WARREN COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) -- Most people have never heard of a free-standing community. It's a town that is built entirely from scratch quite literally from the ground up. Even more don't know the first free-standing community in our country was started right here in North Carolina. Although the project was never fully realized, the infrastructure put in place in the beginning stages made way for an entire region to thrive today. ‘Soul City’: Civil rights leader tried to create rural utopia in North Carolina over 50 years ago Something as simple as running water in Warren County is a daily reminder of the thriving city that Floyd McKissick Sr. got so close to making a reality. He came up with the idea to start a brand new town that would be what he felt was the answer to rural out-migration and economic opportunity for all people but especially disenfranchised people of color. He called it Soul City. Dr. Charmaine McKissick Melton is the youngest daughter of Floyd McKissick Sr. She remembers the early days of the town her father developed. She was a teenager when her father moved the entire family from New York City to Warren County to start the town. "I moved to a mobile home on a dirt road in Warren County," McKissick-Melton said.  "Soul City was proposed to be a city of approximately 50,000 people ... planned over a period of 20 or 30 years with each village having its own school, community center, depending on the size." Construction started in 1974. At the time, Warren County was pretty much empty. Very few homes and businesses were there, and no schools were there. The location that would become the brand-new Soul City had no running water, but McKissick Sr. saw a diamond in the rough. "Warren County was chosen because of ... its location. The seaboard coastline railroad ran through the property. US 1 abutted the property. We were probably three miles from Interstate 85 the Manson exit. Kerr Lake, the source of our water, was probably four miles away, and we were in driving distance of probably 1/3 of the country's population: New York, Chicago, St. Louis," said Lew Myers, former director of marketing for Soul City. The location had its perks, but there was still much work to be done to make the land livable. Water was the priority for McKissick and the developers. They collaborated with the neighboring cities of Oxford and Henderson to build a $13 million regional water system, pulling water from nearby Kerr Lake. "That water system continues to provide water to the region today. It's opened up that entire region to growth and development. It's one of the legacies of Soul City," said Floyd McKissick Jr., the former director of planning for Soul City and son of McKissick Sr. "It's one of those significant and prevalent projects that people do not understand would not exist if it were not for Soul City." The plant is still standing and functional today, providing water to portions of Vance, Granville, Warren and Franklin Counties. Once Soul City had water, development started flowing as well. It was long and often complicated work. "I was laying out the roads, water systems, making certain where underground electric was provided for, what the subdivisions would look like, where we would put recreational facilities, working on the contracts and design of those recreational facilities. All of the details that were necessary to create a community," McKissick Jr. said. Between 1974 and 1977, they built the first and only recreation center in Warren County. It was equipped with a community swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and picnicking areas. They built the first subdivision: the Green Duke subdivision. It was named after and built around the historic Green Duke House, which is the original house from the plantation that was there in the 1800s. There were roughly 65 lots and homes in the Green Duke subdivision. They built an industrial facility that served as the headquarters for Soul City company and office space. They also built a brand new healthcare facility that opened in 1976 called Healthco. It was the only healthcare facility in the county. People could go there to receive medical and dental care for little to no cost.  As the executive director of the Soul City Foundation, it was Eva Clayton's responsibility to get Healthco off the ground. "It wasn't even just for Warren County. We had patients coming from Vance County and other places," Clayton said. Healthco outlasted Soul City by decades and shut down in the early 2000s. Like many of the original Soul City structures, the Healthco building remains standing today. It's now under new ownership. All of that infrastructure paved the way for surrounding cities to flourish. The Soul City recreation center is still open and operational, and many of the homes in the Green Duke subdivision are occupied. "The advantage of having placed that infrastructure allowed for potential growth not just for Soul City but for Warren County and Vance County as well as now Franklin County. So there's been a continuous value of what Soul City started," Clayton said. The Kerr Lake Regional Water Plant is currently undergoing a major renovation, and the new owners of the Healthco building are hoping to revitalize and repurpose it for the use of Soul City residents.