Night Kayaking, Fireworks, and Margaritas

Minutes from the Grand Strand Awaits a Slower Pace

Hog Inlet

Little River, SC

Get away from the hustle and bustle of South Carolina's Grand Strand and enjoy the history and natural beauty of Little River. There is an abundance of serene places to stop and take in the coastal southern charm. The town is just north of Myrtle Beach at the North Carolina border. If you are coming from the beaches of NC it's just a quick drive south on Highway 17. 

From their Facebook Page

The first thing you see as you enter SC from the north is the Stateline Fireworks store. As a college student in Wilmington driving to Myrtle Beach to party on the weekends, the fireworks stand was the first reminder that we were entering the otherworldly beach destination known as the Grand Strand. Tacky tourist attraction overload, mega mini golf mecca, planted palm trees, high-rise lined beaches, and amusement parks for miles and miles. The first 'town' you come to as soon as you enter SC is Little River. Back in college, I didn't know it even had a waterfront, or anything other than fireworks, a place to stop and get cheap gas and lotto tickets, and then quickly go over the bridge to other places on the other side of the Intercoastal Waterway, (ICW). In NC decades ago, both fireworks and the lottery were illegal, and gas still today is taxed several cents higher than its neighbor to the south.

A Tiny Waterfront Town

Little River Waterfront

A few years ago my friend Randy moved to Little River to enjoy his retirement. At the time I was doing a lot of traveling. Most of it by myself, camping or visiting friends. It was a difficult time in my personal life and I enjoyed solitude in nature, it was cheaper than therapy and healthier than drinking. I visited my friend in Little River. He lives in a neighborhood just off 17 before the bridges over the waterway. The neighborhood had once been a massive golf course. Multiple courses actually. Only one remains and at the time of my first visit the others had long since turned into woods just behind the homes. Throughout the bramble of cedar, palmetto, and pines were giant live oaks and beautiful blooming dogwoods that the original golf course developers had saved from the old growth forest that was there before it was ever touched by bulldozers. In the woods were still paved paths, canals, waterholes, and berms from the golf course. It was a beautiful place to explore. (It has since been redeveloped.) 

Oak trees & Big M

I decided to go to the waterfront. It is tiny. A sandy grouping of seafood restaurants on a bluff above the Little River, (now part of the ICW). There are more giant old oak trees full of Spanish moss and ferns. There's a huge parking lot. In the water there are fishing boats docked and a big cruise boat that takes tourists out onto the ocean to gamble. The Big M casino is the obvious economic driver for the waterfront. I went at a time when there was no gambling cruise scheduled and the parking lot was empty, the restaurants were mostly closed but Key West Crazy's was open. I sat on the deck. They had roll up plastic walls and heaters so it was usable all year long. I had margaritas and coconut shrimp. The waterfront is beautiful. It feels a million miles away from the chaos I was used to in Myrtle Beach.

The Native People

Artifacts in the Horry County Museum

Of course there is a history to Little River as complex as any small southern town. There was an entire civilization pushed out and killed off. There is archeological evidence that the Waccamaw and Pee Dee Indians and their ancient ancestors used the Little River's inlet as fishing grounds, camping on the nearby islands during the season when the fish were plentiful and shellfish were fat. For thousands of years these people flourished. As I've written about in previous posts, they were eventually forced to take to the dense swamps away from the coast to escape violence and illness brought by invaders from across the ocean.

The European Invasion

King's Highway

Little River is one of the oldest European settlements along the South Carolina coast. Though records are sparse, artifacts and oral histories conclude that subsistence farmers and fishermen came to the area and stayed as early as the 1600's. There was a difficult swampy forest between the Carolina coastal settlements in those days. In the area Conway was the larger 'Old Town' further inland and Little River was considered the 'New Town'. To the south was Georgetown and then Charleston, with vast stretches of wetlands and wilderness between them.

The King's Highway

Highway 17 is called King's Highway for good reason, the original King's Highway still follows almost its exact route through SC. Between the mid 1600's and the 1730's the English constructed the road meant to connect the important colonies of Boston and Charleston.

A Colony Divided

The Carolina Colony was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1712, though the border was a matter of disagreement politically. In 1730 an agreement was reached that put the border 30 miles to the south of Cape Fear running parallel with the river. This arrangement wouldn't last and surveyors were brought in by the north colony and the southern one and the border was drawn and redrawn over and over for the next hundred years. 

The Land Grants

Imagine the Crown as Oprah, if you will: "You get some land, and you get some land, and you, and you, and you!"

