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Southern Pines
Welcomes
The New Season
To The Sandhills
Southern Pines
Welcomes
The New Season
To The Sandhills
SPECIAL ISSUE
Southern Pines, N. C.
December 1951
SPECIAL ISSUE
[oore County In Bed Of An Ancient Sea Has Thrived On Its Many Invasions
Dts, Lumbermen, Railroaders and
sorters Built On Sand and Clay
T : — —
People Have Moved To Pinebluff For Just One Main Reason
By Bill Sharpe
(In State Magazine)
early morning a couple
California traveling the road
Carthage motored easily to
minence of a slight ridge in
e county when some strange
lonition led the driver to stop,
the top of the ridge they
y-
)m the dune upon which they
a beach of whitest sand
;hed, and in the distance
down upon an incredible
-a great sea geographically
excellent chemical quality and its
physical quality is good except
for moderately high turbidity in
some of the larger streams.
Moore has a wide variety of
soils—perhaps the widest variety
in North Carolina, but it is not
conspiculously fertile. It even in
cludes a finger of coastal soil
which points into the couni y in
the vicinity of Cameron.
It contains a number of min
erals, including gold and coppi'r,
but only pyrophyllite (talc) and
sand, clay and gravel are cm
the murmur of vast and mercially exploited. Its econonu
;ss water, carried to them on
mp and salty breeze. But it
an apparition. The murmur
from the wind passing
igh a forest of pines, which
was hidden in a morning
and the dune upon which
stood, and the beach in front
were the beginnings of the
us Sandhills,
of Sea
is believed that the banks of
are the modified cliffs fa,c-
the ocean which once swept
Piedmont North Carolina,
seashofe stretches across
e from Sanford to the west-
edge of the county and be-
and upon its heights in the
al hardwoods of the Pied
dwell the descendants of
;rite Scots, Dutch and English
:ers. South and east of the
is the bed of the ancient sea,
sparsely settled by Highland
j, but now teeming with a
zation which has grown
strata of turpentine, great
w pine, steelrails, peaches,
incongruously, the panicky
sion of consumptives and
omfort-giving qualities of the
ised sand tiself.
)ore in some respects is a
dleground” county, described
ne native as a golden mean,
addition to the division be-
n clay and sand, the eastern
of the county is in the Coast-
Lain, the western part in the
mont.
Y Fine Streams
altitude ranges around 600
and while the county has no
large streams, it has scores
nail ones, including Deep and
er Little rivers. Drowning,
Governors, Bear, Cabin,
IS, Deep, Aberdeen and other
cs. Drowning creek, inciden-
, is on the highway maps as
her river, a designation re-
;d by Moore historians, who
the name was foistered upon
1 by Cumberlanders and Rob-
ians. The county’s water is of
is delicately balanced among agri
cultural, industrial and resort de
velopments.
The countryside is dotted with
small lakes and ponds, all of them
manmade, and many of them
originally used for mills. Thag-
gard’s pond, the largest, was
yielding bass and grinding grain
long before the Revolutionary
war.
Many Small Tovms
It almost perfectly epitomizes
North Carolina in having no large
cities but several small towns. It
is politically Democratic, has a
mild weather with long growing
seasons, and about 30 per cent of
its rather scant population is col
ored. It has fair fishing, and bare
ly fair hunting, and there is the
typical North Carolina smell of
tobacco and textiles in the air.
It originated in Scotch, English
Village Has Thrived On Immigrants
Who Came ‘‘Just Because We Like It”
in
to
Beautiful Pinebluff lake, created in 1950 after the old lake on this site had been washed away. A
bond issue voted by the citizens qf Pinebluff made possible the building of a fine new dam and a lake
side recreation park. The picture above was made during the Moore District fall j:amporee of Boy
Scouts in October 1951.
