Eagles Island reveals a piece of its history at low tide, when neatly placed wooden fences peek above the murky water.
The fences stand out as
the sole man-made objects among swampy reeds and cypress tree debris,
relics of the once vibrant rice plantations that lined the Cape Fear and
Brunswick rivers.
More
than 60 plantations dotted the waterways in northern Brunswick County,
and an estimated 50 percent of Eagles Island was once rice fields,
according to James Kapetsky, a consultant mapping and studying the
history of the fields for the Eagles Island Coalition.
More @ Star News
As I understand the whole area from NC down to around Savanna GA was big rice growing regions and only declined because of cheaper rice imports from the orient
ReplyDeleteThanks and I don't know how I missed this bit of history before.
ReplyDeleteHave you never visited Orton Plantation, Mr. Brock? Just up the river from Old Brunswick Town? It's closed to tourism now, but it was made clear when I visited that rice was the cash crop for the plantations along the Cape Fear River.
DeleteIndigo was another forgotten crop grown along the coasts of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida in the antebellum years.
No, I haven't and it's close to Wilmington where I go at times, so need to remember to do that. The tree covered drive is beautiful. WIKI says the chapel and gardens are open to the public, but not the rest as it is privately owned. I know indigo was popular back in the day, but didn't know about the growing area.Thanks.
DeleteI don't think that the Wikipedia article makes it clear that Orton is now closed entirely to the public, which includes the gardens and chapel. The old Orton Plantation website makes this clear, and the website is actually for sale, further driving home the point that visits to Orton are by invitation of the owner only (he has indicated that this will be to small groups of environmentalists and other such professionals). On the other hand, Orton has always been adjacent to the Fort Anderson/Brunswick Town Historic Site, which is owned by the state of NC. Here are some photos from my own trip to Brunswick Town; and here are some photos I took at Orton, just before it closed to the public in 2010. Fort Anderson, you will note, is a WBTS site, and thus well within your own field of interest. :)
DeleteThanks, well I can at least view the driveway. :) Great article you wrote and at one of the Children of the Confederacy's state conventions held in Wilmington, we had a speaker from the fort and his displayed a replica flag that they flew over the fort. Food looks good also. :) You ought to come to a PATCON.
DeleteI'll certainly consider it, thank you for the offer. :) I'll need to upgrade my transportation before going on any long journeys, my current car (1993 Nissan Sentra) isn't trustworthy enough for much other than heading to work and back.
DeleteI thought you were in NC?
DeleteIt is a shame we don't redevelop this region for our own domestic production. Northern California between Stockton to north of Sacramento and around Klamath Falls Oregon are now big rice growing regions
ReplyDeleteYes, I just checked and they still grow long rice here evidently.
Deletehttp://ansonmills.com/grain_notes/12
Carolina Gold rice, a long-grain rice of slender size and ambition, first surfaced in ... Anson Mills began growing heirloom Carolina Gold for research in 1998 and today has organic rice fields in Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Texas.
Pendleton, SC in weatern SC was the location of a rice plantation, Ashtabula. They set a record for bushels per acre in 1845.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtabula_(Pendleton,_South_Carolina)
Neat and thanks.
Delete