Diamond Lanes of the ��th Century The rise and fall of Moore County’s plank roads By Bill Case
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t is hard to envision just how remote and isolated the Sandhills were in the 1840s. Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen were decades away from coming into being. Infrastructure was virtually nonexistent in this sparsely populated area. With only rutty, often impassable dirt trails to travel upon, the area’s scattered farmers and plantation owners — mostly of Scottish descent — found it inordinately difficult to ship harvested products like turpentine, naval stores, fruit and tobacco much beyond the Moore County line. The same predicament confronted settlers throughout the state’s interior all the way to the Piedmont. Merchants in the Eastern market towns were similarly exasperated with the perpetual challenges of sending supplies in the opposite direction. Bustling Fayetteville emerged as a transportation hub of importance. Commodities coming from the frontier could be barged from the city’s wharf on the Cape Fear River down to the coast at Wilmington. From that seaport, oceangoing vessels could move goods to destinations up and down the Eastern Seaboard and as far away as Europe. But the maddening obstacles to transporting merchandise (and people) from the west to Fayetteville were forestalling the development of that city and the state’s economy. A better transportation model had to be found, and a band of Fayetteville promoters took the lead in exploring alternatives. The building of a new railroad was considered, and a prospective train route west was surveyed. But the scheme was ultimately abandoned because of (according to one disenchanted proponent) “the poverty of the country.” A railroad would not enter Fayetteville until 1858. More intriguing was the concept of wooden plank roads. They had proved popular and cost-effective in Canada and areas of New York state. Compared to what was needed to build a railroad, construction materials were readily available and inexpensive. No iron or steel was required, just wooden planks 8 feet long and 8 inches wide laid horizontally across long heart pine sills and covered by a thin layer of sand. The necessary lumber could often be found in the woods right beside the construction site. The roads were “single track,” just wide enough for a single wagon, but users were able to pull to the side on parallel dirt paths so that oncoming wagons could pass. The most appealing aspect of “mudless highways” was the time saved in transporting goods or stagecoach passengers. The distance
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that took a wagon four days over the ancient dirt or sand paths could be traveled in 18 hours on a plank road. According to one observer, the increased efficiency on planks was the result of “the diminution of friction by which a horse was able to draw two or three times as great a load as he could on an ordinary road.” A movement to build plank roads from Fayetteville into the state’s interior rapidly gained steam during the 1840s, led by Gov. William Graham, who believed that poor roadways had placed North Carolina under “greater disadvantages than any state in the union.” He convinced the state legislature to grant charters to those entrepreneurs seeking to build and operate plank road companies. Five such charters were granted for roads that fanned out from Fayetteville like bicycle spokes to various westerly destinations. The state of North Carolina even purchased stock in several of them. Not surprisingly, there was political controversy regarding whether North Carolina should be dispensing taxpayer funds to support these private ventures. The state’s entrepreneurs and merchants (generally associated with the Whig Party) overwhelmingly approved of the public investment. Not only would their businesses benefit, the value of their real estate holdings alongside any new road would also potentially skyrocket. The Fayetteville Observer reported that the plotting of a plank road through one vast tract caused the land’s value to shoot up from 11 cents per acre to $2. Many small farmers, primarily Democrats, suspected that the state’s partnership with the companies would inevitably lead to roads not being routed with the best interests of the public (and that of small farmers) in mind. There was suspicion that the landed gentry would be tempted to make payoffs to ensure roads were routed next to, or through, their properties. And farmers objected to the legislature’s broad grant of eminent domain powers to plank road companies. The most ambitious undertaking was that of the Fayetteville and Western Plank Road Company (ye olde F&W), which contemplated building the longest wooden road in history (129 miles) from Fayetteville to Salem (now Winston-Salem). Billed by its boosters as a latter day Appian Way, the proposed road sparked interest in Moore County as plans called for it to pass through Carthage. More westerly communities along the wooden highway’s intended path included The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
