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Waters that become the Neuse River firstflow fromfarmBy Tofn DillonSunday EditorHILLSBOROUGH — Far downstream, people of a poetic nature call it the “mighty Neuse.”Where it flows out of Tony Pittard’s 10-acre Orange County farm pond, it's not so mighty.It flows through a foot-wide pipe that runs under the muddy dirt road over the dam and acts as a spillway for the six- to eight-foot drop. This time of year, the pond and the little branch are bankfull and running steadily. That's a function of winter and spring in this rolling part of Piedmont North Carolina. Runoff is almost always high. • 1When summer comes, it's a lot drier. Actually, it's not known as the Neuse here. This is the headwaters of the Eno River — like the word Neuse. that's from the name of an Indian tribe. The Neuse isn't bom until the Eno meets the Flat River at Falls of the Neuse Lake, impounded in the late 1970s to provide water for the grow ing city of Raleigh.But it's all one river: Piedmont headwaters, fall line reservoir and rapids and slow-moving coastal plain brown and blackwater river You need only travel and talk to people to find thatout. 'Kv r ’ v;:5Pittard's farm pond is on the East branch ofthe Eno, only a few miles from a similar pondon the farm of Oscar Compton, draining intoanother branch. Like the area around NewBern, it’s historic“My great-grandfather bought a farm here inthe early 18(X)s said Compton, who turned 62in March, “and it’s been in the family eversince The care Pittard and Compton take withtheircropsshowed even in the w inter. in theofrM*. iMlMWrr*-*' 11 iHi.fiMvi-i.1-r I *TT*f—grassesand winter w on thefiewere soilconservationists.A late winter sun sets behind a farm pond northwest of Hillsborough that isone of the sources of the Eno, principal tributary ofCompton. the Neu*«“I have terraces on my farm my dad built backin the 1930s. That was even before the Soil Conservation Service. We rotate our crops every year and put fescue on the land. That builds up nitrogen in the soil.”Compton, the elder of the two, raised tobacco for years, though he’s mostly just raising a few cows today, letting other people take care of the more labor-intensive crops.And he says he had 12 or 15 hogs at one time. something that might distress environmental activists on the lower Neuse, where multi-thousand-head farms have gotten to be an issue the last few years. Pigs are somethingelse Compton doesn’t do any longer.“Even with 12 or 15 hogs, the odor would get in your clothes.” he said. He says he can remember coming in from cleaning the pens and having his wife ask him to change hisclothes “right now.”“I went to High Point College,” Comptonsaid. ”J was a walk-on and played a little basketball.” He wasn't a star, he said, but he can remember scrimmaging against Doug Moe, one of the University of North Carolina stars of the curly I96lt;k.“Then my dad died, and 1 came home andCompton said. “I’ve never regretted it.” He learned his conservation principles from his father, he learned quail hunting from hisfather arid he learned the love of the outdoorsand the river from his father. “One branch ofSun Journalthe Eno starts on this farm he said.If the Neuse River is a “cause” today for some people, it curiously mirrors what's happened on the Eno below Hillsborough and downstream from Oscar Compton’s farm, where the Eno loops around the northern part of the city of Durham on its way to Falls Lake.“Many years ago the Eno ran red and blue with wastes from the many small textile plants along its banks wrote Bob Benner of Mor-ganton in his 1987 “Paddler’s Guide to EasternNorth Carolina. “These have long been gone.and nature has so completely reclaimed the river valley that this area has been proposed as a linear park.”Indeed, today some 2,000 acres of land along the Eno have been turned into Eno River State Park, and five access areas put canoeists in proximity to the small rapidsalong this Neuse tributary. It’s apopular place on weekends for families and students from Duke,the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and elsewhere.The park is a tribute to the work over 30 years of the late Margaret Nygard and the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley, begun in the 1960s to pre serve the Eno as a recreation resource. But none of that w ork was easy. When the association was begun. Durham was planning a dam on the Eno.“The way we got people interested w as education said Dun can Heron, a geology professor at Duke w ho is the association’s current president. “We had to educate the public that there was a riverregion.Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. It’s also the association’s biggest fund-raiser.And the association has done many other things. It moved into acquiring land for the park, publishes an Eno Journal and a yearly calendar and puts its earnings back into support for the park.Nygard's death several months ago was a big blow. Heron said. Margaret was the driving force behind the association. She wouldwork 24 hours a day and seven days a week for the Eno he said. But the group is still one of the most active public interest groups in thethere and that it was unique. We led hikes, we developed slideshows and exhibits, we’d showthem to any group who would letThe association started its Festival for the Eno in 1980, and it now attracts some 35,000 people a year to Durham’s West Point on the Eno Park. It’s a gathering offolk, gospel and blues musicians that has become one of the biggest July 4th attractions in the TrianglePhoto# by Tom Dillon Sun JournalHikers prepare to cross a suspension footbridge over the Eno River at Eno River State Park north-wed of Durham. It'S become a popular weekend escape for residents of the Triangle city.state. And its education effort has succeeded. “Now everybody knows the Eno is there.” said Heron.It was a warm day in early February when two of us set out to explore a few miles of the Eno above the Duke Power Co. dam at Pleasant Green Road, northwest of Durham. It’s aneasy beginner's stretch where you can paddleseveral miles upstream as well as downstream through the rapids below the dam. We went upstream,Away from the road, the steep hills closed in on the river, and the blustery w ind, which had blown the canoe around on top of the car on the trip over, seemed to die down.It w as on the outskirts of town, that's true. A power line followed the river for much of the afternoon, houses backed up to it, and at oneplace a domestic duck floated in the current But it was a pleasant paddle despite the cold water — a special incentive to stay upright.We paddled upstream through a rapid near Cates Ford, w here someone’s old foreign car sat forlornly in a current to the left of an island. Then we wheeled the cantx* around, ran therapid and an hour or so later were hack at the dam. carefully pulling onto the portage path away from the spillway.Below the dam, rapids led away from the road and on past the site of one of the many mills that used the Eno’s power to grind grain in the days before electricity. These mill sites have furnished a lot of the folklore that makes the Eno so interesting.A little over six miles downstream is Sen nett’s Hole, a moderate rapid w here the builder of long-gone Sennett’s Mill is reputed to haveburied a box of gold in the late 1700, No one’s ever recovered the gold, hut in the mid-1980s a small dam was reconstructed on the river to supply power to the rebuilt West Point Mill, site of the park.Passing by the park later, I made a mental * note to try to get to the festival this year, then tooted on downstream where the river slows down Here it hits a geologic formation calledthe Triassic Basin, less rocky than the Eno’supstream course; it’s only a little more thanthree miles to the backwater of Falls LakeThe Eno continues for another five miles asan arm ol the lake, to meet the Flat River flowing down from Person County, near RoxboroIt’s there, beneath the waters of FaUs of theNeuse Lake, that the Neuse River is bom.
Newspaper Details
New Bern Sun Journal
New Bern, North Carolina, US
Sun, Apr 07, 1996
Page 46
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 26 Jun 2022
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