England was giving out Lord Proprietor land grants and the area that is now Horry County went to several planters, notably the Withers family, and James Minor. Waties Island is named for William Waties, the father, the son, or the grandfather, no one knows for sure, all three were surveyors. Some records show that a William Waties owned 1,150 acres in the Little River area in 1733. This acreage could have been obtained by a Lord Proprietor's grant in 1670, that was given originally to James Minor, but as the surveyors of a vast land grant the Waties may have been paid in acreage. At any rate by the mid 1700's the existence of records didn't matter, King George gave land grants to several more people, hoping for better success in settlement. After all, these land grants were given with the intention of creating additional revenue streams for the crown. A King's grant gave some of the area land to William Allston, though the island remained named Waties. (You may recognize the name Allston from previous posts, the family of politically and militarily successful rice planters who acquired vast amounts of SC land.) The land to the south was granted to William Gause, who built an Inn at Windy Hill, now North Myrtle Beach. The Wither's family held on to their land, Wither's Swash, for generations, (a swash is a creek that runs from the ocean). The Vereen's, a family of French Huguenots, who came to the colonies in 1680, had the land near Singleton Swash. The Vereen original home site is believed to be located about 2 miles north of Singleton Swash.

The Southern Tour

George Washington Visits

George Washington traveled down the King's Highway on his Southern Tour in 1791. He is said to have stayed the night in Windy Hill, had lunch in Little River, and then was guided through the wilderness area to Georgetown by Jeremiah Vereen, a indigo and rice planter, and hero of the revolution.

The Randall-Vereen House

Historic Registry 

After the War of 1812, yankee Thomas Randall built a large home overlooking the harbor in Little River. It became part of the Vareen family's plantation as they bought up more and more of the land in the area. The home stood until it burned in 2014. It was known as one of SC's oldest homes. Its charred remains sat eerily for some time, like a tombstone to the home's long history.

The War of Northern Aggression

 A Confederate battery was built at the point just behind the barrier island where Sheephead creek comes out of Dunn Sound into the area where the Little River empties into the Atlantic ocean. It defended the entrance to Little River Harbor and was called Fort Randall before being captured by Yankees in 1863.

Path through pines at Vereen Gardens

The Vereen Gift

Jackson Vereen was born in Little River in 1882, close to the end of his long life he deeded some of the family's land to the Horry County Historical Society in 1972. Today 115 acres is preserved as Vereen Memorial Historical Gardens, known for it's natural beauty and historical significance. On highway 17 south just past the fireworks store on the left. At the Vereen property there is still a section of the original highway.  At the gardens there is also a Vereen family cemetery with graves as far back as the American Revolution. 

The Island 

The coastal land known as Waties Island actually consisted of a barrier island, and behind that a marshy flat with a small sound, two tidal creeks, and a larger inland section sandwiched between the marsh and the Little River (now part of the ICW). This land changed hands often as it was not considered useful for farming or lumber, and was difficult to access. In the 1920's as a new interest in and romanization of southern plantations brought wealthy industrialist heirs to the region, Horace Tilghman bought the land. At Tilghman Point there are still the remains of the Confederate battery 

Erosion on Waties

The Tilghman Gift

Horace Tilghman's heirs, the Boyce family still own 400 acres of the the land. Tilghman's granddaughter Anne gave the Coastal Educational Foundation of Coastal Carolina University 1/3 of the island to be preserved for use as a natural laboratory. One of the heirs sold their portion to a real estate holding company from Virginia with no plans to develop their property. The handful of private owners agree on preservation but continue to disagree on the means of preservation, some want State Park status while others want it to remain protected as an untouched natural area.

From their website

Historic Horse Ride 

Currently the area of land known as, the Little River Neck area, is home to Inlet Point Plantation, a sprawling horse farm that offers rides on trails through the inland property as well as over the small causeway and onto Waties Island's beaches. If you aren't an environmental scientist or student with Coastal Carolina, or a Tilghman heir, the horse ride is your only option to access the untouched beach by land. Of course, there's always the water. That's how I arrived on Waties Island's beach.

Cherry Grove Public Boat Landing

 My Kayak Adventure

I googled kayak rentals in the area and the one that interested me offered several guided tours and even one called the Sunset and Lantern Tour. I quickly gave J and L Kayaking a call and made my reservation for that evening. It was winter but the weather was amazing. I drove over the bridge toward Cherry Grove Beach. Cherry Grove is a beach that was developed during the post WWII boom of the '50's and '60's and consists of beach front homes and rows and rows of homes on manmade channels. My mom vacationed there as a child. I drove towards the north west side of the island and met the guide and other kayakers around 3pm at the Cherry Grove Boat Landing.

