Miracle on the Haw: controlled by the Jordan family since 1927, Saxapahaw shifts from a mill village to a mix of urban cool and small-town spirit.

• Author: Dodson, Jim
• Position: Town Square

The funny thing is," Heather LaGarde says with a laugh, "we don't officially exist as a town, or even a village. We're really just a good idea." As twilight settles over tiny Saxapahaw (population 1,700), a restored mill town set in a bucolic bend of the Haw River in southern Alamance County, you'd have no disagreement from the 700 or so folks converging for the evening--some settling with picnics on blankets on a grassy hillside across from the mill, while others roam the thriving business district for "Saturdays in Saxapahaw." The summertime celebration, which runs May to September, is equal parts upscale farmers market and free folk festival.

At the village's popular General Store, which calls itself a "five-star gas station," customers queue up a dozen deep for gourmet takeout or poke around aisles displaying everything from locally made heirloom applesauce to organic yogurt, giant Marconi peppers to a wall of regional wines and beers. The mill's new butcher shop, gastropub and artisan brewery are doing their customary brisk weekend business as well, serving a unusually democratic crowd that includes everyone from families with kids to elderly farm couples, Durham hipsters to daytripping kayakers.

Not bad for a "good idea" that, indeed, has no legal corporate or village boundaries or official municipal status. There's no mayor, village council, property taxes or public works department--only a nearby volunteer fire department and a populist army of local volunteers who dig Saxapahaw's old-fashioned ethos. Longtime locals recall a time when Alamance County's government had little awareness that the tiny place even existed. But like a southern Brigadoon that aims to preserve its traditional values with fiddles, food and fellowship, the "Miracle on the Haw," as some have called this populist revival, is a truly homegrown affair.

Had you stumbled just a few years ago into the sleepy mill village named after the Sissipahaw Indians that once made the area home, you'd have found a strikingly handsome brick mill that once produced cotton fabric for the Confederate army but had been sitting empty since losing a bout with a tornado in 1994. Local real-estate developer Mac Jordan --grandson of late U.S. Sen. B. Everett Jordan--set out to revitalize the village by restoring the historic mill his family had owned since 1927 ("Runs in the family," April 2013). Jordan, who grew up in Saxapahaw, eventually enlisted the help of Heather LaGarde and her...