Eno River has long, winding, tumultuous history
Jim Wise; Staff Writer
The News & Observer
July 2, 2005
Edition: Final
Section: Durham News
Page: A3

From a confluence of branches in northern Orange County, the Eno River flows south for 4 miles as the crow flies before meeting Occoneechee Mountain, an isolated hill reaching 867 feet above sea level and about 400 feet above the river.

The mountain's hard rock turns the river so that it meanders generally east for another 30 miles.
East of Durham, the Eno is joined by the Little River and then the Flat, where it forms the Neuse River; but for the last 20 years their junction has been subsumed by the spreading waters of Falls Lake.
Dropping 250 feet in its entire course, the river runs through forest, fields and assorted geological formations, supporting more than 60 species of fish and 12 of freshwater mussels, along with healthy populations of turtles, snakes, otter, beaver, deer and other creatures.
Archeological work at a horseshoe bend in Hillsborough has found evidence of an Indian settlement dated as long as 1,000 years before the present, though other relics unearthed in the area indicate an indigenous presence much earlier.

The river's first appearance in European records is from 1670, when the explorer John Lederer stopped at a town of "Oenocks." The Eno, along with the Flat and Little, appears on the 1733 Moseley map of North Carolina, running through a region Moseley identified as "Back Country."

European settlers found the river a convenient source of hydro power and by 1752 were operating gristmills that became, in some cases, commercial centers and growing villages. In 1887, a fast-growing Durham tapped the Eno for its first water system, building a pumping station at the river's junction with Nancy Rhodes Creek that supplied the town until a new station was built on the Flat River in 1917 --- a move occasioned, in part, by unsubstantiated fears that the Eno's water was contaminated by industrial waste from Hillsborough.

The river continued its bucolic career until the 1960s, when a clash between municipal growth and the budding environmental movement made the Eno a cause celebre.

Anticipating heightened needs for water, especially with opening of the Research Triangle Park in 1959, Durham drew plans for a Lake Eno reservoir even as developers envisioned the river's banks as prime real estate for subdivisions and office parks.

In reaction, conservationists and landowners formed the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in 1966, and agitated for keeping the river in its natural state. The river's future became a point of hot contention, but conservation efforts paid off in the early 1970s with creation of the Eno River State Park in Orange and Durham counties, and of Durham's West Point on the Eno city park.

In 1976, West Point opened to the public with the Festival of North Carolina Folklife, a U.S. Bicentennial celebration that drew an estimated 100,000 people and became the prototype for the Eno Association's annual Festival for the Eno held around each Fourth of July since 1980.

Since that time, the Eno State Park has grown to cover 3,991 acres. Parts of Occoneechee Mountain and the Penny's Bend area in Durham have become nature preserves on the river, and most of its eastern watershed is protected by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Meantime, the river has become a regional attraction, actively promoted as a visitor destination as well as a heavily-used amenity for residents of the urban areas to which it provides a distinct counterpoint.

Copyright 2005 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.