Waties Island from the creek

We paddled slowly down House Creek towards Hog Inlet. It was perfect weather and the water was smooth. It was actually one of the most enjoyable kayak trips I've ever taken. A high pressure system had pushed away any clouds that morning and the bright sun was warm with a light breeze occasionally. As we passed through the homes of Cherry Grove we were greeted by a paddle boarder with a dog who was dancing and jamming out to music as he paddled downstream. Because there were two families with us and unexperienced kayakers, I was able to paddle around quite a bit by myself while they slowly made their way down the creek. It was immensely relaxing. The island has suffered erosion at both inlets due to dredging and the heirs even sued at one point for lose of property. The stand of tall trees you see in these pictures is slowly eroding into the water.

My Sand Dollar

We beached our kayaks just before the inlet at Hog Point. We had time to walk the beach before sunset and enjoy the solitude. I found a sand dollar almost immediately. The beach was huge, and serene. There were no footprints. No tracks from lifeguard vehicles or tourists dragging their stuff through the sand. I did see evidence that a couple had recently come through on horse back, at the low tide line was a pair of tracks disappearing and reappearing in the gentle waves.

Dusk on Waties Island

We enjoyed the beach until dusk when the guide called us back to the inlet. Sunset was coming. From Hog Point we would be able to see the sunset over Cherry Grove. A mist started to roll in off the ocean, it was beautiful. As the sun began to set a flock of birds flew across the inlet. The guide was handing out the lanterns, they're inflated waterproof glowing cylinders. As the sun dropped below the horizon we launched our kayaks back into the creek. 

Night Kayaking

Sunset, Hog's Inlet, & Cherry Grove

 I launched first and paddled out away from the families as they slowly got in their kayaks and were pushed out into the water by the guide. I absorbed the feeling of the air. The light moisture coming in off the Atlantic, the salt smell, the lapping of the water under me, the moments just after the sun has set when the sky is still full of a complex range of colors, I took deep breaths and soaked it all in. The lantern that J and L provided was the perfect amount of light for people to see the kayakers but still not obstruct night vision. I had never kayaked at night before. I had always wanted to and I had paddled out during sunset, but never far enough to be paddling home in the dark. It was so peaceful. 

There were bird sounds, and there were bug sounds, and there were frog sounds, and the sound of the paddles in the water, but there were no other sounds, until we were paddling through the large homes of Cherry Grove where there were sounds of laughter and music. It was obvious that it was the down season, as only a handful of homes looked occupied, most were dark, silently awaiting the return of warmer weather and weekly renters. 

I highly recommend the J and L Kayak experience, if you are in the area and want to get back in touch with nature, its a great escape. 

We are lucky that the families who inherited these properties believed in preservation. Driving away through the tightly packed homes of Cherry Grove I thought about the beautiful high marsh behind Waties and realized that is what this island looked like before it was cut up with channels and developed. Little River is a perfect place to take in nature or history and get away from the hustle and bustle. It is much more than a fireworks stand.

Are They Extraterrestrial Impact Zones, Ancient Ocean Currents, or Massive Prehistoric Alligator Holes?

Examining the Mysterious Carolina Bays

Fact or Fiction? Uncovering the origin stories of these geological anomalies.

Though they may go by different names up north, Carolina Bays dot the map in the east from New York to north Florida. They are shallow elliptical depressions in the earth, often wetlands, marshes, swamps, or lakes, named for the Bay trees that are found along their rims. North Carolina has many of these depressions and the largest forms the oldest, and biggest fresh water lake in the state, Lake Waccamaw. The origin of the Carolina Bays has long been a mystery.

Dinosaur Era Fish Spawning?

One hundred million years ago there was an ocean covering the coastal plain of the Carolinas. The Late Cretaceous period was a time of a tremendous amount of biodiversity. There were still dinosaurs, but the time of mammals had arrived. The ocean had abundant life too. Schools of fish on the scale of whales could move ocean currents with their passing. In the relatively shallow ocean above the coastal plain of the land mass that would become North America these massive schools of huge fish would swim together and procreate in a swirling sediment disturbing frenzy, circling around until they'd formed a large pond in the sandy ocean floor, where they could safely spawn. As sea levels changed the spawning grounds became inaccessible. The water receded leaving shallow, elliptical depressions behind. 

Safe Harbor for Ancient Ancestors of the Alligator? 

