Paul Ferguson: “What I want to see.”

 

What I Want to See

a Carolina Paddler Article

by Alton Chewning

-Writing river guidebooks isn’t easy.  Ask Paul Ferguson.  While researching rivers, he’s been bitten, beached, broached, broken, and robbed.  He has made friends and lost friends.  He persevered with the task and we’re the lucky recipients of perhaps the best river manuals ever produced.

Bobby Simpson gets a call one night.  It’s from his friend, Paul Ferguson.  Paul’s working on a new edition of his Eastern North Carolina paddle guide and he has a question.  Not that Bobby has the answer, but he may know someone.  Paul is writing about a portage trail around a big Duke Energy hydro plant dam.  He is mad at himself for not measuring the width of a gate in a chain link fence through which someone portaging would have to pass.  Wanted to know if a canoe would fit through beam wise or if it needed to be turned on end.  Paul didn’t want to make a long return trip to the site and wondered if Bobby, who worked for Duke, could connect him with a worker nearby.  Bobby wondered to himself how much the width of the gate really mattered but told Paul he would ask around.

Bobby made some calls, got a name, and contacted the worker at the site.  The worker said, sure he’d be happy to measure it.  Bobby asked the guy to call Paul directly.  He didn’t want to be the go-between and mess up some detail and have Paul peeved at him.  A few days later, Paul called Bobby and thanked him, said the worker supplied the necessary measurement.

Bobby laughs and says, “That’s Paul.  That’s his attention to detail.”

Paul Ferguson started paddling in earnest shortly after moving to North Carolina.  Carolina Paddler covered some of his history in our first article on Paul, “A Traveler of Rivers.” Paul is the type of person who doesn’t dabble around when he starts a new interest.  He immerses himself, learning as he can, however he can: by researching, by training with others, by practicing.  He has a healthy curiosity and wants to learn new things, see new places, search for something he hasn’t seen before.  Part of his happiness in paddling is trying new routes and new wrinkles on old ones.

Paul joined the Carolina Canoe Club in 1973.  There were many knowledgeable paddlers in those early days:  Frank Held, Dennis and Ginny Huntley, the Eriksons, Howard Du Bose and many more.  Perhaps no one was more respected than the first president, Bob Benner.  The first CCC meeting was held at his house in Jamestown.

Scarcity of guidebooks

When Paul started looking around for guidebooks to the Carolinas rivers, there weren’t many options.  One was a series called Appalachian Water 4, the Southeastern Rivers, by Walter Burmeister.  The books were largely based on information gleaned from topographic maps, useful in its own way but limited.  A handful of other books were available for the rivers of the Mid-Atlantic region:  Randy Carter’s Canoeing White Water River Guide, Monte Smith’s Southeastern Whitewater and Virginia-based Classic Virginia Rivers by Ed Grove and Virginia Whitewater by Roger Corbett.  Ed Gertler, coached by Roger Corbett, started writing his impressive guidebooks beginning in 1979 with Maryland and Delaware Canoe Trails.  Still the Carolinas were largely uncovered.

Unfortunately, the Benner-McCloud Paddler’s Guide lacked somewhat in accuracy.  Routes and distances were sometimes confused, features incorrectly noted, details lacking.  Creating a thorough and consistent guidebook of sometimes mercurial river data is a difficult task.  Paul Ferguson understood this and when he would find errors in the guidebooks, based on his own exploration, he would report them to his friends, McCloud, and Benner.  He would also send corrections to the NC Department of Highways when road signs and maps were inaccurately marked.

Paul began to wonder if a better guide was possible.  And if he was the person to do it.  He enjoyed exploring new rivers, he had time and means to do so, and he had the engineer’s precision of thought to do an accurate job.  So, a goal was set.  Document as many rivers of eastern North Carolina as he could.  Do it carefully and keep in mind what a paddler, new or experienced, would need to know.  As Paul puts it, “What would I want to see?  The stuff you need to know.”

Paul developed a system for treating each river uniformly.  Flatwater was assessed an A, B, or C ranking depending on river current and obstructions.  Whitewater was ranked using the international rapids scale of Class I-VI.   Scenery gets its own ranking of A-C depending on aesthetics and human encroachment.  Distances, portage routes, put-ins/take-outs including special notes, the rapids at various levels, the difficulty, the quality of scenery, phone numbers of landowners and so much more are found in the guides.  Good local restaurants receive a mention as well as historical sites and geological curiosities.  The details are as dense as some of the tree-choked backwaters he paddled.

