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Learn more about Fish Dam Road: click here See more news stories on the Eno River Association: click here |
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‘In Search of
fish dam
road’ N.C. Science and Math team treks east to bring old Indian path to life |
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BY JIM WISE
jwise@heraldsun.com; 419-6680 From the cozy warmth of a hickory fire on a drizzly morning, to the prickly tangles of blackberry vines and barbed wire, from an Eno Indian village of 1701 to a 1915 power plant and a 1949 NASCAR track, a teenage team from the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics is bringing new life to an ancient thoroughfare. Starting Tuesday and continuing through next week, 23 students and two teachers have resumed the quest for fish dam road. "On the surface," said art teacher Joe Liles, "it looks like we're simply traveling the course of a road. In reality, what is going to happen is that traveling opens up to us experiences with people, with geography, with oral traditions and living history." "In Search of fish dam road" is a "mini-term" class that continues to build on a project begun last year. Then, a similar group began at Falls Lake and worked west, tracing the pre-colonial route of a trading path and collecting impressions, samples and stories along the way toward the site of an Indian village in present-day Hillsborough. This year, the project begins in Hillsborough and is working east. "The western end of things, last year, kind of got shortchanged because we ran out of time," said Liles, who is leading the project with math teacher Dot Doyle. "We didn't map the road in that part of Orange County. "This year," he said, "it's almost similar to hiking a much shorter version of the Appalachian Trail. They will really have the experience of visiting all of fish dam road, from beginning to end. I'm hoping that will give them a sense of both physical and spiritual accomplishment." Discovering culture Bits of fish dam road may still be found on maps of Durham, and the name remains on one or two street signs near the Oxford Manor public housing community. Other parts of fish dam road form sections of modern streets and highways, among them Redwood road, Hamlin road, Old Oxford Highway, Crutchfield and Carver streets, Berini Drive and U.S. 70. NCSSM senior Brandon Locklear, from Robeson County, enrolled this year for his second fish dam expedition. Having taken the class last year, he said he figured he would have something to contribute this time and he plans to write a paper on his experience. Being a Lumbee Indian himself, he said, the project has personal meaning for him. "I've learned more about my culture," he said. Another student, Samantha Woolery, a junior from Charlotte who was braving the woods and streams despite a fractured ankle, said, "I love the woods and stuff." "I have a lot of Native American friends, and it gives me a good excuse to go hiking," Woolery said. Route evolution The fish dam route was established long before Europeans arrived in the New World, connecting the Hillsborough Indian village with another on the Neuse River, near the present Cheek road bridge over Falls Lake. At the Neuse River end, the Indians built a stone weir in the river for catching fish -- hence the name "fish dam." With the arrival of European traders and settlements, the old footpath was widened to accommodate packhorse traffic and, later, wagons. Nineteenth-century maps show it as a prominent roadway across Durham and Orange counties, and in the early 20th century, automobiles followed its course. With the "Good roads" movement of the 1920s, some parts of fish dam road were improved into modern highways and some parts became city streets, but much of it was abandoned to erosion, woods and bulldozers. During the class, each student develops a project of his or her own -- photography, sketching, nature collecting, mapping and so on. And as the class finds and records sections of the road, two students take Global Positioning System coordinates, which are fixed on a topographical map and correlated with aerial photographs. That should produce a map of the partially vanished road that is as close to exact as modern technology and old-fashioned woodslore can create, they said. But learning what went on along the road is as much a part of the project as learning the road itself, Liles said. "We'll learn, for instance, about how life was for the Indian people that lived in the horseshoe bend of the Eno [River] in present-day Hillsborough," he said. "We'll learn about how the mills operated on the Eno, not only as places to grind your corn and wheat, but as centers of communities. "We'll learn about hog killings, we'll learn about growing tobacco, we'll learn about how sawmills used to operate, we'll learn about Huckleberry Springs and what a vibrant part of early Durham that was," he added. "And we'll learn how to ford creeks and rivers." Through the ruins On Tuesday morning, the class got to warm itself around an open fire in the replica Occoneechee village in Hillsborough, while hearing from John Blackfeather Jeffries, whose 18th-century ancestor Simon adopted a British surname in order to retain the voting and property rights that the colonial government denied to Indians. From that point, historian Tom Magnuson led the class through riverside woods to a point where archaeology has established a human presence as far back as 10,000 years. Owls, red-tail hawks and deer made their presence known as the class made a perilous stream crossing over the ruins of a dam. That first day finished at the ruins of the Orange County Speedway, where Richard Petty, Junior Johnson, Fireball Roberts and others of their ilk raced at the dawn of NASCAR. By the end of the week, the group had advanced through tangled woods, soggy streambeds, a golf course, the ruins of the Southern Power Co. plant off Pleasant Green road and into part of the Eno River State Park. They even spent one night camping out by the side of fish dam road. "I tell you what," Liles said, "I'm a tired puppy. "But it was a miraculous experience." Added Don Moffitt, past president of the Eno River Association, "All of that work will help keep the memory of fish dam road alive." People with memories fish dam road also will be the subject of the 2005 Eno River Calendar, and during the mini-term, day-by-day reports are being posted on the Eno River Association's Web site, www.enoriver.org/fishdam. fish dam road and the NCSSM project also will be the subject of an exhibit opening May 6 at the Durham Public Library, 300 N. Roxboro St. Liles credits Moffitt and local historian David Southern for the idea of investigating fish dam road, and the project's scope extends beyond what Science and Math students will learn during their mini-term. "We want people's stories and memories about fish dam road," Liles said, "and it's very critical that we act now, because people that can actually remember fish dam road as children now have to be at least 85 years old. "We have found several of those people, but we know there are more out there, and we want to make contact with them," he added. Liles asked that anyone with information contact him at the school at 416-2730. "It's been great watching Joe work," Moffitt said. "Joe has gotten all kinds of people engaged, and a lot of people excited." And it's good to realize that there is more to the Triangle's modern surroundings than what may be glimpsed from a car window, Moffitt said. This project could "help people who live here now to have some idea of what life was like around here as recently as 70 years ago and as long ago as 300 [years]."
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