Gazetteer fun: D-F

The highly entertaining and educational North Carolina Gazetteer has been updated for the first time since it was first published in 1968. (Kudos to Michael Hill at the N.C. Office of Archives and History for undertaking the updating of William Powell's monumental publication.)

We figured we would highlight some of our favorites from the book every now and then. This version will look at random listings that begin with letters, D, E and F. (Click here to see A, B & C.) There are some 2,ooo-plus listings in the Gazetteer, so feel free to search for your own faves.

Day Book, community in n(orth)e(ast) Yancey County on Jacks Creek. Alt. 2,350. Post office est. about 1815 and named for a book in which names were recorded of settlers moving west. Another version of the traditional origin of the name is that it came from a time book kept for employees of a local lumber company.


Eupeptic Springs, community an former resort (1860s-1870s), n(orth)w(est) Iredell County. Known as Powder Springs prior to development as a resort by Dr. John Ford, who renamed it Eupeptic (good digestion).


Fayette County was formed in July 1784 when an act of the General Assembly divided Cumberland County into Fayette and Moore Counties. It was intended to honor Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), who visited the United States that year. Fayette County retained the courthouse in Fayetteville. In October of the same year, the act was amended to retain the name Cumberland for the county.

The North Carolina Gazetteer is published by UNC Press. To order one, click here.

Hey, Jack Kerouac

CNN.com recently did a story about the photographs of Allen Ginsberg, who captured the Beat Generation with his words and images.

"[T]he beats arrived on the American art scene with an explosion of amphetamine-fueled creativity," says CNN."Their frank explorations of the twin taboos of sexuality and drugs helped to usher in the counterculture of the 1960s and, though their wild antics were the stuff of legend, they paid a heavy price.

"Jack Kerouac killed himself with alcohol, while William Burroughs killed his own wife in a drunken parlor game gone awry."

The first photo that pops up in the slideshow is of Kerouac. His On the Road is one of those seminal works that everyone who has ever been "searching" for anything has read. I first read the book as a college freshman (surprise!) and was shocked, somewhat, to see that Kerouac's main character references both Fayetteville and (here's the really surprising part) my hometown of Dunn.

In reality, Kerouac referencing anywhere in N.C. is not that surprising. After all, the writer lived for some time in Rocky Mount and made numerous treks there to visit family.

Raleigh's John J. Dorfner has written and studied about Kerouac's time in Rocky Mount-- called "Testament, Va., " in On the Road -- "the only time he used a fictitious name for a town in any of his books," wrote Dorfner back in '07 in the News & Observer.

Kerouac described America once as one big backyard, one he loved to wander in, from yard to yard, just seeing what everyone was doing, and to join the party that was going on. And the wild, sad, mystical book describing Kerouac and Neal Cassady -- a cowboy and a football player -- in an automobile cruising the highways, cities and towns of America in search of "it" actually started in Eastern North Carolina, in Rocky Mount. ...

Kerouac roared into Rocky Mount on a roadway of words -- by train, bus or a ride that he bummed along the way. During the late 1940s until 1956, Kerouac made extensive visits to Rocky Mount.

Kerouac visited North Carolina in June 1948 for the birth of his nephew, Paul Blake Jr. He joined his family during Christmas 1948, in a little white house on Tarboro Street, at the end of a dirt road in Edgecombe County, right across the Nash County line, the railroad tracks that separate the town. The city streets weren't paved in those days and Kerouac describes the muddy new Hudson pulling into his brother-in-law's front yard. ...

Cassady and crew pulled up on a snowy Christmas Eve 1948. Neal played jazz records and jumped around and had Kerouac's relatives concerned. But it was all straightened out and Jack and Neal left for their first venture on the road together, taking Kerouac's mother's load of furniture up to Paterson, N.J. Then they came straight back for her and the rest of the gang, Marylou and Ed.

Kerouac's sister moved from their home on Tarboro Street to the crossroads community of Big Easonburg Woods, five miles outside of Rocky Mount. The community is called West Mount now and hasn't changed much from when Kerouac started visiting in 1952. ...

