IIA. Prose Description of Site. 



Merchants Mill Pond is located in central Gates County, on 

 SR 1400 about 1.4 miles south of US 158 at Eason's Crossroads. 

 The park presently consists of about 2,500 acres, with eventual 

 proposed size of about 3,300 acres upon completion of the park 

 master plan (Fig. 13). 



The history of the area, discussed in the master plan (1978), 

 revolves around the mill pond, constructed in 1811, and once a 

 center of commercial activity. The pond was constructed to operate 

 a series of mills, with the most important in existence around 

 the end of the 19th century, supporting a number of small 

 businesses and a post office. 



The pond fortunately survived the period when milling 

 businesses turned to other sources of power and most of the old 

 mill ponds were abandoned and eventually drained. The property 

 was donated to the State in 1973 by the A. B. Coleman family of 

 Moyock, NC and dedicated as a State Park. In 1980 a large tract 

 was registered as a North Carolina Natural Heritage Area, 

 designating it for the permanent protection of high quality 

 wildlife habitat; habitat for a number of rare, endangered or 

 threatened plant species, and as examples of the original forest 

 types of the area. 



With the exception of the pond itself, all of the plant 

 communities of the park are representative natural communities of 

 the region. Despite its man-made origin, the pond is also an 

 outstanding natural community. It has existed for about 170 

 years and has acquired one of the most diverse collections of 

 aquatic and wetland plants in the mid-Atlantic area — over 165 

 species. Only three of these, Myriophyllum brasiliense (Parrot's 

 feather) , Spirodela oligorrhiza and Aneilema kaizak , are not 

 native plants. 



Furthermore, there is evidence that this flora, with 

 communities too numerous to analyze separately in a study of this 

 scope, is entirely natural for the geographic region, having 

 originally occurred in beaver ponds (Frost, unpublished study). 

 Beaver, originally common in this area, carved out numerous 

 ponds in the virgin swamp forests. These natural impoundments 

 would have been the major habitat for many of the species of 

 aquatics now found in the remaining mill ponds. 



Beaver were completely extirpated from the Atlantic Coastal 

 Plain by trapping, by the early part of this century (the last 

 one was trapped in North Carolina around 1915) . As beaver 

 disappeared in the 18th and 19th centuries, and their ponds 

 were absorbed into new swamp forest, numerous mill ponds were 

 being constructed for water power. So, by happy circumstance. 



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