State

Page Two THE STATE April 14, 1934 NORTH CAROLINA’S DESERTED VILLAGE THE HOUSES ARE STILL THERE, AND SO ARE THE STREETS AND OTHER SIGNS OF HABITATION, BUT FOR THE PAST FORTY YEARS, NOBODY HAS BEEN LIVING IN THIS MOORE COUNTY VILLAGE EXCEPT BATS, BIRDS, SNAKES AND VARIOUS SMALL ANIMALS. IT WAS ONCE A THRIVING MANUFACTURING COMMUNITY, KNOWN AS PARKWOOD. - BY R. S. NORTH CAROLINA once bad a oily whose sole excuse for ex¬ istence was the manufacture of millstones. It was a thriving munici¬ pality set in a valley, and through its heart flowed a winding blue stream, just the size for trout, stickers, and corn mills. For the past forty years this town has not had an inhabitant ; that is, no inhabitant of the order of primates. For four decades only bats, ravens, screech owls, and ghosts have disturbed the dreary peacefulness of this once lively town in Moore County, five miles west of Carthage, and one mile off the main highway between Biscoe and Car¬ thage. When it was alive the town was called Parkwood, but now that it is dead it is known as the “deserted village.” Some time ago I went to Biscoe to sec some friends. When I got there, they could not be found. What few people who remained at home ex¬ plained to me that everybody was away visiting the “deserted village.” In¬ quiries soon gained me the knowledge that hundreds of natives living within one to ten miles of Parkwood knew nothing of existence until a short time previous someone had discovered its ruins and told everybody about it. Just As It Wos 40 Ycors Ago The strangest thing about this strange town is that except for the state of di¬ lapidation, decomposition, growth of trees and underbrush, and lack of hu¬ man inhabitants the place stunds just os it was when deserted about half a century ago. Even the old postoflice, with its record of registered mail and the letters in the pigeon holes, is still there undisturbed except for the rains that have beaten through the fallen roof, and the bugs and dirt daubers that have clogged the general delivery window. When I went there, I searched through the files of the general merchandise RAINEY store, through the register of the Grand Hotel, and through the ledger which kept a record of the registered mail at the postofficc. The most recent date I could find was where Moses Faber, of Baltimore. Maryland, put up for the night at the Grand Hotel on April 2, 1891. He and his horse and the driver of the horse cost his firm seventy-five cents for the night. He paid the bill and it was receipted on the books by a clerk whose name I could not decipher. A discovery in the attic of the hotel gave me a clue to the whole strange situation. In a chest I found thousands of advertising folders, almost perfectly preserved. These folders were in colors and told of the wonders of the town’s great item of manufacture: “Moore County Grit” millstones. In this beau¬ tiful valley some enterprising soul had discovered “a blue colored cement stone, filled with white flint, which when dressed has a much sharper and better cutting edge than any other stone yet found.” The Old Mill Site On leaving the belt road and enter¬ ing the forest you run into the first house of Parkwood with startling sud¬ denness. Without close scrutiny, none of the buildings can be seen from the highway, and yet the first structure— the mill which ground the free samples of meal— is not more than fifty yards from the heavy traveled roadway. Only the walls of this building arc left ; the guts of the structure, the three stories, stairs, mills, and roof are lying in a jumble in the blue stream which once turned the stones that ground the meal that made the hoc cake that fed the THE AUTHOR, R. S. Rainey, is Principal of the Oakhurst High School, in Charlotte, and has writ¬ ten a number of articles in stote newspapers ond other periodicals. folks that picked the cotton and tapped the turpentine for many miles around. Just above the mill in almost a perfect state of preservation stnjids the big plant which once manufactured the woodwork for both the “Under Runner” and the “Upper Runner” mills. The lathes, the saws, the planers, and the lumber are all there, undisturbed by vandalism. A huge gum whoso limbs have upset one corner of the roof, blocks n doorway. A hole in the ground filled with clear water and teeming with sun perch was once the quarry from which the stones were blasted. In a stone house nearby was stored the explosives for blasting. High above the ground a stout steel cable passes through a great oak. This cable once was a part of a crane which lifted the stono onto a machine that trimmed the rocks into the millstones. Lofty pines lift their heads high above the steam engine which was run by two huge multi-horsepowered boilers set on brick foundations. Two smoke stacks, more than a hundred feet tall, lie prone on the earth, viewing the proud heights from which they descended. A big pile of thin steel strips was intended to serve as bands for the millstones. Pile3 and piles of lumber, like John Brown's body, lie moulding under a coat of leaves and pine straw. Valuable Mill-stones To the connoisseur of the quaint and the antique in homo building, the pile of discarded millstones will hove the greatest appeal. A certain old Vir¬ ginian a few years back made a fortune by buying up old millstones and selling them to wealthy home-builders who wanted them to place in front of their front steps. With this Parkwood pile at his disposal, he could have made sev¬ eral fortunes. There are literally hun¬ dreds of them. Beautiful with thoir white flint sparkles and the dull blue background. Only slight flaws exist, nothing to mar their beauty for home decoration, ond, according to the folder, they range in size from fourteen to 48 inches. A strange feeling came over me as I attempted to unravel the mystery of why these people so abruptly left this town to decay in the woods, the houses arc still there, but where are the people and why did they leave? I have made inquiries from several sources but up to the present have not found any one who could give any authoritative in¬ formation on tho subject.