The sea level changes happened over time as plate tectonics gradually moved the land mass westward. Ocean life had time to adapt to these environmental changes, what happened next they did not have time to adapt to. Sixty-six million years ago, the end of the Late Cretaceous, was a terrifying time to be on earth. A massive disastrous event changed the oceans and atmosphere. Asteroid impact or volcano or both, the earth moved, tons of soot, ash, and sediment clouded the air and acidified the water. The temperature rose as the sun's heat could not escape through the cloud layer. Death and decay were everywhere. The low lying areas where there was still fresh water became vital to the life that was left. 75% of life on earth died and rotted. The only large four legged creatures to survive were ancient sea turtles and crocodillians, who kept their ectothermic bodies cool in the mud. The only dinosaurs to survive were the avian dinosaurs who could fly in search of food or water. 

Life in the Paleocene, sixty-five million years ago, was tough, but there was life. Temperatures regulated and acidity levels began to clear. Plants and animals adapted and evolved in new ways. The massive crocodillian ancestors of our american alligators survived the hard times down in the mud and they developed a unique technique to increase their availability of fresh water. They wallowed. Not just any rolling around in the mud, strategic circling to push the mud out around them, creating a small pool. These massive creatures would wallow out a space in the mud until they had their own pond. During the hundreds of years of their lives they would continue to push mud around in the bottom of their hole. Massive amounts of time pass. As the Paleocene came to an end another time of upheaval as the plate moved in a much faster way than it had before and volcanic events again raised the carbon levels in the atmosphere and raised the temperatures. Animals had to adapt again and many new species developed in the warm jungles of the Paleocene-Eocene, including primates. The earth's land was covered in plant life, the ocean had vast reefs and forests of algae. 

 More huge amounts of time passed. The abundance of plant life worked to clean the atmosphere. During the Eocene the levels of carbon in the atmosphere cleared. The earth eventually began to cool again and ice formed at the poles. Sea levels dropped and land bridges allowed the new species to travel. The first ancestors of humans evolved. Things were looking up. The cold and the low sea wasn't for everyone and there were extinctions, just not on the scale of some of the previous catastrophes. During the Oligocene the tropical forests receded to the equatorial regions and grasslands spread around the globe where there was not ice. The earth went through a series of warming and cooling. As plate shifts continued, volcanic events would increase carbon levels and temperatures would increase, as temperatures increased the plant life increased, cleaning the air and allowing for cooler temperatures. In an extended absence of any carbon increasing events, the earth cooled enough to create a series of ice ages. 

Relict Thermokarst Lakes (Glacier puddles)

Two million years ago the earth had cooled to the point of freezing. The Last Ice Age propelled a mass migration. Glaciers covered most of the northern land mass. The climate changes again increased the rate of evolution in some animal classes. Many mammals adapted with thick fur and some form of hibernation during the coldest months. The massive glacial ice sheet spread further from the poles, covering a great deal of the earth in ice. Then tens of thousands of years ago, the ice spread suddenly stopped. 

The climate began to warm again. Animals that had adapted to the cold moved further and further north, some became extinct. Equatorial animals began to spread into newly warmer regions. 

The end of the last Ice Age ushered in the Holocene, which is the geological time we are still currently experiencing.

As the ice melted left over glaciers created lakes. Depositing whatever sediment had frozen in the initial ice or had been carried along with glacial movement. Shallow elliptical ponds and lakes could be glacial remnants.  

Extraterrestrial Impact Zones

The People of the Falling Star

Ten thousand years ago people settled into a routine in the lush region that is now southeastern North Carolina. The Ice Age was over and food was no longer scarce. The people didn't have to follow herds of large animals. Instead they hunted smaller animals, gathered fruits and nuts in season, and fished on the coast. The rivers were their routes from the lush interior to the coast and this is often where they settled. The ancestors of the Waccamaw people were building a settlement in the interior along a river amongst a forest as old as time. They learned how to grow their own food. The soil in the forest was rich but there was not enough sun and too many trees and the people began to cultivate the land, taking down the trees and planting crops. They believed they had created a beautiful garden. One night as they slept in their village next to their garden, the sky lit up with a crack louder than any thunder they'd ever heard. A bright streak ran across the sky and then... Boom! Everything went silent. Then muffled screams and moans, and then men shouting, and the sound of rubble moving. Flicker of flames and choking smoke. Through the night they worked to uncover those buried and trapped and heal the hurt. At first light the scope of things came into better focus. There was dirt everywhere. Their garden, meant to feed the whole village was gone. Nothing was left but a smoldering hole. It began to rain. Mud covered everything. Water began to fill the hole. The women and children huddled together under the shelter of the trees at the edge of the village as the men worked in the rain and mud. A silver haired old woman with no teeth and a face of wrinkles came out of the woods. She had animal skins to cover the children, and a snack of blackberries and walnuts. She told them she had seen the whole thing from her spot up river. "A star fell from the sky and landed right in the middle of that enormous garden." She turned to the children and shook a crooked old finger, "you know this is because, the people forgot to be thankful. They were overlooking the gifts and abundance and destroying what is free to create a life of labor for themselves. The Creator was not happy." It would not be the last time the natural resources were abused by humans.

