|
Learn more about Fish Dam Road: click here See more news stories on the Eno River Association: click here |
|
|
Unearthing
Fish Dam Road BY JIM WISE jwise@heraldsun.com; 419-6680 Through briars and bamboo, up ridges and over gullies, along city streets, country lanes and the memories of old timers, a long-abandoned road is coming into a new light. For the last eight days, 23 students of the N.C. School of Science & Mathematics, along with their teacher and a handful of grown-up fellow travelers, have been seeking out the route and stories of Fish Dam Road. "You guys will find this road where people never knew it existed," art teacher Joe Liles told the class at the outset. "You guys will be doing historical research on this road. Nobody's ever done research on this thing before." Originally an Indian trail, Fish Dam Road ran west from the Neuse River to Occoneechee Town on the Eno at present Hillsborough. European settlers adapted it for horse-and-wagon traffic. Around 1930, some parts of the road were rerouted and paved, some incorporated into city streets, and much of it left for time and nature to fill in and overgrow. "This is real detective work," said Liles. The class is a "mini-term" school project that began March 5 and finishes Monday afternoon with a public reception in Science & Math's Student Center. The students are working with old maps, recording latitude and longitude points, making photos, recording family trees, sampling flora and soil and otherwise collecting data on the road and people who traveled and lived along it. "I was interested in it when they mentioned it being an old Native American trail," said Nina Martinez from Wake County, who gave her ancestry as black-Haliwa-Cherokee-Mexican-Yaqui and Apache. "I'm very interested in painting, and I looked at it as a way to do that." "It's a lot of fun; I like being in nature," said Mary Oxendine, from Fairmont. Starting March 5 at the Cheek Road bridge over Falls Lake, Liles and his class found a segment of the old road, running down to a ford on the Granville County side about half a mile through the woods from the modern highway. On their next outing, they picked up the trail on the Durham County side and traced it to its junction with present Redwood Road, then through more woods to its ford on Ellerbee Creek. Since then, they have traced the route along Hamlin Road, past Catsburg and behind Duke's Chapel United Methodist Church, along Wisteria Avenue to Carver Street, through Croasdaile, down Berini Drive and Howe Street to an abandoned quarry on the Eno River and then up to Pleasant Green Road. At some points, the road vanishes from sight; at others, it's a clear gouge in the earth, about 20 feet wide with high berms on either side. The students have also spent time with folks such as Scott Harkey, 88, who talked about hauling lumber along the road, and the "tough pill" he had to swallow when 500 acres of his land were taken for Falls Lake; cousins Fran Thompson and Marion Sands, sixth-generation residents along the Fish Dam route; and John Scarlett, whose grandfather was a slave on land the family has owned for 150 years. Along the way, they've also encountered wild ginger, rattlesnake plantain, turtle shells, deer skulls, general litter and the fine (and sharp) points of smilax and wild roses. Liles said the idea for the class came from Don Moffett, a neighbor who happens to be president of the Eno River Association and plans to use the Fish Dam project for the 2005 Eno River Calendar. And he said he thinks the students have got "in touch with the spirit of this road." "Now, instead of reacting with typical teenage boredom, they're excited every time we find this road," he said. "The whole process of recovering it, and how to point it out in the woods, even if it looks just like a little trough, it's actually a road - it's pretty amazing," said Oxendine. "It would be un-obvious to someone that didn't know what they're looking at, but to us it's like, Wow! There's a road there!" |
|