The Methodology

Paul would identify a new river to explore using maps, other guidebooks, and suggestions from friends.  Before the GPS system was available, he would use topographic maps to get ideas on gradient and geography of a river. Sometimes he would have a companion to help with shuttles and occasionally he would bicycle shuttle.  Once he called a cab.  Another fateful time a helicopter gave him a ride.

The basic approach was this.  Use an audio recorder, generally dangling in a mesh bag from a lanyard around his neck, to record his comments on the sights and sounds as he approached the river, anything notable like the quality of the road, or places to park.  Maybe a person or service who could provide a shuttle.

Get on the river, always in an open canoe, mostly a solo one.  Pull out a camera, a compass, a watch, maps, a GPS device.  Start down the river, calibrating the speed of current and of paddler, noting the water level and weather on the day.  Make verbal notes of all of this to the audio recorder, including any special sights or occurrences.

Bobby Simpson did some of these paddles with Paul.  It required discipline.  Simpson: “You get on a river with Paul and he fires up his GPS and gets a map out and a stop watch and he does his calculations and you just have to get used to that.  Sometimes you want to talk to him, and he’ll just look at you and say, “I can’t talk now!”     Okay, Okay.  Leave him alone, he’s doing this.”

And continue this documentation for every mile of every section of every river covered in the book.  Every portage.  Anything of consequence.  So, what does his raw data look like?  For those interested, at the end of this article we include an example of a section of one of his favorite rivers, the Black River of North Carolina.  First, we give you his raw data, then follow with the account as it appears in the guidebook. Look at this and then imagine doing hundreds of rivers and countless miles.

Talking to the Dragon

After paddling a new section or river, and recording extensive notes, Paul was faced with how to transcribe the information from the audio recordings.  Direct transcription from the audio proved too tedious for Paul.  “I’m a slow typist, I’m not a touch typist.”  Instead, Paul used an automatic transcription software.  Paul:  I would save all the notes I wanted to retain on the recorder.  Then I’d come back with the raw notes and talk it into Dragon Naturally Speaking software.   It’s a well-known speech recognition software.  I couldn’t just play the audio back into the software.  Too many mistakes.  I found it better if I listened to the tape and then repeat it.  Otherwise, there were too many interruptions and noises.  It was cleaner if I repeated the important things.  All those notes I spoke on the river would be written by virtue of me speaking to Dragon.  I’d catch errors but mainly my verbal notes came out as written notes. That’s the only way to preserve the data and to have any efficiency in looking at it, to have the spoken data and then look at it in text.

Other writers had different techniques.  Ed Gertler, a friend of Paul and a fine guidebook writer himself, used a memorization approach.  Ed describes, “I purchased a tape recorder and later a GPS, and never used either. My technique was simply to recite my observations, like the Twelve Days of Christmas, referencing observations to public bridges. For example, “first dam, below second bridge, carry left”, then add the next observation but repeat the first. This could get tedious on something like PA’s Conestoga River, where there were 19 dams and maybe 25 bridges in 30 miles. But my brain was more supple then. I would then back this up with road scouting later. Of course, nowadays, using Google aerial views is helpful too.

If Paul were writing the guidebooks now, he probably would use Google Earth and other tools to double check his river-based observations.  Paul was an early and devoted adapter of GPS technology.  Cleo Smith, a friend of Paul’s, says he wishes he had the money Paul spent on batteries for his GPS.

The Global Positioning System, originally called Navstar, was developed by the American military.  After Russian fighter planes shot down a Korean airliner that had strayed into Soviet airspace, the need for better civilian navigation became apparent.  In 1983, President Reagan authorized the civilian use of GPS, although with an accuracy intentionally diminished to 100 meters or so.  Paul says sometimes he would change sides of a larger river and the GPS didn’t reflect the move. The military still wanted the sole use of the highly accurate version.  In 2000, President Clinton authorized the signal scrambling to be removed and so we have our current highly accurate capability.  Paul’s directions became more pinpoint. In addition to accurately measuring distances, Paul would use Waypoints to mark features or notable sights.

Part of the clarity and usefulness of Paddling Eastern North Carolina and Kayaking Canoeing South Carolina is the wonderful sectional maps of the rivers and the roadways that lead to them.  Paul’s method was to start with a state map, and use Corel Draw software to remove much of the detail, leaving just the pertinent roads and rivers.  Then break the river into manageable sections. On a visit to his son and his family in Florida, Paul was able to talk with his ex-wife, Jonna White, who was also visiting from the Virgin Islands.  He showed her the third edition of his guidebook and she asked how he did the maps and cover design.  Paul said Corel Draw.  Jonna is an artist and while Paul and she were married she was using zinc plates, etched in acid, and a printing press to produce her artwork.  Now she, too, uses Corel.