Who cares how it got here, lets make money!

In the mid 1600's the English King gave the Waccamaw land to a Lord as part of a large land grant, he then divided it among his heirs and others who wanted to colonize their piece of the ‘new world’. As the European invaders began settlement, the Waccamaw people retreated further into the swamps. The story historians tell involves the son of a cattle farmer from the Virginia colony who settled his grant in the 1700's and began buying up the area after the revolution. His family continued to be large landholders in the area for several generations. They were uninterested in how the lake had formed, only motivated by it's usefulness to their mercantile aspirations. For two hundred years the land was used for lumber and turpentine production. The lumber yards produced shingles from the giant cypress trees of the swamp surrounding the lake. The industry brought the railroad to the area. A depot was built in 1900. In 1926 a dam was built to prevent the lake water levels from dropping during dry weather. It was ceremoniously declared a State lake in 1929, as government interest in preserving natural resources began to increase. A YMCA boys camp was created on the banks of the lake.

A bird's eye view

With airplanes came areal photography and a renewed interest in the origin of the Carolina Bays. The extraterrestrial impact hypothesis came back with a vengeance. Truthfully the appearance from above does lend itself to this explanation. Scientists even had areal surveys commissioned, taking measurements of the angles of each ellipse. 

The Younger Dryas period is sometimes explained by the impact of material from outer space. The Carolina Bays were used as evidence of this most recent massive climate altering impact.  

The Carolina Bays and other NC wetland areas began receiving State and federal protection in the 1970's. Lake Waccamaw became a State Park. For several decades the catastrophic comet creation story was considered scientific fact.

Technology and testing today

As technology advanced, satellite imaging, core sampling, particle analysis, and radiocarbon dating disproved the theory of extraterrestrial impact. The Bays are shallow and the depression is in the superficial sandy surface, the bedrock underlying the Bays remains undisturbed.  Lake Waccamaw is located in the larger geological region known as the Pee Dee Formation, named after the river which exposed the ground underlying the area. The Pee Dee Formation is a marine deposit from the Late Cretaceous, (when the ocean covered the area). Glauconitic sand and fossiliferous limestone make up the bedrock. That means there is a dark greenish sand and  limestone rocks that contain fossils from a hundred million years ago covered in a layer of newer sediment.  Lake Waccamaw is underlain by layers containing fossils of the lower Pliocene Goose Creek Limestone and the lower Pleistocene Waccamaw Formation. The sediment layer and the underlying layer have been radiocarbon dated.  The lake is estimated to be 15,000 to 30,000 years old. In 2008 a whale fossil was found in the lake believed to be one to three million years old. All this data collection has reignited a debate about the origin of these geological anomalies. Geologists today believe terrestrial processes and repeated modification by eolian and lacustrine processes of relict thermokarst lakes created the depressions. That's geo-jargon for earth bound processes of erosion and glacier lake sediment deposits. 

The State Park

Today they offer a handful of primitive hike-in camping sites right beside the lake in the shade of the cypress trees. No frills, clean well maintained campsites for tents. There are restrooms at the visitor center.

Did the Nazi's bomb North Carolina?

 Dow Chemical Plant Ruins

Click HERE to GO INSIDE the RUINS

Click Here to learn more about THE CAPE FEAR REGION

Warning: Government property, no trespassing, area patrolled by military police!

Location: Dow Roads Woods along the Cape Fear River on 'Pleasure Island' 

 
Original Purpose: In 1934 Dow Chemical began extracting bromine from salt water.

There's tales of spirits and spooks and creepy creatures all through the Cape Fear region, but the woods on the west side of Pleasure Island seem to have something extra that makes them magic.

The Cemetery

On Dow Road somewhere between Carolina Beach and Kure Beach 'Alice' and her friend parked in a sandy parking area with a wooden sign for Federal Point Methodist Church Cemetery. No cemetery was visible from the road, all they could see was a mossy, sandy path into the dark woods. There was a large yellow barrier blocking any vehicle traffic, which anyone wanting to mourn at the cemetery would need to go over, under, or around. The temperature seemed cooler as soon as they began walking the path. The air smelled of earth. Something ran off through the woods as they approached. It was big. They decided it was a dear.  The first signs of the cemetery became visible, the girls see a cracked concrete table sitting crooked in the sand and a rusted and damaged chain link fence. They slowed and became skeptical. They were looking for a historic site. They saw newer tombstones adorned with shabby fake flowers and tattered miniature flags. It was not well taken care of but it didn't seem historic. Disappointment was adding to the gloom of the day. It began to sprinkle and the girls were just about to go back to there car when they saw it. Just to the back of the modern cemetery was a historic plaque, they ran towards it. Alice tripped over an exposed root but landed in the sand with some amount of laughter. They joked about horror movie cliches. 