Kerouac describes his life and times in Big Easonburg Woods in his novel "The Dharma Bums," written after the publishers told him that they wanted another "On the Road" type of book. "The Dharma Bums" explores Kerouac's leap into Buddhism; his West Coast mountain climbing with Japhy (Gary Snyder); and poetry adventures with Allen Ginsberg and "HOWL." In it, he devotes five or six chapters to describing his life in Big Easonburg. Kerouac's sister and brother-in-law rented a little cottage that Kerouac used for his retreat. He'd come there from places North, South, East and West and usually walked the three miles to his sister's house after being left off at the intersection of Little Easonburg and Halifax roads. He details this lonely walk, observing the farmhouses and tobacco fields covered in snow. Kerouac would live and sleep out on the back porch. This was his room. He would stay up late writing, either on his back porch or in the little kitchen. He wrote "Visions of Gerard" there, beginning right after Christmas 1955, taking over the little kitchen and writing all night long. He finished up during the first weeks of January 1956.

If you want more about Kerouac and Rocky Mount, be sure to visit Dorfner's article at Empirezine. The town provided Kerouac "with inspiration in-between his cross country journeys in the 1950's. It was a peaceful setting for the hurricane that was to become Jack Kerouac's life and times. Kerouac...if people heard of him at all...they'd associate it with the author of the 1957 novel On the Road, the story of one man's search for a place that, for him anyway, never existed."

(Photos from Empirezine)

Asheville, Hickory & Wilmington: Overvalued cities?

A new study that lists the most overvalued and undervalued places to live in America places Asheville, Hickory and Wilmington in the "bad" column.

"A CNN website rating 330 cities across the country shows Wilmington is a bad deal for real estate, ranked 15th on the list," says WECT.

[Click here to see America's most overvalued cities]

While the study may or may not be accurate, experts agree that when you look into the details of how the research was compiled, you can see why Wilmington is near the top of the list.

Economist Dr. William Hall says bad loans are to blame, but also believes things are improving.

"Things are not declining as much as they have in the past," said Hall. "In fact, sales have may in fact stabilize, or beginning to increase. I'm not so sure prices have reached their low point but they are close to it."

The good news -- from the state's standpoint -- is a number of N.C. cities are on the undervalued list. Among those are Burlington, Charlotte, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Greenville, Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Winston-Salem.

Quick hits: 'Fayette-nam,' blame Florida for the tough times, and new/less tags?

Playwright says 'Fayette-nam' a tribute

"A new play about Fayetteville and Fort Bragg debuted last month in San Francisco, but people here aren't necessarily celebrating the publicity," says the Fayetteville Observer.

"It's called 'Fayette-Nam.'

"The title injects new life into a nickname that Fayetteville leaders have tried to shed for 30 years. The Fayetteville of today is not the Fayetteville of the Vietnam era, when the city was filled with rough-and-tumble draftees preparing to go overseas, and downtown was filled with strip bars and prostitutes, said Mayor Tony Chavonne.

" 'It's a different city today. It's a different country,' he said.

"But the play isn't about Vietnam-era Fayetteville.

"Set in the present day, it's about a 19-year-old soldier who fears dying in Iraq.

"According to published reviews and press materials, the soldier - a black man from California - goes absent without leave the night before he's to deploy. He hides in a doughnut and egg roll shop next to a strip club on Bragg Boulevard with a first-generation Chinese woman (who dreams of living in Paris) and her college-student daughter (who is on the run for burning down a dormitory in New York). ..."

Financial chill in the Carolinas? Blame Florida

"Amid the bad earnings, bankruptcies and other bleak financial news from Carolinas companies, executives are increasingly blaming some of the gloom on the Sunshine State," says the Charlotte Observer.

"From Fortune 500 corporations to family-owned businesses, many area companies invested in Florida in recent years to capture a piece of the state's population boom. Now that the housing market has collapsed, growth has stalled, tourism has ebbed and consumer spending is down, a chill has fallen on the state's once-sizzling economy.

" 'They all rode the wave, and the wave came crashing down,' said economist Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Competitiveness in Orlando. ..."

