We thank Sports Endeavors  (SEI), Matt Fox owner of The Wooden Nickle, Mike Troy, and David Stinson for meeting the costs and other needs of this year's fundraising letter.  Without their invaluable contributions, the letter would be one of the largest annual item cost on our books.  SEI is the parent company for Eurosport, soccer outfitters, and for Great Atlantic, lacross outfitters and a long time supporter of  TPA events.   If you sponsor a soccer or a LAX team, use SEI for your equipment.  Believe me, they are world class and they are great neighbors as well.  The Wooden Nickle is a college tav in a town without a college, go figure.  The pub fare is imaginative and tasty, the ambiance is eternal tav.  When the college kids are home for the holidays, it gets crowded and noisy, but between holidays it is a downright civilized place.  Mike Troy is Hillsborough Town Poet Laureate and a TPA board member, and David is a retired businessman, a friend and supporter.  They made the letter possible, and the letter makes our operation possible.  When you see the people, please, thank them.

In fact, in the spirit of the season and on the outside chance your or your organization is in the market for something one of our corporate sponsors can provide, patronize them all.  As far as we're concerned, Maptech makes the best poor man's geographic information system program available.  Though they sell a wide range of land, air, and waterborne navigation software, with prices for every need short of actual survey work, we do more with they're TerrainNavigator Pro program than with any other single program in the office.  They even offer printed topographical and historical topographical maps.  MaptTech and ESRI, donors of our full-bore GIS system, ArcMap, account for every map we produce.  Chuck Ketchie, Carolina Maps by Mail, provides many historic maps for us.  And let us not forget Shawn Smith of Smith Computer Parts, on-line computer component brokers; they provided the immense screen on which we're right now developing this newsletter.  Pace Development, an environmentally aware developer is one of our first clients and remains a regular supporter too.  Finally, please, appreciate the contribution made to our project every time the North Carolina Humanities Council pays for Tom to travel abroad to talk about the old trails.  If you are a program chair for an organization using speakers, please, check out NCHC "Roads Scholars" to get a free speaker for your organization. 

Thank them all.  Support them all.  They support us.

January First Sunday Hike, on the Little River, in Durham County, NC January 4th

You may recall that the TPA studied a portion of the Little River in Durham County this past year.  The study was, we believe, successful in that it identified a good number of previously unnoted sites; mills and roads and other odds and ends worthy of note.  One of the more important finds was the original route of Highway 501 at the Little River.  There we found a ford typical of pre-wagon traffic; creeks on opposite sides of the river with trails and roads merging into them to use them as ramps down into the river.  We'll visit this site in January 2009. 

As usual, we'll gather at the trail head for a 2 PM departure and we'll be back to the cars by 4 PM.  This promises to be a more strenuous hike than usual.  Though only about 1.5 miles long, it includes some slope climbing, two creek fords, and no trails to speak of.  For those of you interested in nostalgic, suggestive of an earlier time, beside the critical byways already mentioned, this hike will include a fascinating farmstead being drawn by gravity back to the earth.  There is a beautifully preserved stone foundation and some remnant log structures.  Down the road, to the west we'll see other occupation sites, chimney falls, and dumps indicating long abandoned homes.  The meeting place off of Highway 501 north of Durham at the Little River will be marked with TPA signs.  We'll meet in the parking lot of the Little River School, by the soccer field.  Sturdy shoes are advised.

The maps, left and right, can be enlarged by clicking on them.  They show the location of our meeting place and locate the hike site.  The GIS map (to the map) shows the old farmstead on the hill above the old, old ford.  This site is probably much older than the oldest visible remnants at the site, just as the stream crossing below is far older than the bridges downstream that replaced it.  This roadway should someday be mapped completely as it is likely that there were a number of traveler support facilities lining the approach to both the Little River and the Eno River to the south.  We had a local treasure hunter come in the office one day to show off some 18th century coins that he'd found at what his grandparents had told him was a tavern site on their land about a half mile west of the current line of Highway 501. 