The girls started googling on their phones. The Newton Home site and Graveyard at Federal Point is the oldest archaeological home site of Europeans on North Carolina's islands. Artifacts dating from the 1700's and 1800's have been found there. The graveyard contains markers with well known local names of early settling families. Many tombstones are missing or destroyed. The graveyard is surrounded by woods. The oral history of the area says there was a grave site for people of color as well, today it remains unmarked. 

There is a doghouse sized replica of one of the structures that burned in a fire that destroyed buildings and took lives in the early settlement.

Beside the chain link fence between the modern cemetery an the historic one are two graves decorated in seashells and coins and other strange collected things. They are paupers' graves. Donated to those who had no means for a burial. One was a vagabond who ended up in the area and was well loved by the community and the other was a legend, The Fort Fisher Hermit, a man who'd lived on the island in the middle of the 1900's alone as a hermit. People would pilgrimage to meet with him and hear his philosophical take on the perils of the modern world. (Click HERE for a post on the Hermit) From the back of the old grave yard there is a sandy path going off into the woods. Knowing the river was nearby, the girls decided to follow the path hoping it would lead to the water. It was still sprinkling every now and then but it was warm and not to much of a bother. The moisture increased the smell of earth in the air.

 

The River

The girls saw the sunlight before they saw the water. It was shining still to the west. They came to a clearing and saw that they were on a bluff above the river bank. It was about four or five feet and sandy so they jumped down the embankment. The sun was shining off the river. There was a little beach there and they walked along it taking in the sun and beautiful scenery. No other humans anywhere to be seen. 

It was so beautiful they got a little carried away and walked a long ways down the beach. Taking pictures of the river and the trees along its shore. They walked along for sometime until they came to a place where they could not go any further. There was an old structure, rusted metal and wooded pilings. It was a retaining wall of some kind. Alice climbed atop and announced that there was water, black and deep on the other side. It was not cross able. There was smoke on the horizon across the water. The girls used Google maps to see what was there. Sunny Point Military Terminal. They joked about the men in black. They Googled some more. Dow Chemical. They had heard of the ruins in the woods and the legend of how they came to be. They scurried up the ridge to see if they could see anything else. Nothing but dark woods, the smell of earth, and rustling of some small animal in the underbrush. 

More Google.

 

Into the Woods

They found a picture of the old site. Dow had chosen it because a nearby Carolina Bay made a perfect natural holding reservoir and there was already a trench that had been dug during the Civil War as part of the defenses along the Cape Fear. Using the picture of the old site they decided they'd need to venture into the woods a bit and try to find a way around or over the trench. The woods were dark and dense. The smell again was strong. Earth. Enough smell of earth in the air to almost choke a person. Alice swore she saw a dog. Her friend wondered if it was a coyote. They went into the woods anyway. They were on an adventure and they were determined.

They peered out into the forest, looking for any signs of structures or creatures like the big cats they'd heard prowled these woods. Reassuring each other that it was just legend. Something caught Alice's eye. She tried to use her phone's camera to see what it was without going closer. The picture didn't really help. They decided to cautiously approach. As they got closer they could smell the odor of death. It was a bird. A large bird. To their surprise it was a hawk. It was hanging from an odd low limb of a tree. It had the claws of one foot deep into the wood. Nothing about its position in the woods looked natural. This beautiful bird hanging there to decay and be eaten. Needless to say the creep factor was rising. The rain started back. 

                

The girls were not going to give up. They went deeper into the woods following along the trench. 

That's when Alice screamed. A pile of bones were in the path and off to the side was a skull!

            

The bones were real but the skull, thankfully was a cheap plastic Halloween decoration. It wasn't even close to Halloween. The girls had theories about what they had come across. Maybe it was a ritual of some kind. Witchcraft. Maybe it was just the killing field of a predator animal and the skull was dragged there by mistake. Whatever it was they had finally found the way across the trench just past the bones. It was like a land bridge across the trench. Once across the girls saw thick woods and something colorful. It was their first glance at the graffiti that adorns the ruins. 

The Dow Chemical Plant Ruins

The ruins have long been a popular spot for mountain bikers and graffiti artists and any other youngster looking for a slightly illegal way to pass the time. The remnants of the buildings are brick and concrete. There are concrete footings and tunnels and a towering pile of brick rubble. 

