One of the most novel gatherings in the Sandhills in a long time was held last week at the midwinter Boating Club grounds on Drowning Creek at Blue’s Bridge, where Moore, Hoke, Richmond and Scotland counties corner. The attendance, which Robert Page said amounted to about 25 office seekers and 225 others, was one of the most representative lot of men that has very often gathered at such a place on any occasion, for these people were there to try to awaken development in the entire community embraced the counties that joined hands there.
A big banner on which was drawn a large map of the four counties, and showing their relation to each other, and to the Sandhills section, was hung to the trees, where everybody could study a little geography. One bit of information given by the banner was that Moore had built good roads to the county line, and now wanted the other counties to get into action and help develop the joint territory and also to allow the Moore County roads to go beyond the boundary.
A big barbecue dinner was served with pork that was raised on the Buchan farm on one side of the creek and lamb that came from the Mossgiel farm on the other side. With these were unlimited baskets of other stuff, so that the county commissioners and highway commissioners, and bankers and officers and lawyers and ordinary folks who had gathered from the four counties could have evidence of what that neighborhood could do. After the barbecue had been put where it would o the most good, R.N. Page, R.L. Burns and J.W. Achorn talked some plain sense to the multitude. By the time the glories of the Sandhills had been fully laid out according to the map, the commissioners from Scotland county rose up, as Talbet Johnson says, like Lars Persena, and declared that they would begin a road from Laurinburg that should hit the Moore county road at Blue’s bridge, and that by August 4th men should be at work on the job. To quote Talbot further, “The Scotland men asked, ‘Now who will stand at my right hand and keep the bridge with me?’”
Promptly Hoke county lined up and replied that they would be ready to meet all comers any day with a road from Raeford to Blue’s bridge, and that set the Richmond commissioners to milling around, and they intimated that they would recommend that Hamlet cut into this group of roads that should join the four corners and open the vast scope of territory that is ready down that way. Capt. Maurice and Edwin McKeithan looked at the bridge and thought it needed some help in making it better, and an eyewitness reports that if about one more barbecued shoat had been hurried to the table about that time the enthusiastic bunch might have begun right there to stake out the improvements and begin work.
After the wave of enthusiasm over the joint work of the four counties had subsided the county officials and many others were taken in automobiles out over the peach orchards of Moore county. At Garren Hill they saw Ralph Page’s fine lay out, and Sam Richardson’s big gold mine alongside. At Capt. Cowgill’s place they saw the energetic captain missing spray and giving a demonstration of what is to happen to the curculio this summer if any are nervy enough to monkey in the Pinehurst region while the crop is making.
“And here,” said one of the silver-tongued guides, “is land that was worth $6 an acre before it was planted in peaches.” He might have said one dollar, for that is what a lot of it sold for not so long ago but that many of us can still remember it. “But that,” continued the philosopher, “was before we had good roads. When we get a good system of roads into that area down around the bridge at the corner of the four counties several thousand acres of land just as good as this will become land just as valuable as this, for a road makes values.”
When the multitude once more vowed that good roads which can take a $3 acre of sandhill knob and turn it into a peach orchard worth thousands of dollars an acre was none too good for their four counties, and that good roads should be made the favorite sport of this section after golf and watching the tourists or any other minor amusement.
The general sentiment of the folks who were at the meeting seemed to crystalize in the opinion that a good road should be built from all the towns of the four counties to converge at that common center at the bridge in order to make it easy to get down to a place where Robert Stuart and Nelson Cortway raise shoats and lambs of the type that furnished the dinner last week. They all went away as the Legrange Lenorian would say, with the feeling that a lovely time was had.
From the front page of The Moore County News, Carthage, N.C., May 18, 1922
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