Second Creek, a small community of 

 loggers, farmers and shinglemakers in 

 Tyrrell County, then moved with his 

 family to Alligator Creek in 1901. He 

 spent his childhood in the woods 

 hunting, fishing, bullfrogging and 

 doing, in his words, "a thousand things 

 a boy could do." By the age of 12, 

 Basnight was helping his daddy in the 

 log woods and on their one-mule farm. 



At 21, he worked for a commercial 

 fisher and lived at a fish camp on 

 Charles Island 

 at the mouth of 

 Alligator 

 Creek. "We did 

 not do too 

 well," Basnight 

 confesses, " but 

 we paid for our 

 nets and eat 

 beans regular 

 and had lots of 

 fun doing it." 



After his 

 daddy died of 

 typhoid fever in 

 1919 and the 

 cotton market 

 crashed the 

 next year, he 

 gave up 

 farming. Like 

 many other 

 Dare County 

 residents, 



Basnight had few choices but to find a 

 mill job. In September 1922, he writes, 

 "I put out for Buffalo City." 



So did I. On my first day in the 

 Great Alligator, I paddled down Mill 

 Tail Creek to the old site of Buffalo 

 City. A swamp forest of cypress, pond 

 pine, sweet gum and maple had 

 replaced the village. The only relics 

 that I could find were a few railroad 

 tracks and a beat-up concrete wall, part 

 of the old pulp mill. I had to rely on 

 Basnight' s memoir to bring the 

 deserted swamp back to life. 



Buffalo City thrived many years 

 before Basnight's arrival. In the 1880s, 

 a New York timber company called 



Buffalo City Mills located the sawmill 

 village in the swamps about 19 miles 

 west of Manteo. Local laborers and, 

 according to oral tradition, more than 

 200 Ukrainian immigrants from New 

 York raised the town on the north bank 

 of Mill Tail Creek. In such swampy 

 land, they had to build streets by laying 

 planks and covering them with a thick 

 layer of sawdust. 



In 1907, the Dare Lumber Com- 

 pany bought the mill village. The 



Possibly the T.M. Sanderlin store outside Buffalo 



company owned Buffalo City's houses, 

 general store, sawmill, school, churches 

 and hotels. Local white laborers lived 

 downtown, but blacks and Ukrainians 

 lived together in a neighborhood to the 

 south. Basnight wrote that about 300 

 people lived in Buffalo City. Other 

 workers commuted from outlying 

 settlements such as Sycamore and Sand 

 Ridge. 



The company paid wages in scrip, 

 pieces of brass or aluminum redeem- 

 able only at the company store. "You 

 had to buy groceries there, so that came 

 out of your pay," former Buffalo City 

 resident Hubert Ambrose told the 

 Virginian-Pilot years ago. "Sometimes, 



at the end of the week of work, you'd 

 wind up owing them money. The 

 company store really owned you." 



Basnight's memoir agrees. "Most 

 of them [made] less than $2.00 a day 

 and traded it out at the company 

 store," he recalls. "Alot of them would 

 never see a dollar, just three 000 on 

 their envelope." 



Buffalo City was a rough, wild 

 and raucous place not for the mild of 

 heart. The timber company made the 

 laws, and 

 vigilante 

 justice 



enforced them. 

 Stories of the 

 city's wooden 

 stockade can 

 still be heard 

 in Dare 

 County. 



"That was 

 a Saturday 

 afternoon 

 thing, watch- 

 ing people get 

 punished," one 

 fellow 



remembered. 

 "They'd whip 

 them till the 

 blood ran 

 down their 

 backs. Leave 

 them locked in 

 there for up to two days. Make a 250- 

 pound logger cry." 



To supply Buffalo City with logs, 

 timber camps arose throughout what 

 are now the wildest parts of the 

 Alligator River National Wildlife 

 Refuge. Even Whipping Creek, where 

 I paddled my second day, once had its 

 own post office. Today only black 

 bear, white-tailed deer and recently 

 reintroduced red wolves inhabit that 

 area, but timber workers once built 

 railroads into the swampy interior. 

 Mules hauled the logs to the railroads, 

 and steam locomotives carried them to 

 loading docks at Mill Tail Creek. 

 Basnight built railroads when he 



20 MAY/JUNE 1997 



