Ward discusses why the towns of Davidson, Cornelius, and Huntersville of northern Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, were opposed to county consolidation plans in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Ward argues that because of their distance from Charlotte, the most populous area of the county, the residents of these three towns worried that rural areas would be overlooked in the distribution of resources. Nevertheless, they did see the benefits of consolidation in terms of efficiency and were considering their own consolidation, apart from that of the county at large.