A friend from the Coastal Canoeists, Les Fry, did the cover design for the first edition. Melinda Clement, another friend, did the copy editing. Other friends helped with research and organization during the three editions of the Eastern NC and one of South Carolina.  CCC’s Larry Ausley did some proof reading, photography, and river research with Paul, as did Alycia Hassett, Bill McDowell and a host of other paddlers:  Wayne Charles, Gary Cousineau, Len Felton, Will Hicks, Don Meece, Cleo Smith and others.  The Third Edition cites two:  Elmer Eddy, who at age 80 enthusiastically explored rivers with Paul, and Pete “Swamp Man” Petersen who endured many an unexpected setback with a jaunty, “It was an adventure-where do we go next?” Trips were made on weekends and holidays.  Paul retired from IBM in 1993 and then could paddle any day that suited him.

Paul was deep into a draft of his first Carolina guidebook.  He still sent Benner and McCloud corrections to their book, but he was ready to make the jump to publishing his own.  Paul began conversations with Menasha Ridge Press, who also handled the Benner/McCloud book but they kept delaying, saying they were not ready to go to press.  Paul finally realized a new edition of the Benner/McCloud book was soon to be issued and Menasha didn’t want the two books to be in competition.

Paul finally determined he would remain independent and publish his own book. He formed Pocosin Press (named for the low lying, shallow basins that are common in eastern North Carolina), found an all-woman printing company in Minnesota and placed his first order for 5000 books.  The First Edition of Paddling Eastern North Carolina came out in late 2002.  Later editions appeared in 2007 and 2018.

The hard work didn’t stop there.  He now had to sell the books.  First, he made the rounds of canoe shops and outdoor stores, people like Great Outdoors Provision Co., Get Outdoors and Cape Fear River Adventures. He would sell directly to them at a discount, and they sold the books at retail price in their stores.  Later, he learned the intricacies and difficulties of selling through Amazon.  The advantage was a greater visibility and what’s called “fulfillment.”  He would send a large shipment to Amazon and they would fulfill the order by shipping to the individual buyers.  Early on Ed Gertler gave Paul tips on self-publishing and direct marketing.  Later, Ed said, “Paul very patiently coached me on the challenging task of dealing with Amazon.”

Paul was active in the CCC through much of this period of writing and revising the guidebooks.  He was president during 1993-1994 and again in 1997-1998.  Earlier he had served as the Safety and Education Chair.  He belonged to Coastal Canoeist club, as well, but only held office with the CCC.

Researching the rivers for the guidebooks required dedication and tenacity.  Many times, trips did not go as planned and Paul and companions had to make impromptu camps. Sometimes they became lost.  Once there was a very bad accident, as Paul calls it, “a doozy,” involving the Altamahaw Dam on the Haw River. After reading Ferguson’s account of the Altamahaw event, “Accident on the Haw:  A Near Death Experience,” Paul Scrutton said “it’s a helluva trip report.”  Ferguson agreed: “He’s right.  A lot of excitement in that trip report.  A lot of pain.”

Even a quick bio-break at an interstate rest stop could be dangerous.  Paul was coming back from a river trip in South Carolina in 2008.  Pete Peterson, his most diligent of companions, has been on the trip but they are driving separately.  Around midnight, Paul stops at a I-95 rest area to take a pee.  Standing at the urinal, somebody behind him yells, “You m********er, give me your money.”  Paul zips and turns.  A young guy is holding a pistol in a raised, gangster-style fashion.  “Give me your wallet.”  Paul eyes the fellow carefully and focuses on the weapon.  It is a revolver; Paul had a similar model, and he notices the cylinder is empty.  No bullets.  Except maybe one in the chamber.

Paul slowly removes his wallet and flips it on the floor.  The guy grabs the wallet, removes the cash, and throws the wallet back to the floor.  A polite robber, not taking the wallet and sparing Paul the burden of renewing credit cards, licenses, etc. Paul waits a few minutes for the robber to clear out then goes to his van and calls the police.

A state trooper shows up and he looks at the van and canoe mounted on top.  He asks, “Where you been paddling?”

Paul responds, “Are you a paddler?”

Trooper: “Yes, I paddle.”

