MURDER OF A POCOSIN
Lakes rarely seen by eyes of man — The Croatan Fpresl group. Left i' Great Lake; far right. Long Lake; right middle*
ground, Little Lake; and in foreground, partially drained F.llis Lake. Traces of the old canals can be seen in its dry bed.
They are the heart of a pocosin which may he turned into good forest land. — (Photo by Jerry Schumacher).
The Fores! Service hopes to kill lliis ex¬
tensive slough by a long range draining
program: and it may be good iukus for
fishermen.
Pocosin is a fairly pretty word, but
it’s a hell of a place. Nobody knows
that better than National Forest Serv¬
ice people, which has a big pocosin
on its hands and wants to get rid of it.
The pocosin. or "high swamp," em¬
braces about two-thirds of the 152,-
388 acres of Croatan National Forest
in Carteret, Craven and Jones coun¬
ties. Not one North Carolinian in 10,-
000 has ever been into this forest, and
for very good reasons. Most of it is
inaccessible, and quite forbidding. That
makes it fine for deer and bear and
other game, which slop over into ad¬
jacent territory, making the hunting
very good. But it also makes it fine
for mosquitoes, cotton-mouth mocca¬
sins, and forest fires.
The forest's purchase boundaries
are extensive, stretching all the way
to White Oak River (which rises in
the pocosin) and south to N.C. 24.
fit/ mi l siiari’f
and on the east to Clubfoot Creek
and Marlowe Creek, formerly links
in the old inland waterway. The Trent
and Neuse bound it on the north.
Both U.S. 70 and N.C. 101 go through
the forest. Of course, much of the land
inside these "purchase boundaries" is
still in private ownership.
I he forest contains four large lakes
and some smaller ponds of such sym¬
metry that they bring to mind the
meteorite theory of the origin of our
eastern lakes. You would think such
remote, unfished lakes would team
with fish, but they don’t, and that is
part of the story.
Around the lakes lies a horrible
muck but underneath the muck is good
fine sand and fine loam sand. The
topsoil is 97 per cent organic matter.
This means that if you were to put a
hundred pounds of pocosin soil in a
furnace. 97 pounds of it would disap¬
pear. The muck also is extremely
acid.
Pisgah Forest officials, who admin¬
ister Croatan. plan to dig canals into
the lakes and lower the water table
by about 18 inches. This, they say,
would result in oxidization of the top
18 inches of the swamp, turning the
no-good topsoil into plummcrs* soil.
When this is done, the land which
THE STATE. Vol. XX; No. 21. Entered as second-class mailer, June I, 1933, al the Posloince al Ral.leh. North Carolina, under Ihc act of
March J. 1879. Published by Sharpe Publishing Co.. Inc., Lawyers Hid*., Raleigh, N. C. Copyright, I9J2. by ihe Sharpe Publishing Co.. Inc.