Some lawmakers want to review specialty plates

"Attention trout anglers, tennis players and forestry fans: you can now promote your passion on the back of your cars.

"The three are among the latest in an ever-growing collection of specialty license plates on the state’s highways – letting motorists show some individuality while generating extra money and awareness for groups, schools and hobbies," says the AP.

"The number of vehicles with specialty plates – not to be confused with personalized or vanity plates – has soared by nearly 50 percent in the past three years to 227,221 as of July 1, according to a state Division of Motor Vehicles report.

" 'When you drive down the road and you see a license, you say, what does that license plate mean?' said Kelly Gaines with the North Carolina Tennis Foundation, whose new 'Play Tennis' plate started June 1, generating donations for tennis camp scholarships and junior programs. 'There are some incredible causes out there.' ..."

Now, I LOVE tennis, but I even shook my head and chuckled on Friday when I saw the "Play Tennis" one for the first time. Maybe these plates are getting a bit out of control. I, for one, would love more standard North Carolina options. But that's just me.

'Peak of Good Living' .... 'City of Oaks' ... 'Clogging Capital of the World' and other N.C. nicknames

You gotta love Wikipedia. Wanna know the GPS coordinates of Schuyler, Nebraska? No problem. Ever wondered who was the first person to swim the English Channel? Bingo. Wanna know how fireflies produce light? You got it.

And if you want to know what are the nicknames of North Carolina places, then you can (kinda-sorta) find that too. Of course, it being Wikipedia and all, some of the ones listed are possibly incorrect or just plain not something the local Chamber of Commerce is likely to promote. (Ex: "Torture City" or "Fayettenam" for Fayetteville.)

But it's still neat to see a repository of some of these nicknames. For instance, most people know that North Carolina has two places known as the "Paris of ..." Asheville is the "Paris of the South" (not listed by Wikipedia, by the way), while Carrboro is the "Paris of the Piedmont."

Speaking of fireflies, I had no idea that Boone was the "Firefly Capital of the World." Other "Capitals" include Calabash ("Seafood Capital of the World"), Chadbourn ("Strawberry Capital of the World"), Erwin ("Denim Capital of the World"), High Point ("Furniture Capital of the World"), Maggie Valley ("Clogging Capital of the World") and Pinehurst ("Golf Capital of the World").

Of course flora and fauna play into some of the nicknames as well: Brevard ("Home of the white squirrels"), Fayetteville ("City of Dogwoods") and Raleigh ("City of Oaks").

As with the aforementioned "Fayettenam," there are several "unofficial" nicknames out there: Cary ("Conentrated Area of Relocated Yankees") and Greenville ("G-Vegas" -- or the cynical "G-Wilson" and "The Emerald City") come to mind.

Other place nicknames include:

Apex - Peak of Good Living
Brevard - Land of Waterfalls
Chapel Hill - The Southern Part of Heaven
Charlotte - the Queen City
Durham - City of Medicine
Fayetteville - All-America City; Tar Heel Town
Greensboro - The Gate City
Hendersonville - City of Four Seasons
Kannapolis - City of Looms
Raleigh - Raleighwood
Thomasville - Chair City
Winston-Salem - Twin City
Wilmington - The Hollywood of the East

What are some other place nicknames that we've left off?

(Image from drivehq.com)

Who knew there was an Appian Way ... in N.C.?

While working on something completely unrelated, I came across this note in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina by William S. Powell:

The Appian Way of North Carolina "was a plank road built by the Fayetteville and Western Plank Road Company that extended 129 miles from Fayetteville to Bethania. Completed to Salem in 1853, it reached Bethania on 28 Oct. 1854 and at the time was the longest plank road in the world. The road's descriptive name suggests its important -- the ancient road of the same name built in in Italy in A.D. 312 extended 132 miles from Rome to modern Santa Maria Capua Vetere. Eventually continued into southern Italy, the Appian Way was considered to be the 'queen of long-distance roads.'"

Who knew?