Paul: “Where?”

Trooper: “Often the Cape Fear River”

Paul: “Where do you get your information?”

Trooper: “I got this book about Eastern N.C.”

Paul: “What color is the cover?”

Trooper: “Orange.”

Paul: “That’s an old edition now.  I have a new edition, a third edition, it has a green cover.  Would you like a new one?”

Trooper: “Yeah!”

Paul has a box of guidebooks in the van and hands the trooper a new edition.  The trooper takes Paul’s report.  Paul encourages him to get back with him if the robber is caught.  The trooper assured him he would.

The next day, Paul gets a call from a detective in Fayetteville.  The detective starts, “I understand you got a guidebook.”  Paul agrees to send him one.  The robber is soon apprehended, and Paul is paid restitution.  The lawmen go paddling, Paul’s book guiding the way.

The second edition of Paddling Eastern NC grew by 100 pages as Ferguson continued adding rivers and details.  He never had formal criteria for adding new rivers.  It was more of a process of looking at maps and choosing the larger rivers yet uncovered and disregarding the smallest.  The little creeks a few miles long.  “There were too many bigger ones to do,” Paul said, “You don’t need to do every ditch.”  In a nudge of friendly rivalry, Paul accuses Ed Gertler of paddling every water puddle in Virginia.  And going square dancing and contra dancing after most paddles.

Paul writes, “After writing Paddling Eastern North Carolina, I missed not having a list of new rivers to explore. All signs pointed to South Carolina. Many of its large rivers come from North Carolina, and it has a wealth of streams originating within South Carolina.”  So, by 2014, the Canoe Kayak South Carolina book was a reality.

Even if Paul skipped a few creeks, the coverage is extensive.  He recently inventoried the two books, NC and SC:  128 streams in total, about 4900 miles.  

The books sold well and almost immediately became the standard reference for anybody paddling the rivers covered in them.  David Ferguson says, “I ran into people who are familiar with the books, who use the books.  If you’re in NC or SC and you canoe or kayak, chances are pretty good you are going to have the books.  I was always very proud of him.”

Burt Kornegay operated a trip guiding business for many years.  He said, “…having run canoe trips all around the country, I have a large selection of river guidebooks to many states, guidebooks I’ve drawn on to set up canoe trips. In my experience, Paul’s two books to the Carolinas are some of the very best out there in terms of providing the right information for paddlers—river accesses, driving directions, water levels, river width and gradient, rating of rapids, portage trails, shuttle services if they exist, etc. They give not only the right info, but accurate info too.

A typical online review of his books says this: “As a “marathon” paddler who frequently paddles 30- or 40-mile trips in a single day, accurate mileage estimates for trips are extremely important to me. This is because if my mileage estimate is off by as little as low single digits, my take-out time could easily be after dark, not before it. I’m happy to report that Paul Ferguson absolutely nails his mileage estimates for various trips.”

Kornegay adds, “Equally praiseworthy is Paul’s thoroughness—along with the fact that he personally has been down every mile of every river he writes about. He doesn’t pass on material that’s secondhand.

Of course, there is always room for dissension.  Some people say Paul’s riverbooks are, well…. dry.  No excitement or emotion.  Humorless. David again offers his opinion, “I think it was a conscious decision by my dad.  He’s got a great sense of humor and can tell a good story but with the books, he was trying to take himself out of it.  Not make it about him or his opinions or witticisms but more about the data he would want in a guidebook.”

Kornegay says, “… it’s true, his books rarely wax poetic.  Fine with me.  I’ll find the poetry of the river myself.  Give me accurate details instead for planning out a trip.”

To find Paul writing in a more emotional and lyrical form, one only must go to the aforementioned Altamahaw dam accident account or to another story which we will feature soon in Carolina Paddler, “Searching for Methusaleh.”

Another perspective is that of John MacGregor writing in his 1866 travel classic, A Thousand Miles in a Rob Roy Canoe, “The man who has a spark of enterprise would turn from a river of which every reach was mapped and it channels all lettered.  Fancy the free traveller, equipped for a delicious summer of savage life, quietly submitting to be cramped and tutored by a “Chart of the Upper Mosel,” in the style of the following extract….

‘Turn to the r. (right), cross the brook, and ascend by a broad and steep forest track (in 40 min.) to the hamlet of Albersbach, situate in the midst of verdant meadows. In five min. more a cross is reached, where the path to the l. must be taken; in 10 min. to the r., in the hollow, to the saw mill; in 10min. more through the gate to the r.; in 3 min. the least trodden path to the l. leading to the Gaschpels Hof; after ? hr. the stony track into the wood must be ascended,’ &c, &c.—From B——‘s Rhine, p. 94.’ 

