Winston-Salem City Info

Winston-Salem is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Winston-Salem is the county seat and largest city of Forsyth County and the fourth-largest city in the state. Winston-Salem is the second largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region and is home to one of the tallest office buildings in the region, such as 100 North Main Street.

It is called the “Twin City” for its dual heritage, or “Camel City”, a reference to Camel cigarettes and the city’s prominent tobacco industry; many locals use “Winston” in informal speech. Other city nicknames include “The Dash,” which is the name of the city’s minor league baseball team and refers to the hyphen between “Winston” and “Salem”.  ”Winston” was named after American Pioneer and Revolutionary War hero, Colonel Joseph Winston in 1849.  ”Salem”, meaning “peace,” was given its name in 1766 by the early Moravian settlers.  The two towns became one city in 1913.

Winston-Salem is home to three universities and one college: Wake Forest University, a nationally distinguished private university, Winston-Salem State University, a historically-black university founded in 1892, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Salem College, a four-year liberal arts college for women.

In 2003, the previous Greensboro – Winston-Salem – High Point metropolitan statistical area (MSA) was re-defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, resulting in the formation of the Greensboro-High Point MSA and the Winston-Salem MSA. The 2009 population estimate for the Winston-Salem, NC MSA was 484,921. The Greensboro – Winston-Salem – High Point combined statistical area (CSA), popularly referred to as the Piedmont Triad, had an estimated population of 1,581,122 in 2009 making it the 30th largest metropolitan area in the USA. Source: US Bureau of the Census, Annual Estimates of the Population Table CBSA-EST2007-02