1899 Hydro-Electric Power Plant

To all of those who haven't heard, my knee/back has put me out of commission over the last few months. I've been back and forth to the surgical center in Pinehurst trying to get over a weight lifting injury. The doctor prescribed no lifting, no running, and no riding for the next 2 months... Basically no fun......

However, I have been doing some canoeing and some hiking as I try to make it through the 2 month sentence. I had heard of an old power plant located on the Cape Fear River. I couldn't believe that I have paddled past this place many times and never noticed it. I soon found out why.

The power plant is located on the Cape Fear River about a mile and half downstream from the current Buckhorn Dam. You follow a trail along the river until you get to a T-type intersection. You then take the grown up logging road on the left and follow it all the way to the plant. You can tell when you are getting close, as you will be scrambling up and down several very steep muddy banks. As soon as Daisy and I saw the power plant, she put on the brakes. She refused to get close to the power plant. After dragging her for a few feet, I gave up and tied her to a nearby tree. This is where she remained sitting contently while I explored the old plant.

The first thing you will notice at the plant is the numerous posted signs. CP&L currently owns the land and has posted all sides of the property. I'm not going to tell you anymore about what I saw, however I will give you a short history of eerie beginnings of the power plant below.

A short history of the Power Plant at Buckhorn. (This information was taken from Duke Power's Website and also from the newspaper of the time "The Chatham Rabbit".)

The facility began construction in 1899 when W.M. Morgan and Captain R. Percy Gray decided it would be profitable to develop power on the Deep and Cape Fear Rivers. These men in conjunction with a few other companies (Cape Fear Power, Deep River Manufacturing, and Cape Fear Iron and Steel) took a loan out for 350,000. (I'm not sure what the equivalent of 350,000 dollars would be today, but I'm sure it would be an enormous amount of money). This project must have been a little more involved than at first thought. In 1905 after six years of construction, the loan was found in default and the plant faced foreclosure.
During the foreclosure process, the Power Plant faced more problems. An epidemic had stricken the residents between Lockville (Lockville is in Moncure, NC) and Buckhorn Dam. This sickness was believed to be caused by the backwater from the Dam. The residents quickly tried to stop construction, claiming the dam was a nuisance and a health hazard for landowners in the vicinity. Landowners frantically sold their land in an effort to move away from this facility.

On Oct. 6 1906 the dam was sold at a public auction for $250,000 to Mr. S.D. Mitchell, a prominent electrician of New York. (Bondholders and stockholders of the company lost all they had invested.) Construction resumed on the property and it was near completion six months later, when disaster struck once again.

On April 25, 1907 four workers at the Power Plant were killed as their vessel was swept over the damn into their watery grave. This caused a halt in the operation of the dam. (There seems to be a history of bad things happening here). A month later disaster struck once more.

On May 23, 1907 70 feet of the Buckhorn dam washed away. Operation was once again halted to provide time for the dirt to be replaced by concrete.

Once this renovation was completed, it was reopened and began operations, successfully transferring power to Fayetteville and Sanford mills. However the catastrophic past of this eerie place continued. (Maybe Daisy was smart not to want to get close to here). As workers were continuing to complete the metal structure which was attached to the dam, a storm arose. The workers moved inside of the building to escape from the violent rain (21 workers). During the storm, lighting struck a nearby tree and ran inside the building. This killed 7 of the workers, and severely wounded another 7 (and also killed a horse). This halted the operation once again.

Over 20 deaths in a period of two years, just to try and get this place going... Creepy.

Next adventure... Camp in the attached building... (This is why I don’t watch scary movies!)

Paddling the Cape Fear

"Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can't take a taxi." ~Alan Alda Every year my friends and I spend numerous hours on the river. One of our favorite river trips is going from Buckhorn Dam to Lillington. This is a two day paddle and always presents some type of challenge. We typically make this trip several times a year, but this was the first time that I had paddled this section for 2008. There were only three of us heading out for this trip: Joel, Gavin, and I.

*Google Map of Put in, Camp, and take out.....

We met at Joel's around 1:00 and after we had loaded all of our gear up we headed for the dam to put in. We put our boats in the river on the Lee County side of Buckhorn Dam at around 2:30. We agreed that we should try to make it to the fish traps before dark. This would be a challenge since we only had about 4 hours of paddling time before dark. About a mile down river we came to the first obstacle and first close call of the trip. The obstacle was a rock garden that engulfed the entire river for about a 1/4 mile. These rapids were especially hairy today because of all the rainfall over the last few days. Not to mention that our canoes were loaded down with way more gear than we needed. (Gavin had a small version of REI packed in his rucksack.) After banging a few rocks and taking on a good amount of water in the boat, we were all able to navigate through the switchbacks without capsizing. We continued paddling for the next hour or so until our shoulders burned to much to continue. We decided to pull over to one of the enormous rocks in the river and take a break, hydrate, and dump water from our canoes.
After a short break we loaded back into our boats and headed downstream, paddling as hard as we could. Our next obstacle was about 2 miles downstream. This was the largest rapid on this section of river. As we approached the rapid we all commented on the ferocious sound it made. We paddled closer to get a good look at which line we thought would give us the driest route. I had been through this section tons of times before, but during the winter months you have to be a little more careful because of the dangers of the cold weather. (I had capsized here a few years back when it was snowing outside, which makes for a miserably cold nights sleep) After a few minutes of trying to decide which line was the safest and watching Joel nearly loose his boat. Gavin and I decided to err on the side of safety and portage around this one.

We made camp just before dark and spend the last few minutes of daylight gathering enough wood to keep us warm by the fire all night. The spot we chose was amazing. It was just past a small set of rapids on a sandy island. This would make for a relaxed nights sleep on soft sand while being sung to sleep by the fast moving water.

As the sun set over us, we unpacked and got ready for the night. We broke out our stoves and our meals and cooked them by the fire. My favorite thing about camping is all the laughs and stories told by the fire. Time flew bye as we laughed by the fire and continuously wiped our eyes from laughing hysterically at all our misadventure tales, besides its not an adventure until something goes wrong, right? We joked by the fire until we all found our eyelids becoming heavy, we had a good ways left to go before reaching our take out tomorrow, so we would need our rest. We headed to bed.

We woke up the next morning before daylight and enjoyed our breakfast by the rekindled campfire. This morning was extremely foggy, the kind of thick wet fog that would slowly dampen your clothes. As the sun rose we found it extremely hard to look forward. The rising sun's reflection beamed off of the water and seemed to set your eyes on fire in just a few seconds. The majority of the morning we spend looking straight down into the boat as we paddled down river. The fog finally lifted around lunch and the remainder of the day was perfect. As we always do, we finished the trip with smiles on our faces. It was another great river trip and another cool story to tell.