Miracle of Hickory Park

Featuring the Hickory Music Factory, an outdoor basketball court, playground, and the Miracle of Hickory Memorial Garden.

This park is the former site of Hickory’s historic polio hospital. In 1944, a polio epidemic spread across Western North Carolina. In rapid response, the Hickory community rallied together to construct an emergency hospital to treat infantile paralysis, or polio. The hospital was conceived and built within just 54 hours; experienced one of the lowest mortality rates in the country thanks in part to the revolutionary Kenny method of treatment; and was integrated, accepting patients of all races, during a time of segregation.  These events became known as the “Miracle of Hickory.”