'Fatal Vision' house to be a fatality

According to the Fayetteville Observer, the infamous house where former Army Special Forces doctor Jeffrey MacDonald killed his wife and daughters will be torn down Saturday to make room for a new neighborhood center.

"The house is on Fort Bragg, at 544 Castle Drive in the Corregidor Courts subdivision.

"Picerne Military Housing, the private company in charge of building and maintaining homes on Fort Bragg, has been systematically renovating or demolishing older homes on the post to make room for new homes," said the paper.

The case is legendary in Fayetteville and was made famous across the country in the book “Fatal Vision.”

Colette MacDonald — Jeffrey MacDonald’s wife — and their two daughters, 6-year-old Kimberly and 2-year-old Kristen Jean, were stabbed to death in the early morning of Feb. 17, 1970. Colette MacDonald was pregnant when she was killed.

Jeffrey MacDonald, then an Army captain, told investigators that day that four people dressed like hippies broke into his house and attacked him and his family.

Army investigators linked MacDonald to the murders, but the Army’s version of a grand jury hearing found there was not enough evidence to try him. A federal grand jury indicted MacDonald in 1975; he was free until 1979, when he was convicted of their murders. He is in federal prison and has maintained his innocence for the past 38 years.

A spokesperson said the house, one of 28 to come down, was not targeted because of its notoriety.

Quick hits: App State looks to Hickory, 'Tank' looks to give back

Appalachian State ponders Hickory campus
"Catawba County and Appalachian State University leaders discussed additional educational opportunities in the Hickory region, including the concept of a satellite campus, during a meeting last week," wrote the Hickory Daily Record.

"The hour-long discussion involved Appalachian’s Chancellor Ken Peacock and Chief of Staff Lorin Baumhover. The meeting centered on bringing more programs to area institutions now partnered with Appalachian, according to Catawba County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Kitty Barnes.

" 'I think what (Appalachian and Catawba County leaders) are looking at is incremental building on what we are already offering,' Barnes said.

"Appalachian now offers a range of classes through the Hickory Metro Higher Education Center, oversees operation of the new North Carolina Center for Engineering Technologies and plans a teacher’s school at Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, along with a nursing school at Western Piedmont Community College and Technical Institute. ..."

NFL star helps 'feed the children'
"Hundreds of Fayetteville children and their families now have food and supplies thanks to some hardworking football players including one local player who has made it to the NFL," says News 14 Carolina.

"E.E. Smith High School's football team tackles community service projects like any other task, by working together as a team. On Wednesday, they were joined by a special alumnus, Demarcus 'Tank' Tyler.

" 'I'm blessed to have the opportunity to come back and give back to my community,' said Tyler. 'You know, I've got to stay grounded and remember where I come from to move forward in my future.'

"Tyler has partnered with an international nonprofit group to help needy families in his hometown. There's 25 pounds worth of food in some of the boxes that were given out Wednesday and toiletries in others. Altogether, 'Feed the Children' plans to help out more than 400 families in just Wednesday’s one distribution. ..."

Joyeux anniversaire, Lafayette

George Washington thought of him almost like a son, and enough Americans thought enough of the passionate Frenchman to name (or re-name) their towns after him. Fayetteville, N.C., was the first town in America to honor the Marquis de Lafayette in this way.

This year marks Lafayette's 250th birthday.

"An outpouring of emotion swept a young nation in 1824 and 1825 when the Marquis de Lafayette toured America as the nation's guest," writes the Associated Press.

"In an age when news traveled by the fastest horse, people hungered for reports of Lafayette's visit and the elaborate celebrations in honor of the Frenchman who fought for America in the Revolutionary War.

"Two centuries later, a touch of Lafayette fever is back. Cities and towns across the country are celebrating his 250th birthday."

Fayetteville is "commemorating Lafayette's visit on March 4, 1825, a whirlwind 24 hours of banquets, military drills and reunions with former comrades such as Isham Blake, Lafayette's fifer and bodyguard at Yorktown.

"It's a birthday party for a man who once said, 'Serving America is to my heart an inexpressible happiness.'

Read here for more about Fayetteville's events.