HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda - 09-07-2005-5fORANGE COUNTY
BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT
Meeting Date: September 7, 2005
Action Agenda
r
Item No. 1'
SUBJECT: Endorsement for Trading Path Association National Endowment for the
Humanities Grant
DEPARTMENT: Environment and Resource PUBLIC HEARING: (YIN) No
Conservation
ATTACHMENT(S):
1) Draft Letter of Support
2) HPC Endorsement Memo
3) Preliminary Project Description
INFORMATION CONTACT:
Tina Moon, Preservation Planner, ext. 2583
David Stancil, ERC Director, ext. 2590
TELEPHONE NUMBERS:
Hillsborough
Chapel Hill
Durham
Mebane
732-8181
968-4501
688-7331
336-227-2031
PURPOSE: To consider sending a letter of support for the Trading Path Association's grant
application to the National Endowment for the Humanities, and to receive the Historic
Preservation Commission's letter of support as well.
BACKGROUND: Tom Magnuson, representing the Trading Path Association (TPA), attended
the August 24`" meeting of the Orange County Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) to
share his proposal for a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. (Mr.
Magnuson also commented on this project at the August 16 BOCC meeting). The proposal will
consist of two main components: 1) the creation of a three-county (Orange, Durham and
Person) consortium to promote heritage tourism and 2) the management of a Phase I Cultural
and Archaeological Survey of an area along the New Hope Creek corridor at the boarder
between Orange and Durham counties. The TPA believes that the site may have been
inhabited by two Native American villages. The TPA has selected a professional archaeological
firm to conduct the survey and would pay for this work from the $15,000 grant.
As the advisory board most closely linked to preservation efforts at the county level, Mr.
Magnuson asked the HPC to review his proposal and to prepare a letter of endorsement for
inclusion in his application packet. The HPC voted to express its support for the proposal.
A draft letter of support from the Board is attached.
FINANCIAL IMPACT: No fiscal impact is associated with this decision.
RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends that the Board consider the letter of
support endorsing the TPA's grant proposal and receive the HPC's letter.
D
DRAFT
[Commissioners Letterhead]
September 8, 2005
National Endowment for the Humanities
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C, 20506
SUBJECT: Trading Path Association Proposal for Archaeological Research / Heritage Tourism
To Whom It May Concern:
This letter is to express support for a proposal by the Trading Path Association (TPA) to conduct
archaeological research at potential heritage tourism sites, including one promising location in
Orange County, North Carolina.
The requested funds would enable the TPA to conduct an initial survey of the New Hope Creek
corridor for possible remains of'Native American village activities. Orange County is working
with its neighboring jurisdictions to protect land along that same river corridor for a proposed
greenway trail and wildlife preserve. The proposed archaeological research would augment and
complement that cooperative effort. The TPA proposal also suggests the creation of a three-
county consortium (Orange, Durham and Person counties) to promote heritage tourism..
Orange County appreciates the significant assistance that the National Endowment for the
Humanities provides each year to universities and other cultural institutions, including five NEH
grants awarded earlier this year to researchers and scholars at our University of'North Carolina
(Chapel Hill) and a Landmark of American I-Iisto ry Grant to support teacher workshops at our
historic Burwell School (Hillsborough)..
Thank you very much for your consideration,
Sincerely,
Moses Carey Jr., Chair
Orange County Board of Commissioners
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HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION
Memorandum
TO: Orange County Board of Commissioners
John Link, County Manager
FROM: Orange County Historic Preservation Commission (HPQ
DATE: August 24, 2005
SUB7ECT: Endorsement for Trading Path Association
The Historic Preservation Commission of Orange County is pleased to submit this letter
of endorsement for the Trading Path Association [TPA] in its effort to secure a
Consultation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are familiar
with the work of the TPA, and believe that the proposed project to further develop trails
and related venues for interpreting America's historic places will be of great value in
promoting heritage tourism here in North Carolina. Additionally, the envisioned final
outcome offers an opportunity for children and adults to better understand their culture
and identity as Americans.
In closing, the members of the Historic Preservation Commission commend the staff,
volunteers and board of directors of the Trading Path Association for their current
endeavor, and look forward to assisting wherever possible as they proceed.
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Preliminary Project Description
Orange, Durham, Person County
Trading Path Heritage
Tourism Consortium
August 31, 2005
Background
The Trading Path Association (TPA) is a 501 c3 non-profit corporation
headquartered in Hillsborough, NC. Its purpose is to find the trade routes of the
17th and 18th century Southeast. The proposed project will illuminate three of
those old trade routes in Orange, Durham, and Person counties. In doing so it
will illuminate an important but forgotten moment of multicultural society.
The TPA project is immense and will take a great many years. The TPA will
save as much as possible of the remnant archaeology of the southeastern
Contact Period (1585-ca 1785). The Southeast was England's first frontier in the
New World, and the lessons learned here shaped the American experience for
ever after. Yet, we know next to nothing about the period for want of public
documents. In very general terms we know it to have been a moment of cultural
and genetic blending, of near rampant anarchy, a multicultural moment lost in the
shadows of subsequent Black Codes and Jim Crow. This project would reveal
and celebrate that singular moment.
If the story will be told it will be told with archaeological artifacts. Hence the
urgent need to preserve archaeology fast succumbing to urban sprawl. To
accomplish this salvation the TPA has developed a message for county and
municipal officials. That message is that their historic landscapes and
archaeology have value as heritage tourism assets, and that it is better to know
in advance where heritage artifacts are rather than collide with preservationists
ad hoc with each threat of disturbance.
This message resonates well at the local level. Davidson County, NC has the
TPA mapping all of its historic river crossings (fords) in preparation for a full
mapping of its old roads. Louisburg, INC has the TPA reinterpreting its early
history, pushing its historical appeal back over one hundred and fifty years.
