Volunteers Needed for New Ventures
The TPA will create a new land trust this year. In July we will create a volunteer committee to help with the start-up, and for that we'll need folks experienced or interested in land trusts. We have some very strong advisers working with us on this, but we'll need
folks to help details of setup and designing project administration. To make the land trust work, we are also creating a county chapter program to facilitate
stewardship and we'll set up a committee to manage that effort as well, so
we also need community organizers. If you are interested in serving on one of these committees,
please, indicating your interests.
Also,
this summer we will spend a couple of days each week in the woods, looking for remnants of earlier versions of St. Mary's Road in Orange and Durham County, NC. Much as we hate taking on the jungle and its critters in full verdure, we need to do this now, and
we'd like to have at least one volunteer along on each outing. We've tentatively planned on going out for four hours each Wednesdays and Saturdays until the job is done. Beside (literally) the road, we'll be
looking for the site of Synnott's Inn, an 18th century public house. If you are interested in helping out, please, call (
919-644-0600) or email (
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) to schedule some time in the woods.
Displayed
to the right is a preliminary search map. As part of our finding technique, first we highlight the water in the area where we want to locate an old road. That gives us some ideas about barriers to movement, fording points and such. In the case of
St. Mary's Road which runs between the Eno River and the Little River basins, we also drew in the watershed between those two basins (red line framed in yellow). Two oddities jump out from the map. First, in Orange County (west side of the map) the road (running east-northeast out of Hillsborough and curving over the top of Durham) intersects Eno River Feeders all the way to the Durham County line. From the Durham County line to the point where the road finally crosses the Eno just upstream from Little River's confluence with the Eno the road intersects Little Rive feeders. Second, the farther west one travels on the road in Orange County the lower down the feeder creeks the road passes, and the farther east on travels in Durham county the lower down the Little River feeder creeks the road passes. There is probably not much information in these oddities, except that only near the county line does the road approach the watershed. From the standpoint of the current project, this merely means that around St. Mary's Chapel we should look high up on the Eno and Little River feeder creeks for the oldest roadway.
Using LiDAR for the first time while searching
The search won't be redefined by
LiDAR (light detection and ranging) but it will be aided to a certain degree. We have never done so before, but for this search we will test LiDAR. There are currently two concerns with this technology. First, are there bad "tiles," portions of the map that just aren't mapped very well? Second, how many of the perceived indentations are "false positives." The first question will await another project, but with this project we hope to determine what percentage of perceived indention are of no interest.
The images right and left give some idea of what we expect from this technology. On the left is a LiDAR map of the area where we will search. Even with these very shrunken images it is possible to see shadowed indentions in the Earth's surface; remnants of old roads and other excavations. To the right is the same image with most of the possible old road remnants filed with color.
In the map with the colored lines, the longish, continuous line running horizontal through the middle of the image is a hypothesized road line. The brown lines are stream-shed boundaries. The black marks indicate the location of what may be some very important occupancy sites.
Membership in the TPA: Now is a Really Good Time
At about this time each year we run out of rent money; call it the summer doldrums or, maybe, a season of want. Whatever it is called, it hurts.
If you haven't purchased a membership recently, please consider doing so. It won't hurt too much and it will help us keep the door open until business recovers.
To initiate or renew your membership in the TPA, we now offer the following three options:
Option 1: You can renew using your credit card via the Triangle Communities Foundation at:
www.trianglecf.org Option 2: You can click the "Donate Now" button on the right side of the screen, and that will take you to PayPal, a secure transaction site. You'll be asked a few questions to create an account so as to protect your sensitive information, and then you'll be able to donate using a credit card or other vehicle.
Option 3: The membership form can be
downloaded from the website and sent in to the address below with your payment.
Thanks for your continued support!