The girls walked through the tunnels. It was surprisingly colorful. Graffiti covers everything and some mischievous people have created a fairy land with pink and green fiberglass and plastic wands over a bed of bricks, broken and splattered with red paint. The wall above scrawled with a plea to jump in, lay down and get comfy. It started raining harder and the girls sat in one of the tunnels listening to the silence and the rain. 

More time to Google. What exactly did they make here? Bromine, used for photography and chemical warfare!? What happened to this place? Officially: It was decommissioned in 1946 when a plant opened in Texas. But ask a local and you might hear the legend about what happened there during WWII. There is very little information about the chemical plant during the war years and the decommissioning and destruction of the structure isn't well documented. A media black out surrounding certain events led to the wide spread belief that there had been a cover up. Locals say that at the end of the war the Nazi's desperate to stop production of chemical agents drove a submarine up the Cape Fear to the site of the chemical plant and fired on the structure, damaging it beyond repair. The area became a part of the Sunny Point Military Terminal's buffer zone after the war. An area protected and patrolled by the military to insure security and safety surrounding the nations largest marine terminal for munitions. Any person wanting to see the ruins for themselves does so at some risk. There are wild animals of course, and there could be some sketchy people, as well as the military police on atv's and carrying guns. There are also bugs. Lots of bugs. Mosquitoes are everywhere because the ruins have a lot of standing water in low spots. People have come out of these woods covered in hundreds of baby ticks, like specks of dirt crawling up their legs. In the summer there are spiders that build giant webs across the trail at face height, they can be as large as a human hand. This is not a place for the weak or easily frightened. 

Go with the Flow

Following North Carolina's Groundwater 

From the Mountains to the Coast

(Stopping in my back yard to check out my town and the local campground.)

Boone, NC

    In North Carolina the flow of groundwater is kind of complicated. Water moves from areas in the mountains, like the Appalachian temperate rain forest, through a layer of weathered rock and soil, called the regolith, into cracks in the crystalline bedrock to the aquifer underneath. The water flows through the fractures and emerges as springs and streams in the lower elevations.

NC rivers 1830

 The creeks and rivers flow through the Piedmont Plateau picking up sediment, eventually crossing into the Coastal Plane at what is called the fall line, where the hard bedrock of the Piedmont shifts to the softer coastal formation and the rivers have rapids and waterfalls.The rivers pick up more sediment as they travel through the permeable sand hills and swamps, eventually depositing this sediment to help form NC’s distinct coast line. Groundwater in the Coastal region is absorbed from creeks, rivers, and swamps. The interaction with the ocean has created a complex freshwater-saltwater transition within the coastal aquifers.

    I’ve written about the Cape Fear region a couple of times. And I have mentioned how the Cape Fear River has its beginnings far from the coast. In fact, the Cape Fear is a great example of how NC’s watersheds work. The Cape Fear river begins in Haywood, close to the Chatham and Lee county line where the Deep River meets the Haw just south of its exit from Jordan Lake. These are rivers that begin with springs in the Piedmont. The area where these rivers begin has head springs which feed many rivers. There are megacrystic features and intrusions of granite from the Paleozoic Era, what that means in plain English is that the terrain in this area has cracks or veins in the rock bed where past geological events like earthquakes, volcanoes, or other plate movement pushed large crystalline rocks and older granite up into the younger bedrock. These intrusions give groundwater a flow path both to and from the aquifer and thus many springs can be found in areas with this type of unique geology. 

    The Deep River actually has multiple head springs, the East Fork of the Deep River begins in the Sandy Ridge area near the runway of the Piedmont Triad International Airport. The West Fork begins in Kernersville near the intersection of two major highways. (Runoff mitigation has been a continuing issue at these headwaters.) The West Fork flows south to High Point where it feeds the man made Oak Hollow Lake (where I live). It exists Oak Hollow at a controlled dam and flows across the northeast side of High Point into City Lake. The East Fork flows from Sandy Ridge through northeastern High Point and then into City Lake. The two become one as they exit this lake headed southeast. The river leaves Guilford County near Jamestown where it heads through Kersey Valley into Randleman Lake Reservoir. From there the river flows south through Randolph county from Randleman northeast of Asheboro. It winds eastward to Franklinville, then at Ramseur it heads south until High Falls where the river moves west and northwest along the fall line. 