(Photo by Emerson Humphrey)
farming area. It is the repository
of the native lore of the county
South Neglected
But the ridges of the sand, with
their magnificent but unappreci
and Dutch settlements, but it had ^ and its indigenous customs,
no colonial gentry to speak of,
and its history was more one of
hard work than of gory deeds. The
county historian says there was
scarcely a gentleman in colonial
Moore, in the accepted sense of
the word.
But with general statistics out of
the way, this middle-state county
modern transportation.
Lumber Boom
The lumber boom, overlapping
the turpentine boom, was on, and
cutting of thq virgin forest pro
ceeded rapidly, continuing until
ated stands of virgin long-leaf
pine, for a long time were consid
ered worthless. This stand was
the westernmost fringe of the
about 1910. To get the lumber out
to the steam lines, lumbermen
laid tracks for their tramways,
using 4x4 lumber on cross ties
appears one of the state’s most inland 150 miles from the ocean
exceptional and contradictory. |and extended to the Gulf. The
The line between clay and sand pines occupied a country so for
great long-leaf belt which swept of 4 x 8’s. It was an era of specu
lation, suddenly shifting fortunes,
and flimsy development. Manly
has had profound effects on the
history and economic develop
ment of Moore. R. E. Wicker of
Pinehurst, historian of the coun
ty’s historical society, says that
the first settlers of record were
on the Deep. River as early as
1747, in a section where Benjamin
Williams, colonial governor Of
North Carolina lived and is
buriedin this section, too, is the
Alston House, scene of a Revolu
tionary Tory-Whig skirmish.
Immigration into this northern
portion of the county was fairly
bidding that travelers passing
through the country detoured
around it, because the needle-
carpeted floor of the forest did not
even offer forage for livestock.
Then the first of many infiltra
tions to pe:^olate into the Sands
begun. Highland Scots entered
through the “back door”—coming
up from the Cape Fear Valley
and following the streams, upon
which they established small
farms. According to Wicker, they
probably did not come by choice.
But desirable land to the south-
steady in the period 1750-70, and I east had been taken up, and the
Carthage, the county seat, was.^ardy newcomers grubbed out a
settled in 1786. The clay belt con-I hard living from the streams’
tinues to be the conventional banks.
They did not get along excess
es a shipping center and boasted
14 stores, 9 of which were said to
contain bar rooms.
The northern end of the county
got railways, too, and the Moore
Central, which went into Cam
eron, was only recently taken up.
The Norfolk-Southern was built
in to Robbins.
This lumbering was depletion,
not development, but indirectly it
led to the more permanent pros
perity of the region. In the early
80’s, some unknown doctor in the
north sent a tubercular patient to
Manly in an effort to restore him
to health. There he was visited by
one John T. Patrick, industrial
agent of the Seaboard, and Pat
rick, ^alking with his sick friend.
Tie Pinebluff library, owned and operated by the Pinebluff Li-
•y association, has a history dating back almost 50 years. The sign
made by the late Hermon McNeill, noted sculptor, who had a
e and studio at Pinebluff for many years.
iveyly well with their clay neigh
bors. Almost to a man they had
Crown sympathies, and the Coun
ty swarmed with Tories. The no
torious David Fanning organized
[them into bodies which harried
ithe American patriots, and the
[county’s Revolutionary War his
tory is mostly concerned with the
murder, arson and pillage char
acteristic of civil strife.
Land Taken Up
Building of the plank road coin
cided with a new surge in Moore’s
development. State-owned land in
the Sandhills was now taken up in
large tracts, often Of 640 acres or
more, and the great pines were
bled of their resin, which was dis
tilled and the turpentine hauled
to Fayetteville.
Then came the railways.
A. F. Page, who moved to
Aberdeen in 1881 from Cary in
Wake county, headed a movement
in 1885 to build a lumbering rail
way westward toward West End.
His family ever since has been
prominent in local, state and na
tional history, and one member,
Walter Hines Page, ambassador to
Great Britain in World War 1,
was one of North Carolina’s
strongest and wisest men.