“This sort of guide-book is not to be ridiculed. It is useful for some travellers as a ruled copy-book is of use to some writers. For first tours it may be needful and pleasant to have all made easy….”  J. MacGregor

Macgregor was an English gentleman who spent a great deal of time traveling all over the globe and was not shy of adventure.  Few of us have his experience or resources and we are happy to have Paul chart a path for us.  We will still get lost occasionally.

How to get data

We all learn in different combinations of ways: some by seeing an example, some by reading and researching, some by doing and learning from mistakes.  Paddlers now have many means available to learn about new rivers. We can ask friends or acquaintances for suggestions or special information.  An old method still in use is to inquire at paddle shops or outfitters.  A local store or landowner can sometimes be called to give eyewitness reports on how small creeks are running. Then there is the unique niche of William Nealy maps.  Graphic, provocative and wildly funny, Nealy could break down the popular lines on a river and offer political and cultural commentary at the same time.  However, some people admit Nealy’s maps offer only a “big picture” or a “feel” of a river but not the greater detail.

The internet provides us with a host of sources for river information. There are national websites, like American Whitewater’s river data, and many focused sites, following a single river basin or geographic region.  Facebook and other platforms provide crowd sourcing insight into rivers and water parks.

Ed Gertler offers an opinion on new media versus old media. Gertler: “I think there are some useful websites, like Alabama Whitewater. I don’t think AW’s site is very good. I mean it fills a void, but I don’t trust crowdsourcing. At least with a guidebook, there is consistency. When Randy Carter called something Class V, we knew it was really Class III.”

Videos are yet another way to learn about rivers.  They tend to accentuate the big stuff, the dramatic parts of a run and not to provide much data on the logistics: the put-ins and take-outs, durations, water levels, etc.  Still, videos are a valuable subjective tool to understanding a river and seeing it from an eyewitness level.  Some people do speak of a “YouTube effect” saying the lower, wide angle subjective view doesn’t capture the force and gradient of rivers.

Paddlers new to a run have all these resources available to them as well as one of the most versatile approaches-scouting a river or a rapid.  Even this approach has its detractors.  As William Nealy wrote, “the time spent scouting a rapid usually equates to the time spent getting thrashed in the hole below.”

Still giving

After publishing the third and final edition of Paddling Eastern North Carolina and the more recent Canoe Kayak South Carolina, Paul continued to update his information on websites devoted to each book.  He actively solicited suggestions for changes or updates to the printed information.  The website supplied PDF’s of “here’s what has changed.”  After many years, the original software platform of the websites became outdated and needed redoing.  Paul decided it was time to call it a day and move on.

Paul eventually tired of the billing and shipping of books and decided to give the remaining inventory, over 1200 books, to the Carolina Canoe Club.  The Club shared a third of the books with the Eastern NC-oriented Carolina Kayak Club and sold the remaining books to members and vendors at a significant discount and used the proceeds for special programs and recognitions.  In this way, Paul continued to be of service to the club and paddlers who embraced him warmly back in the early ‘70s.

The CCC no longer has Paul’s books for sale.

Paul Ferguson includes a special credit in the forward to the NC guide.  “… to Bob Benner and Tom McCloud for inspiring me with their 1987 guidebook,  A Paddler’s Guide to Eastern North Carolina.”

 

Addendum:  Raw notes to printed page

The following are Paul’s raw notes from a trip on the Black River in NC.  Following this is how the river is described in the book.

Black River      Cape Fear Basin

Highway 903 bridge (a.k.a. Lisbon Bridge Road – Sampson County 1134) over Great Coharie Creek to Highway 411 bridge at Clear Run

May 31, 1999

Gauge: Black River near Tomahawk-95 cfs, 2.32 ft.

This is Section one of the Benner book. He has the put-in wrong on the map. He shows a put-in on Six Runs Creek. The proper put-in is on Lisbon bridge Road-Sampson County 1134. a.k.a. Highway 903 at Great Coharie Creek. There is a short dirt road on the upstream right of thebridge that leads under the bridge to a put-in on downstream right. Elmer,Tom Patterson, and I put-in at 11:35 a.m. The water is low, about 6-8 in.deep. A current of about 1 mi. per hour at the bridge. River is 45 ft. wide and the banks 8-15 ft. high. The river broadens out quickly to about 60 ft. There is a house at the put-in on downstream right. (Cleon Lanier’s house)

There are some sand islands in their river and many cypress trees on the banks. Mile 0.5-the creek is about 30 ft. wide at its narrowest. The banksare sandy and the camping would be good. Banks 10-12 feet high.