    The region where the river runs in a counter intuitive direction is significant geologically, not just because of the fall line. The Deep River coal field is an area of Triassic rocks stretching 36 miles along the river in Chatham, Lee, and Moore Counties. In the age of dinosaurs there was a vast swamp along an ancient river. As swamps tend to do, decaying plant matter formed layers of peat in the humid dense environment. Over huge amounts of time shifts in plates and other events changed the landscape and large amounts of sediment flowed down and gathered in the area where the river turns. The pressure of the massive layers of sediment created the perfect situation to turn the peat into coal. For 200 years people have attempted to dig this coal out of the ground. Deep River is NC’s only commercial coal bed. The coal industry is extremely dangerous and many tragedies are associated with mines. Over time the abundance of illness, death, and mishap creates a need for explanation in the human mind. As we often do, people created legends to place blame somewhere that would give them the opportunity to feel like they could continue working and create superstitious ways to protect themselves. It was a way to rationalize a terrible industrial human rights travesty without placing blame on the industrialists. In NC's coal mines, it came in the form of a demon. The Deep River coal field is cursed by this disturbed demon, and many have lost their lives in his clutches.

    As the river leaves the coal fields and drops onto the flatter plain to the east of the fall line, just north of Sanford. Southeast of Pittsboro, it joins the Haw River, just below the Haw's emergence from Jordan Lake.

Mermaid Point

     The area where the two rivers converge to form the Cape Fear River is called Mermaid Point. Legend says that mermaids would swim up the Cape Fear River from its mouth seeking the fresh water source. (Click HERE for more on Mermaids of the Cape Fear)

    

    Of course, Native Americans lived along the river for thousands of years. Europeans were settling in the Deep River basin from the Virginia or Pennsylvania colonies during the 1700's. The town I live in developed later with industrialization and improvements in transportation. First in the area was James Mendenhall, a Quaker like many who were moving to the area, received a land grant in 1762 in the place that is still called Jamestown. He built a gristmill and a sawmill on the river.

Mendenhall Home

His heirs built a home and by the 1800's the Jamestown Quaker’s had a thriving community. However, in 1851 the North Carolina Railroad built its tracks to the south of Jamestown instead of through it. The placement of the railroad was hotly debated at the time. It’s location would be a boom for whatever community was closest. At the railroad’s highest point it intersected NC’s Great Plank Road. This intersection was incorporated in 1859, becoming High Point. The area's location was ideal for trade because of the transportation hub. People in the area grew tobacco, cotton, and produced furniture from the vast hard wood forests of the western Piedmont and foothills.

High Point, 1913

By 1889 High Point had its first furniture factory. In the next ten years thirteen more furniture factories and a handful of textile mills turned High Point into a bustling industrial town. In 1905 NC held its first furniture exposition, the Southern Furniture Exposition Building was built in 1921. It was ten floors and 249,000 square feet. Throughout the 1920’s the furniture industry continued to grow, as did High Point. The city purchased the land that had been the original Mendenhall site along the river, and tore down all the structures.

They built a dam to create City Lake, a reservoir for drinking water as well as recreation. City Lake Park has a number of amenities; a large swimming pool with a water slide, grills, picnic tables, shelters, a merry-go-round, miniature golf, and the 340-acre lake. Of course my memories from childhood are of the miniature train that goes around for taking in scenic views of the lake. Also back then there was an old fire truck that kids could play on.

I love kitchy roadside stops and furniture city has a few. High Point chamber of commerce built the world's largest chest of drawers in 1926 to showcase the towns industries, furniture and textiles. Neighboring Thomasville, not to be out done, created the world's largest chair.  The chair has been re-titled, the largest Duncan Phyfe Chair, after the famous man who designed the chair and many others. 

    The Piedmont is home to the original Krispi Kreme Doughnut shops and though the store on main street has been rebuilt to modern standards, they have kept the vintage neon sign. 
    

    Oak Hollow Lake, High Point, NC is a relatively new man-made lake. The dam on the West Fork or West Prong of the Deep River was completed in 1971. A larger water source and recreation facility for a booming international city. High Point was becoming a global center for furniture sales and manufacturing. Of course the 1980's and 90's deregulation of global trade led to deals with countries where labor and natural resources were cheaper. Many manufacturers moved plants to other countries. This changed the economic outlook for towns like High Point. No longer booming much of High Point's growth today is centered around the University, though furniture market is still the main economic driver. 

Oak Hollow Lake happens to be my back yard. Well almost. There is a campground, a marina, a playground, and picnic areas just a short drive down the street. I had never really utilized this beautiful place until recently. Last spring I started taking the kids I babysit to the lake side playground. It is beautiful. I hope to plan a camping trip to one of their lakeside spots as our first attempt at camping with the baby. (Safely less than a mile from home.)  I will post about it for sure!