The Page railway, eventually
extended west to Asheboro was
preceded in 1878 by completion
of the Raleigh and Augusta Air
Line (now the Seaboard). Some
what later in 1892 John Blue con
structed the 47-mile Aberdeen
and Rockfish railway, and the
Sandhills at last were bisected by
PINEBLUFF MAYOR
Practically nobody lives
'inebluff who doesn’t want
ive there.
From the 1880’s to the 1950’s—
he span of the recorded history
jf the community some seven
ailes south of Southern Pines on
Mo. 1 highway—very few families
lave made Pinebluff their home
hrough necessity rather than
choice.
Citizens of Pinebluff grant that
t is probably because nobody has
lad to live there that the town
now or at least in the 1950 census
as a population of 572, rather
han five times or 10 times that
number. But they’d rather have
happy neighbors than a town 10
-imes its present size.
There are no factories at Pine-
iluff in which people have to
vork and so have to move there
because of their jobs. No company
maintains district offices at Pine
bluff to which its employees are
assigned, forcing them to move
families to the community wheth
er they like it or not.
Perhaps the only persons who
have ever had to move to Pine
bluff are church pastors who have
been assigned there in the normal
shifting course of their peregrina
tions from one charge to another
—but if any of these have not
liked Pinebluff they have not
made it known. And today, one
of the town’s most respected cit
izens is a retired pastor who, with
his wife, so liked thq town that,
after serving the church there for
inch and eight-inch mains. It is
typical of the Pinebluff commun
ity’s combination of civic pride
and civic apathy that, although
the bond issue was carried and
the water tank installed, there
were only two members of the
board of commissioners at the
time, because it had not been pos
sible to induce ai third candidate
to file for election to the three-
man board.
As one of the two commission
ers was frequently out of town on
private business, the bond issue
and management of this major
improvement for the town was
handled almost completely by the
mayor and one commissioner.
Pinebluff residents have been
bragging about their water sys
tem for almost 30 years, but the
election in which only two candi
dates for three offices could be
mustered has been long forgotten.
Bigger Than Appears
Many a motorist entering Pine
bluff from the North or South on
No. 1 highway has noticed that,
after passing the State highway
city limits marker (including the
notation that the town was de
clared a bird sanctuary in 1922),
he drives for some distance
through farmland, on the South,
or woodland, on the North, before
reaching an inhabited portion of
the town.
Pinebluff, it seems, is bigger
than he thinks. It is.
Within Pinebluff’s town limits
are farms, forests, one lake now
a number of years, returned later
H. MILLS
either originated or picked up an
idea which was to turn the word
Sandhills from a description of
despair to one of hope. The merits
of sand were shortly to be trum
peted to the world.
Promotion Campaign
The railway commenced a sub
stantial promotion campaign aim
ed first at aiding New Englanders.
At that time, “consumption” was
the most dreaded of diseases, and
Patrick pictured, with perhaps
more veracity than he intended,
the Sandhills as a healing‘hab
itat for the diseased. New Eng
landers came in a slow but steady
stream, settling along the railway
track, and principally at Southern
Pines. That stream of emigrants
has never ceased.
, a had bought 570
acres at $2.50 an acre, which the
natives probably thought was a
rare bargain for them. It turned
out to be a rare bargain for all
concerned.
Dream Towns
The railway promoter laid out,
on paper, some “dream” towns,
many of which remained just
that. Southern Pines, however,
was one dream to become a real
ity, and into his plans Patrick
built features which have blessed
and cursed the settlement to this
day. His blocks were standardized
400 feet tracts, each bisected by
alleys leading into a 100-foot
square. Ownership of the squares
and alleys is how being disputed.
After Southern Pines, he laid
out Pinebluff, also originally a
health resort, then Roseland 'and
perhaps others. Roseland flour
ished briefly, at one time boasting
a newspaper, the Roseland Enter-
(Continued on Page 4)
and there used to be two, and, at
Pinebluff’s new town hall, remodeled and enlarged from an old
schoolhouse building.
for a permanent home when the
days of his active duty and trav
els were ended.
