then right over here is Geter Andrew Barker the third, which his nickname was just Jet.

[00:28:12]True goodness springs from a man's own heart.

[00:28:17]Died August 2nd, 1981.

[00:28:23]And off in the distance there I don't know if you guys can really tell it, but that right there is the rodeo arena. That's where we was located on that hillside earlier and all that valley right there was where the big rock festival was held back in 1970.

[00:28:42]That still cracks me up just to think about that. All right, my friends, I think that is going to pretty much do it for me today.

[00:28:48]They might be fixing to have a little something up here at this church because they're about three cars showed up since I've been here.

[00:28:55]So, I want to go ahead and vacate the premise and uh not look like such an outsider.

[00:29:01]>> [laughter] >> All that being said, friends, thank you so much for watching. Until next time, I am the Hitchhiking Yeti, and I'll see you in my next adventure.

[00:29:08]Y'all stay safe, and hope to see you all again soon.

[00:29:12]And so long from very beautiful, quiet Love Valley, North Carolina.

[00:29:21]It's been a good one today.