The Beauty in the
Barrens The triumph of Tufts, Olmsted and Manning By Claudia Watson Photographs by John Gessner
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eneath the canopy of a brilliant blue June sky, the land lay battered. An abandoned tramway, used for hauling lumber and turpentine, stretched through a landscape marked by scraggly oaks and a few spindly pines. Wild hogs and sheep foraged the nearly barren sand. On that day in 1895, James Walker Tufts, accompanied by surveyor Francis Deaton and two other men, inspected a 100-acre parcel of his new landholdings in southern Moore County — the site for his proposed town. The first task was to settle where to place the survey stake marking the land’s center point. They made camp for the night in an old lumber shelter, boarded on two sides. The next day, Tufts walked to a broad, shallow, basinlike plot of ground. He had neither an ax nor the proper fatwood stake but succeeded in finding an old piece of timber, which he drove into the ground. Deaton marked the spot on his rough topographic map “Beginning Point.” Characterized by its rolling terrain and deep, coarse sand, and predominately covered by tall longleaf pine, the land once had been part of a 90-million-acre wilderness stretching from southeastern Virginia in the north, to eastern Texas in the west, and as far south as the upper half of Florida. The longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) could live up to 500 years, grow to 3 feet in diameter and reach a height of 120 feet.
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Soon, this region’s harsh but beautiful landscape was under pressure. The tall, straight, longleaf timber did not go unnoticed by the steady stream of European settlers. They followed the Cape Fear River and its tributaries to the pine barrens of Moore and Richmond counties to find land for intensive high-yield farming. But the sandy soil was unsuitable, so they turned to the pine forests for their livelihood. The vital longleaf ecosystem was devastated, the target of exploitation: first for its lumber, to build homes, buildings and masts for ships. Later its resin was used to make tar and turpentine, essential naval store products that supported shipbuilding efforts. With the arrival of trains in the 1800s, the trees were felled to build railroad tracks. Ultimately, those railroads were essential to Moore County’s development and Tufts’ arrival. James Walker Tufts, a successful and wealthy entrepreneur from Massachusetts, was captivated by the area’s warm climate and therapeutic pine-scented air. He used his considerable wealth to locate and purchase nearly 6,000 acres to build a winter retreat in an area laid waste by decades of timbering operations. The project, seen as essentially benevolent, would provide respite and recreation for “the betterment of his fellow humans.” In particular, he focused on ailing individuals — including those with early stage tuberculosis who were mistakenly, and commonly, believed not to be The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