Enthusiasm
From the beginning, Pinebluff
and its inhabitants have had an
enthusiasm for their home town
that has been termed inflated by
the cynical but appears com-
I pletely justified by the happy
people who dwell spaciously and
contentedly there.
John T. Patrick, original found
er and promoter of the community
in the 1880’s and 1890’s, did not
limit his enthusiasm when, in a
description appended to an 1894
map of the town, he described its
qualities in terms not only of the
United States but of the entire
world.
‘If you want to locate in the
Southern States,” the description
on the map proclaimed, “recollect
that Pinebluff, N. C., is the town
that is being rapidly developed
by Northern and Southern men
and women of energy, enterprise
and means. It is one of the health
iest locations in the United States
and has as fine water as can be
found on the globe, as pure as the
Poland Springs water of Maine. .”
The water to which the founder
probably had reference, according
to an old-time resident of Pine
bluff, is that of a spring now loca
ted on the property of the Pine
bluff Sanitarium. This water was
at one time bottled by Mr. Patrick
in five-gallon containers and was
used on dining cars of the Sea
board Air Line railroad.
Pure Spring Water
The water of the world-unsur
passed spring is not a part of the
town’s present modern munici
pal water system, but the water
in the pipes of the modern sys
tem is rated by residents equally
as highly. It is pure spring water
requiring no chemical treatment.
Regular checks by the State labor
atories pronounce it pure as it
comes from the ground.
While more crowded commun
ities struggle to float huge bond
issues for the expansion of their
water systems, Pinebluff residents
gaze fondly at their big 50,000
gallon tank that was installed in
1923 at a cost of between $4,000
and $5,000 dollars. Estimates of
what it would cost to build it to
day run up to $50,000.
The 1922-1923 water bond is
sue of $8,000 not only paid for
the tank but allowed installation
of considerable footage of six-
least on the map, the outline for
a good-sized little city.
Even the “built-up” areas of
Pinebluff, where the streets have
been cut through for years and
there are street lights burning on
all four corners of the blocks,
there are square blocks on which
there are only two .or three
houses. It is possible to live in the
center of town and be out of sight
of your neighbor.
This real estate promoter’s
nightmare is pleasing to Pine
bluff residents. They enjoy the
spaciousness and grandeur of a
large town without the large
town’s crowding. For tax revenue
the’ dispersion of Pinebluff’s
homes is not lucrative—^but the
town runs efficiently with a bal
anced budget. Town officials ad
mit they sometimes dream of
what it would be like to collect
taxes on &' normal number of
homes around the blocks where
mocking birds now nest in wild
grapevines, but quickly realize
that then would follow complex
ities of administration that would
likely keep them meeting once
a week instead of once a month.
Then they relax.
Town Is Growing
Pinebluff, on the other hand,
is proud of its development and
growth in the past 20 years. From
a census count of 289 in 1930. the
town listed 330 persons in 1940
and then took its biggest 10-year
jump to 572 in 1950. Spotted
throughout the community are
many new homes. Also important,
practically every available struc
ture, business, residential or
nondescript, is occupied.
This contrasts with conditions
of about 15 years ago when a
town check showed between 30
and 40 buildings of all types va
cant.
Though residents enjoy the un
congested dispersion of their vil
lage, every one prefers the pros
perity, building and expansion of
today to the conditions of 15 years
ago. And nowhere does a strang
er get a warmer welcome than in
Pinebluff. In a greater degree than
in most communities, Pinebluff
accepts people as they are.
Through the years, the town has
known and harbored distinguish
ed writers and artists, faddists
and eccentrics, sportsmen and re
tired engineers, lawyers and doc
tors and seekers after health and
happiness—and it has shown
(Continued on Page 8)