State

PMOTO DY MELVIN TURLINGTON The old blast furnace at Endor on the Deep River near Sanford. Note figure of man standing in arch. Iron Mining in Upper Cape Fear 2. — The blast furnace at Endor By MALCOLM FOWLER A LMOST from the date of its set- ZX tlement the far sighted leaders / V of the Central Cape Fear Val¬ ley had gazed with yearning — if somewhat covetous — eye toward the lush lands of the upper Piedmont region. Why should the trade of that vast, rich section go toward Norfolk and Richmond on the one hand or Charles¬ ton, South Carolina, on the other? They had enough power from Smiley’s в and the Great Falls at Buckhorn above Averasboro to turn thousands of factory wheels. And the Cape Fear itself was a navigable highway straight down to Wilmington and the markets of the outside world. The answer, of course, lay in those same falls of Smiley and Buckhorn, not to mention Jones’ Falls just above the confluence of the Deep and Haw rivers. The river was the route of transport, and the falls had them blocked. But it was a hardy breed who peopled the Valley in those days. They didn’t hunker down on their haunches and wait for a beneficent government to set up a WPA project for them. “I)o it yourself.” was their motto — and they did it- -or tried to. The legislature of 1792 chartered the Cape Fear Navigation Company to improve the navigation of the Cape Fear from Averasboro to the junction of the Deep and Haw, and those folks made their first bid toward eonouering the obstructing river rapids with ca¬ nals and locks. Previous articles have told how those first efforts came to grief and bankrupted nearly every planter and business man around Averasboro. And how the younger generation, cursing the misfortune of their fa there,, sal¬ vaged what they could from the wreckage and mass-migrated to neighboring states and territories and set up the first families of the sections they settled. Dealt such a staggering blow, it was some little time before the Cen¬ tral Cape Fear Valley recovered. Steam transportation had been devel¬ op»! and a railroad was creeping to¬ ward Raleigh ; extensive coal, copper and iron deposits had been discov¬ ered at Buckhorn and in the Deep River country when the people of the Valley made their second bid for in¬ dustrial prominence. The legislature of 1848-49 chartered the Cape Fear and Deep River Navi¬ gation Company to make the rivers navigable from Fayetteville to Han¬ cock’s Mill, ’way over in Moore County. Гп the following decade, dams and locks were constructed from Averasboro to Carbon ton on the Deep River, and bluff, hardy Matthew Brady had taken the first steamer, the John H, Baugh ton, up the river. Many Mining Companies As the work on the dams and locks progressed, a regular rash of mining and development companies broke out in the Deep River country, reaching a peak in 1854 when apparently anyone who could kick up a lump of coal or a piece of ore on his place, formed a mining company; and any deal in¬ volving less than a million dollars drew only raised eyebrows and derog¬ atory sniffs. Of course, these wildcats soon fell by the wayside, but other companies that were controlled by the Bryan, llaughton. Heck. Evans, Mclver, McRae and London interests, to name a few, made steady progress. Due to an interlocking of their in-