In the short-term, by 2007, the TPA intends to have five to seven heritage
tourism sites open (coinciding with the Jamestown 400 celebration) between
Petersburg, VA and Augusta, GA. To that end we have identified two sites in VA
and five in NC for development and incorporation in the program. We are
working with authorities near the sites to develop the assets as Trading Path
sites. Ultimately, the TPA intends to turn over to the National Park Service a
'non-contiguous national park' comprised of heritage sites focused on artifacts of
the early trade routes and of the contact era. A consultancy grant will facilitate
the TPA travel and coordination efforts in one element of that plan.
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Current prospect
This consultation grant will underwrite coalescing one regional node in the
projected matrix of nodes. It will bring to bear technical experts, like:
archaeologists, land grant researchers, specialized landscape architects,
regional planners and historians needed to assess each of several sites in a
regional heritage matrix. These consultants will authenticate local sites and
prepare preliminary interpretations and thus make the final product more
understandable at the local and county levels. The end product will be a clear
picture of exploitable Trading Path related sites in a three county area in North
Carolina and will recommend a framework for planning a three county tourism
consortium. It is believed that success in this case will offer inducement to other,
similar counties and towns to protect and develop their Contact Era landscapes
and archaeological sites.
Heritage tourism provides a rationale for protecting antiquities. And heritage
tourism works best regionally, not locally. There are precious few Williamsburgs;
dense concentrations of artifacts. Most counties and towns have but a handful of
attractive sites, but joint venturing with neighboring counties will multiply the
value of the heritage assets of all involved counties and towns. The TPA wants
to develop a scope and prospect statement for three counties and two
municipalities in NC; Orange, Durham, and Person counties and the towns of
Chapel Fill] and Durham.. All these entities will be beneficiaries of a coordinated
tourism development program. All have considerable unprotected and largely
unnoted Contact Era and Trading Path assets.
Specific elements of the project
Durham City and County
In Durham County and in cooperation with the NC historic site at Stagville and
with the US Army Corps of Engineers, the TPA will reinterpret the Stagville state
historic site to incorporate its pre-Stagville history as a crucial ford along the 17th
and 18th century Trading Path.
Stagville, an existing tourism site, exists where it is because of the Flat River
crossings it exploited. Yet that aspect remains unnoted in the sites interpretation.
So, in a sense, one product of this proposed project will be a broadened
reinterpretation of an existing heritage site. Preliminary studies have located a
packhorse ford and two 18th-century bridge sites heretofore unnoted at Stagville.
These revealed remnant roadbeds indicating the complex of transportation
options concentrated at this Flat River crossing. It is quite likely that further study
will reveal the presence at or near the Stagville stream crossings of a Contact
Era Native American or blended Contact Era village site as well.
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The consultation grant will cover expenses incident to forming a partnership with
county, city, state, and federal stakeholders for mapping and developing the
landscapes and archaeology remnants at Stagville.
Orange County and Chapel Hill
Documentary evidence indicates the existence of a two village Native American
site of possibly great historical importance located in the New Hope Creek
bottoms on the Orange - Durham County line in southwestern Durham and
eastern Orange Counties. The likely site of these villages is less than three miles
from both downtown Durham and downtown Chapel Hill. According to one
reliable early 18th century map, these villages sat astride a critical transportation
node, the intersection of critical north-south (Central Coast Trail) and east-west
Trading Paths (the lower path to the Catawba and Waxhaws).
Consultancy monies from this grant will pay for archaeological and landscape
studies that will determine the precise location and dates of the villages and
reveal (by landscape analysis) their connection to Stagville and Hillsborough and
other existing heritage sites.
Person County
In the 17th century, when packhorse men first entered the backcountry, to avoid
the Occaneechi Indians who dominated trade in the backcountry, these
packhorse men crossed the Roanoke River at "Moniseep", a horse ford now
under Lake Gaston north of Warren County. The most direct route from
Petersburg to the Catawba and Cherokee for these traders, after crossing the
Roanoke at Moniseep, passed over Mount Tirzah in Person County, NC.
Recently, on Mount Tirzah the TPA found a two hundred yard long piece of
packhorse trail that has been out of service since the 1720s. This landscape
artifact confirms the early route of the traders and, in conjunction with the sites at
Stagville and in the New Hope bottoms is crucial to explaining and understanding
the evolution of trade routes and, hence, settlements in central piedmont.
Consultation money will allow archaeological confirmation of the antiquity of the
Mount Tirzah artifacts and will assist in the creation of a county level heritage
tourism initiative in Person County, a rural tobacco and textile-impacted polity.
In summary
This grant will facilitate gathering the expertise necessary to determine the
feasibility of a three county consortium for heritage tourism in piedmont North
Carolinas Orange, Durham and Person counties. These experts will catalogue
and assess the value of three heritage sites, one in each county, related to the
Trading Path to the Catawba from the earliest English settlements in Virginia.
These sites sit on the upper/high road (Person County), middle/main road
(Durham County), and lower route (Orange County) of the Trading Path.
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The end product of this consultancy grant will be a scheme for a three-county
consortium for the exploitation of heritage tourism relating to the three sites.
Assessment of these sites by the consultants funded by this grant will, minimally,
provide local schools and heritage organizations to fully appreciate the
interconnectedness of seemingly unrelated cultural artifacts, Furthermore,
consultant assessments will exemplify to the public that before there were three,
two, or even on county there place in the piedmont had importance that reached
far beyond modern county lines,
Should this consultancy project produced its expected and desired outcomes it
will lead to planning a fully integrated, three county heritage tourism consortium
that will be a model for other polities in the piedmont of the southeast,
T. Magnuson, Founder
Trading Path Association
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