Mile 1.0-There is ample water in the creek but path through the trees that has been cut sometimes forces us, at this low level, to shallow spots. This is close to minimum for the creek. Mile 1.1-had to drag a few feet because a tree forced us into a shallow spot. Mile 1.2-we join Six Runs Creek. It is much wider here-about 80 ft. and deeper. Mile 1.4- a house on the left  with a steel dock.

Mile 1.6-the right bank has been cleared. Bank about 15 ft. high. Mile 1.8-we’re into a straightaway section of about one-quarter of a mile. Cypress trees on all sides and river is 85 ft. wide. Water is 3 ft. deep with very little flow. The canopy is completely open where the creek was mostly closed. We are now going over sandbars and the maximum depth in places is about 8 in. The banks are 8-12 ft. high. See many sand bar camping sites. Stopped for lunch at 11:50 a.m. and the GPS says 2.7 mi. finished lunch at 1:07 p.m. and GPS says 3.0 mi. we met Cleon and Doug Little. Doug owns Black River Boats. Their Old TownDiscovery 158 canoe has electric, through the hull, motor. Just downstream there is a narrow place where it is only 35-40 ft. wide.

Mile 3.1-a right turn and high-banks on the left. Bank is 25 ft. high and you can see where the normal water level is down about 3 ft. Mile 3.4-house on the right bank. River is 75 ft. wide and banks are 10 ft. high. Some cypress but not a great number. Doug says the river is never too low to paddle.

There is always a small channel of water. Mile 3.6-house on the right witha floating dock. Mile 3.8-two houses on the right. Mile 5.5-80 ft. wide and banks 6 ft. high. Mile 6.9-we can see the bridge and we just passed Clear Run Creek on the left. River is 80-90 ft. wide. Banks are 4 ft. on the left and 15-20 on the right. It is 2:50 p.m. GPS says it 7.0 mi., 2 hours and 48 minutes paddling time. (Measured topo with OziExp – says 6.7 miles. Takeout is on the upstream right. The takeout is owned by Amos McLamb (910) 532-4782 There is a gate across the entrance that is sometimes locked. The combination is usually the year-like 1999. There are posted signs at the takeout as seen from river. (I called Amos- He said he does not like a lot of traffic. It is OK for me to use it. Officially – for a book – it is private property and permission must be obtained) There is a sign on the road upstream left about a hundred feet from the bridge. It says “Steamboat trade — naval stores and lumber were primary cargo for vessels navigating the black river. ca.1875-1914. Remains of the steamer, A J Johnson, 60 yds south.” (Amos said you can see the bow embedded in the bank when the water is low. It is just downstream of the bridge.) Tomahawk gauge is just upstream of the bridge on the left but is difficult to see. The only signs I saw were old metal pipe and some flexible piping going into the bank. Doug said shark’s teeth can be found in the river bed below the house with the steel dock.

 (Class A, 6.7 miles (from topo), Scenery A. 3.5 hours)

Road mileage – 211 mi.

From Paddling Eastern North Carolina:

Gauge  USGS Black River Near Tomahawk.  Estimated minimum is 125cfs (2.3 ft.).

Notes  NC 903 at the put-in is also called Lisbon Bridge Road (Sampson Co. 1134).

Great Coharie Creek has many trees shading the run and sandy banks over 10 feet high.  Sandbars are exposed at low water and require searching for the deeper channels.

Six Runs Creek (mi. 1.2) joins to form the beginning of the Black River.  The channel becomes wider and more open.  Cypress trees are near the water and banks are up to 20 feet high.

At the NC 411 bridge, upstream right, there is a private, gated road to the bank. Obtain permission or use the steeper banks from the bridge.

A sign near the NC 411 bridge notes “Naval stores and lumber were primary cargo for vessels navigating the Black River (1875-1914) Remains of the steamer, AJ Johnston, 60 yards south.

Carolina Paddler:  In the next section description, Black River Section 2, Paul notes what can be seen at the take-out for section 1.  This is his pattern for all sections of rivers.

Notes:  See the previous section about putting in at NC 411 and the sign noting the old steamboat bow embedded in the bank near the bridge.