join the kingfisher as our upstream escorts. 

 It isn't Webster's first visit to Milltail 

 Creek, but the wild solitude is still 

 impressive. "Back here," he says, "you'd 

 never know there were seven and a half 

 million people in the state." 



But you'd also never know that 

 Milltail Creek was once the site of Dare 

 County's largest town. Around the rum of 



dwindled away. The lumber company 

 closed its operations about 1950. Once the 

 saws stopped, the woods began reclaiming 

 its streets. Today there is little left. On 

 stormy days, knowing captains will thread 

 the tiny creek mouth to anchor out of the 

 wind, but mostly Buffalo City is the haunt 

 of herons, a little mud ramp where you can 

 launch a johnboat into the wide waters 



Remote waterway stretches teem with wetland wildlife. 



the century, the Dare Lumber Co. built a 

 lumber camp on the creek shore complete 

 with boardinghouse, hotel, bars and a 

 blacksmith shop. More than a thousand 

 people lived in the tangled wetland swamp 

 forests off Milltail Creek, logging out the 

 great stands of Atlantic white cedar. In 

 time, more than 100 miles of logging 

 railroad were laid through the Alligator's 

 virgin forest. 



"There it is," Webster says, pointing 

 to a few old pilings in the woods, all that's 

 left of the village. "Downtown Buffalo 

 City." After a cholera epidemic wiped out 

 most of Buffalo City's workers, the town 



where the creek swells into Boat Bay Lake. 



But it is a fitting introduction to the 

 Intracoastal Waterway's charms, for this 

 curious boaters' highway happens to pass 

 through a world of startling contrasts. 



The waterway isn't so much a single 

 lane of water carved through the coastal 

 plain as a collection of protected canals, 

 creeks, rivers and dredged navigation 

 channels that stitch together the open 

 waters of the Atlantic coastline. 



In places, the waterway is as 

 commercialized and urban as the Norfolk 

 waterfront. Elsewhere it threads through 

 some of the most remote countryside left in 



the Southeast. Ply the waterway and the 

 world can change dramatically, and with 

 startling speed. Fifteen minutes from 

 wetland wilderness and you can be in the 

 midst of massive shipyards. Squalls can 

 whip calm waters into roiling seas. Fog 

 can shroud markers. And your boat can 

 bump into history in the most unsus- 

 pected places. 



We leave Webster 

 back at the Highway 64 

 bridge and turn south 

 for the big- water run up 

 the Alligator River, the 

 distant shores a haze of 

 green treetops, the 

 wind at our backs, the 

 boat sending plumes of 

 foam from the bow. 

 Channel markers far in 

 the distance sketch out 

 our route, like tiny 

 lighthouses strung 

 across the open water. 



Native Americans 

 were the first waterway 

 engineers in North 

 Carolina, for they dug a 

 10- to 12-mile "haul- 

 over" so they could 

 pull their canoes across 

 the dry land between 

 Clubfoot Creek and 

 Harlowe Creek, 

 creating a link between 

 the Neuse and Newport 

 rivers. Workers in the 

 colonial era deepened the cut to 5 feet 

 with slaves, mules and sweat, cutting by 

 75 miles or so the water route from 

 Beaufort landing to New Bern. 



But the great colonial effort of 

 channel-building was the one that carved 

 a water route between North Carolina 

 and Norfolk. Any kid in Camden 

 County can tell you that George 

 Washington helped form a company to 

 construct a canal linking northeastern 

 North Carolina and the growing 

 tidewater region. 



Long before Valley Forge and the 

 White House, Washington circumnavi- 



8 WINTER 1999 



