Laurinburg is a city in and the county seat of Scotland County, North Carolina, United States. Located in southern North Carolina near the South Carolina border, Laurinburg is southwest of Fayetteville and is house to St. Andrews University. The Laurinburg Institute, a historically African-American school, is as well as located in Laurinburg. The population at the 2010 Census was 15,962 people.

Settlers arrived at the gift town site not far and wide off from 1785. The unity was named for a prominent family, the McLaurins. The reveal was originally spelled Laurinburgh and pronounced the similar as Edinburgh, though the “h” was cutting edge dropped. The community was initially located within the jurisdiction of Richmond County. In 1840, Laurinburg had a saloon, a store, and a few shacks. Laurinburg High School, a private school, was acknowledged in 1852. The deal prospered in the years following. A origin of the Wilmington, Charlotte and Rutherford Railroad was built through Laurinburg in the 1850s, with the first train reaching Laurinburg in 1861. The railroad’s shops were moved to Laurinburg in 1865 in the hope they would be safer from Union Army attack; however, in March of that year, Union forces reached Laurinburg and burned the railroad depot and interim shops. The shops were difficult rebuilt. Laurinburg was incorporated in 1877. In 1894 the railway shops were moved out of the town and, combined similar to low cotton prices, property values in the Place decreased and the town experienced an economic depression.

By the late 1800s Richmond County had a majority black population and tended to withhold the Republican Party in elections, while the make a clean breast of North Carolina was dominated by the Democratic Party. As a upshot of this, white Democrats built stirring a political base in Laurinburg and in 1899 the town and the surrounding Place was split off from Richmond into the extra Scotland County. The town was declared the seat of Scotland County in 1900 and the first courthouse was erected the once year. As their assume in public affairs and part of public resources declined, local black citizens created the Laurinburg Normal Industrial Institute, later known as Laurinburg Academy, in 1904.

Main Street in Laurinburg was paved in 1914. Beginning in 1929, the Great Depression intensely impacted Laurinburg, causing two banks to fail. A other courthouse was built in 1964. Laurinburg’s downtown suffered an economic end beginning in the 1980s taking into consideration the Belk department store moved to a shopping center further away. The downtown was heavily impacted by Hurricane Florence in 2018.