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14. Lost Heritage: Last River Highway
- University of Virginia Press
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191 14 Lost Heritage Last River Highway Much of the Albemarle region was virtually inaccessible by road until relatively recently. The vast swampy Albemarle peninsula was particularly isolated, especially the remote communities along the Alligator River. Indeed, one of these, Kilkenny, was described as late as the 1930s as ‘‘one of the most isolated villages in North Carolina.’’ Although indeed isolated by land, these communities had good communications by water for hundreds of years, a river way of life that disappeared in the twentieth century with ascendency of the motorcar.∞ The farmers and fishermen of these communities along the Alligator River depended fundamentally on the water highway between Fairfield (Lake Mattamuskeet) and Elizabeth City. For generations a succession of familiar scheduled steamers, Dickerman, Lizzie Burrus, Soon Old, and Alma, left Fairfield in the morning several times a week, stopping at the deep-water Cherry Ridge Landing (Gum Neck) and smaller docks along the way, and terminated eventually at Elizabeth City, from which one could continue on to Norfolk or catch the next scheduled steamer to New Bern. Little has been written about this bygone aspect of the Albemarle region, especially on the Alligator River. Its very remoteness sustained this lifestyle longer than virtually any similar water highway in the eastern United States. With the advent of proper roads, bridges, and trains even the Alligator River slowly declined as a water highway, and an ancient and romantic tradition finally ended in the mid-1930s. 192 W America’s Wetland Steamboats were a way of life on the Albemarle-Pamlico waterways. Shown is the R. L. Myers II, which plied the Tar River between Washington and Greenville, 1897. (Courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History) The very old community of Gum Neck was the largest on this river. Its original landing of the colonial period was located up narrow Gum Neck Creek, but it slowly became inaccessible to larger boats. In due course it was replaced for commercial traffic by a deep-water landing directly on the river itself at Cherry Ridge, a couple of miles upstream. This occurred about 1845 when a refurbished canal linked the river to Fairfield at Lake Mattamuskeet. For about a hundred years Cherry Ridge Landing was the economic hub of the Alligator River. Throughout this period, apart from the Civil War years, when it was burned intentionally, this landing was the lifeline for locals to transport their fish and farm produce, and themselves , to and from Elizabeth City and beyond. Cherry Ridge Landing was probably typical of many other landings that at one time dotted the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds and their river tributaries. Its main distinction is that it was bustling after most of the other river ports had closed because of better communications via road and train. A brief account of this time warp in the 1920s is a rare glimpse into a bygone age: [3.236.139.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:02 GMT) Lost Heritage W 193 The routes of these early steamboats [on the Alligator River] ran like this: They each had separate days to come into Gum Neck at Cherry Ridge Landing. Weather conditions controlled the punctuality of these runs. The Albemarle Sound got pretty rough at times. . . . Fairfield was the home port for these boats. A boat would leave there at 1:00 o’clock am, get to Kilkenny about daylight, pick up freight and passengers there, then go to Deep Point to collect fish from a campsite before moving on to Cherry Ridge Landing at Gum Neck, arriving there about 9:30 am Mr Joe McKinney (with a walrus mustache) was Dock Master or whatever you call the man in charge of all that shipping, etc. These steamboat days were extra special days. Things were happening, and news from the outside world was always welcome, and someone interesting might get off the boat to spend some time in Gum Neck, hopefully. . . . It usually took the rest of the day to get all the merchandise off the boat and get reloaded to depart at 5:00 pm for other parts and return to Elizabeth City. . . . There were barrels, boxes, crates and bags all containing commodities for our [general] stores. Huge blocks of ice for the stores and some homes and for the fishermen slid all over the docks before they were corralled. . . . Windows, doors and finer things were ordered from Sears Roebuck & Co. . . . Some times there were houses, all pre...