Hickory, in Catawba County and in Burke County, was named for the Hickory Tavern, built in the 1790s. In 1870, the city was incorporated, and the name changed to exclude the word Tavern. The Free Academy, Hickory's first school, was founded in 1868, and Highland Academy, later known as Lenoir-Rhyne College, was founded in 1891. The site of the worst outbreak of polio ever, Hickory was the site of a march of Dimes polio hospital in 1944. This hospital, known as the Miracle of Hickory, took 54 hours between the time the idea was had and the time the hospital was treating its first patients.
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