US Highway 501 runs from BuenaVista, VA to Myrtle Beach, SC by way of South Boston, Va, Durham, NC, and Laurenburg, NC where it leaves the Piedmont and enters the fall zone.  Through most of North Carolina it is paired with US 15, another very old route running from above Rochester, NY (named for Nathanial Rochester, Thomas Hart's business partner after Maddocks Mill) down to near Savannah, Ga.  In Virginia both roads show signs of great antiquity, with old and elaborate wagon roads paralleling the modern roads in many places.  Both take advantage of excellent ridges to make their way mostly through the middle of the Piedmont.  It is probable that the crossing of 501 over the Little River in northern Durham County, NC predates English occupation.  It is almost certain that it was a major road of importance, tied in to the Occaneechi Trails and the Carolina Road, and being a long haul highway once wagons came into use.  Nate Rochester probably traveled 501 to get to his new home in upstate New York  So the site we're going to visit is probably quite ancient.  Stone work all along the ridge above the Little River indicates continuous usage from ancient times.  For all these reasons this ought to be a pretty nifty walk.

The First Sunday Hike took a great deal of imagination.  Between dairy cattle, a twentieth century water treatment plant, and a dam pond, Mattocks Mill is not much more than a memory.  We did see bits and pieces of old road, found a ford, and there was a house site, but not much more.  On the bright side the day was nippy but once we crossed the open pasture the woods broke up the wind and gave some relief.  Joseph Graham attacked Mattocks Mill in February, so the chill air helped to reconstruct that moment.  Otherwise it kept us moving. 

In the picture to the left, board member Pip Merrick asks a question along the way.  To the right is a picture of a chimney.  It is probably the remnant of a 20th century cabin, a weekend retreat, perhaps.  The "header" in the firebox was a piece of narrow gauge railway track, and the stones were all mortared in place, and the chimney had a ceramic stove pipe inset; not very old at all.  Nearby, though, was a likely chimney fall from which the builder may have salvaged enough stone for his single story effort.  Once again, this scene offers proof to the adage that a good house site is a good house site then and now.  The 20th century builder probably built by a pre-existing, collagpsed house, and used scrap from that earlier structur that once sat above the confluence of McGowan's Creek and the Eno River, just off the road to Mattock's Mill.

One day we hope that the current owners of the lake that inundates the old mill site, when they have to dredge the silt out of that lake, will allow archaeologists to study this famous old mill and battle site. Until then we will continue to look for hints and vestiges of the past so as to speed the process of discovery and understanding.

On the hike out from the mill site we stepped into a well preserved section of "double barreled old road.  Where it went and what it was for remains to be determined.  Fortunately it is on land not likely to be developed any time soon.

[As usual, click on any of the pictures for larger images]

Annual Fundraising Letter and You

The TPA is still an all volunteer organization.  Every hike hosted, every meeting attended, every day in the field is performed by  volunteers and paid for with donations.  I think you will agree that we've made some impressive progress considering that we do more with less than any organization we've ever seen.  In Hillsborough, using Boy Scouts and high school student volunteers, we've built a park protecting the intersection of two 18th century roads.  The park has three trail loops, a picnic area, and two vista points with benches.  So far it has cost the Town of Hillsborough precisely five landscape timbers and some staff time.

We introduced quite a few young people to the ancient places immediately around them.  In 2008 we took all of the 4th grade students from one school (in groups of 30 or so) out on to a nearby old roadbed and the students found and left in place numerous 19th century artifacts.  They learned a bit about archaeology, and a bit about history, and some botany, and some anthropology.  Mainly they had interactive fun with nature.  During the course of 2008 we did slide shows for three middle school and high school classes, took home schoolers into the field and brought other home schoolers a slide show.  We probably only directly reached a few hundred students, but you can bet some will remember the feeling of seeing their first old landscape.  We exist to find, map, and protect colonial era artifacts, and we reach out at every opportunity to make sure the public knows these artifacts are around their place and in their space.  We did all this with your support.   

Response to this years letter is gratifying.  We'll take a few more steps in 2009, thanks to you.  But we want to do more, and one way to accomplish that is to ask you all to consider being sales agents for the TPA.  If you know anyone who might take pleasure in being a part of this project, please, send them to us.  If you can find the time, have the energy, and think you might like to see some vestige of antiquity, come out on a First Sunday Hike, bring a friend, party in the woods with us.  We need all the support we can get to fund what we do.  Wouldn't it be nice to have the TPA logo displayed on the side of the TPA vehicle ($150.00).  That vehicle could get more done if it were set up for off-road work ($500.00).  We do as much of this stuff our selves as we possibly can, but some of it is just beyond our means. If you are near the TPA galactic headquarters, volunteer a couple of hours per week.  Every bit helps.

Be creative, be supportive: help us find ways to get things done.

Upcoming Public Events

• January 19th, Tom will speak to the Davidson County Genealogical Society about the old roads in that part of the state.