Kannapolis

… city in S Rowan and N Cabarrus Counties. Alt. 765. Until inc. in 1984, it was the seventeenth-largest unincorporated community in the United States and the largest in North Carolina. James William Cannon bought 600 acres there along the Southern Railway tracks in 1905; there he built houses and a mill, which began production in 1908. Cannon Mills, noted for manufacture of towels, was there. Since 2008 the site of North Carolina Research Campus, with focus on nutrition. The name comes from a form of the Cannon family name plus polis, the Greek word for city.