Mark Chilton's blog
Long before European settlers came here, Native Americans lived in the area that is now Orange County. Native Americans created a prominent village on the banks of the Eno River—centuries before the place came to be called Hillsborough. Through the village of the Occaneechis ran a well-established path—a path which the Europeans called the Indian Trading Path, the Catawba Path, the Old Trading Path, or the Western Trading Road. In its full extent, the Trading Path ran from the vicinity of Petersburg, VA, to Mobile, AL.
More locally, the Trading Path had a well defined route from the Eno River to the Haw River. West from the Eno River, it more or less followed the current route of Old NC 10, Bowden Road, and Old Hillsborough Road to the present site of the Hawfields Presbyterian Church on NC Hwy 119.
Fleet Feet has been reluctantly considering moving their corporate headquarters and retail store out of Carrboro. This Tuesday, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen will consider an Economic Development Agreement under which Fleet Feet would stay in Carrboro and move into a new building at 300 E Main Street—putting their (greatly-expanded) national flagship store on the ground floor and their national headquarters above.
Yesterday I received a call from a woman who lives in a tent she assembled in the woods east of the railroad tracks near land that Chapel Hill purchased from the estate of Leo Merritt. I have known her for several years and she has been a part of the downtown Carrboro community for a long time. I had mixed emotions about what she had to say. She is moving next month to be with another member of her family in a nearby state. On the one hand, I am happy for her that she will (presumably) have more formal housing arrangements, but on the other hand I will miss seeing her around Carrboro.
Tonight I went to the Abbey Court HOA meeting about the Human Rights Center. Here's the short version of what happened…
I suppose you've all heard about how the Abbey Court Homeowners' Association (HOA) is giving the Abbey Court Human Rights Center (HRC) the boot. The Human Rights Center is a great community center providing many critical human services within Abbey Court, including mentoring, after school care, tutoring etc. In short, the HOA is arguing that the HRC is in violation of the HOA rules by using their unit for non-residential purposes and kicking them out, under threat of a $300/day fine.
The HOA meeting was tonight at 6pm in Raleigh and was closed to the public, however this afternoon it occurred to me that the non-profit organization I work for owns one of the units at Abbey Court, so I went to the meeting to represent our organization's miniscule rights—and to record the meeting.
I spent most of Sunday afternoon out at the Haw River just outside the mill village of Swepsonville about five miles upstream of Saxapahaw. I managed to enjoy most of my time out there even though I was there was because I have been having trouble there with trespassers. The land I own out there is the hydro-electric power plant that formerly powered the cotton mill in Swepsonville.
My hydro-electric plant has been out of operation for about 40 years and the windows in the building are almost completely broken out. Inside the building are huge, deep holes in the floor where the generators once sat atop the turbines. I have been gradually working on making the interior of the building safer by covering over the huge holes in the floor, but the building is definitely not a safe place for unwary visitors.
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