first moved to Buffalo City. He recalls 

 that "my work building railroad was 

 hard but I enjoyed it. It consisted of 

 clearing a 12-foot right of way of trees 

 and putting down the run poles, then 

 cross ties. I could build 15 yards per 

 day and get 20 cents a yard." 



He later was a foreman on a 

 skidder, a small steam-powered 

 railroad engine that dragged logs to 

 the main railroad tracks. He also ran a 

 gas locomotive. 



Life at 

 Buffalo City 

 was hard, but it 

 also had its 

 pleasures. 

 "With this 

 many people in 

 such a small 

 place, there was 

 never a dull 

 moment, for all 

 the young folks 

 would be 

 gathered 

 somewhere 

 every night," 

 Basnight says. 

 "But bedtime 

 was not later 

 than 10 o'clock. 

 Everybody 

 was up next 

 morning by 

 4:30 in order to 



catch the train in the woods at 6 

 o'clock." 



The Red Onion Hotel, where 

 Basnight lived, was the scene of 

 weekly dances featuring well-known 

 Dare County fiddlers such as Webb 

 Ambrose and Jessie Smith. At one of 

 those dances in 1924, he writes, "I got 

 my eyes on a young girl in blue serge 

 sailor suit." Soon he was accompany- 

 ing that girl on boat trips down Mill 

 Tail Creek, or the two paddled up to 

 Sawyer Creek to pick water lilies. 

 "Well," Basnight tells his granddaugh- 

 ter Selina, "it was many years later 

 you learned to call her Mama." 



Basnight also enjoyed the 



camaraderie of the mill workers and 

 loggers at Buffalo City. "There was 

 only one class of people here," he 

 says. "There was no upper crust. 

 Everybody eat their dinner of beans 

 and sow belly out of a tin bucket and 

 washed it down with black coffee — 

 and worked ten hours a day at 15 

 centers per hour. ... They would take 

 you at face value and never question 

 your past." 



The last of the old-srowth timber 



Logs at transfer station on Mill Tail Creek 



was soon cut in the Great Alligator. 

 The Dare Lumber Company went 

 bankrupt in 1917, and none of its 

 successors lasted very long. Basnight 

 lost his job when the last of the big 

 lumber companies closed in 1926. But 

 he stayed a few more years to build a 

 small sawmill for the Duvall Brothers 

 and cut juniper logs near Beechland, 

 farther up Mill Tail Creek. 



Buffalo City didn't disappear 

 right away. The famous East Lake 

 moonshining business kept the old 

 mill town afloat during Prohibition. 

 But after the liquor trade was made 

 legal again in 1934, the boomtown 

 gradually faded into a ghost town. 



Basnight returned for a while, building 

 a home for his family in a shady grove 

 of sweet gum and cypress (with a lawn 

 two feet deep in shingle dust) in 1935. 

 He later made a living as a wooden 

 boatbuilder in Elizabeth City, where he 

 crafted moth boats and flat-bottom 

 fishing skiffs. He died in 1971. 



Buffalo City's survivors and their 

 descendants still gather for an annual 

 homecoming at the Mount Zion 

 Methodist Church at East Lake, but 



nobody lives by 

 Mill Tail Creek 

 today. 



I had a 

 wonderful three 

 days in the 

 Great Alligator. 

 I enjoyed the 

 swamp's 

 serenity; and 

 the mosquitoes, 

 ticks and 

 cottonmouths 

 hadn't begun 

 stirring yet. 

 I did get 

 drenched near 

 Sawyer Creek 

 — I'm not 

 telling that 

 story — but I 

 was lucky 

 enough to find 

 an old logging 

 bridge where I could dry out. I was 

 thrilled to explore the Great Alligator 

 and, with Basnight's help, to discover a 

 forgotten world whose memory might 

 otherwise have faded, like Buffalo 

 City, into the swamp. □ 



David Cecelski is a historian at the 

 University of 

 North Carolina- 

 Chapel Hill's 

 Southern Oral 

 History Program 

 and a regular 

 columnist for 

 Coastwatch. 



COASTWATCH 21 



