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Transportation Changes (1.6.1)The tandem of railroad and revitalized canal placed Elizabeth City in an enviable position for continued growth and expansion as the community entered the twentieth century. The riverfront location of the railroad shops and depot provided the ideal situation for the steamers of various companies which carried freight and passengers to destinations throughout the North Carolina sounds. Although the town's shipyards were active building and repairing vessels throughout the late nineteenth century, business boomed after the canal was improved. In January 12, 1900, The Economist declared that "The business of our shipyards has greatly increased since the Dismal Swamp Canal was opened to navigation." Five years later the town boasted four marine railways and shipyards, one sailmaker, and even a ship brokerage firm (North Carolina Yearbook 1905, 453-454). As before, marine railways and boat builders were located along the river. In 1914 the yards of T. B. Hayman and E. S. Willey both had river locations south of the mouth of Charles Creek; Willey had earlier been located at what is now 222-226 North Water Street. The Elizabeth City Iron Works and Supply Company, a much larger operation whose marine division was better known as the Elizabeth City Shipyard, took over and greatly expanded both the Hayman and Willey locations about 1920. Hayman and Willey then moved to smaller sites nearby, where they remained until the 1930s. The Elizabeth City Shipyard continues in operation at 722 Riverside Avenue (Sanborn maps 1902, 1908, 1914, 1923, 1931; Butchko, 1989: 286). The commercial success of the revitalized Dismal Swamp Canal was dramatic, and the first decade of the twentieth century was the apogee of the canal's long history. In April 1905 the Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk) reported that: The Dismal Swamp Canal is doing an unusually heavy business, having handled hundreds of schooners, barges and tugs during the past week. It is not an unusual event in these busy days for one tug to come through with a tow of as many as 17 schooners; of course, small ones, but all loaded to the gunwales with farm products of the trucking section around the Carolina Sounds. The barges are carrying lumber for Philadelphia and New York, while the truck is discharged here and shipped to the northern markets (Brown 1967: 111). During the first decade of the twentieth century the canal recaptured much of the traffic it had lost to the Albemarle-Chesapeake Canal. Whereas in 1889 the Dismal Swamp Canal carried 78,211 tons of freight, one-quarter of that on the Albemarle-Chesapeake, in 1908 it carried 340,135 tons, three-and-a-half times that of its rival. All of this traffic--barges, schooners, and tugs--came through Elizabeth City, providing the local merchants, businessmen, and workers with a level of activity and prosperity never before seen (Brown, 1967: 111). This advantage, however, was short-lived. In 1911 the Federal government purchased outright the Albemarle-Chesapeake Canal, making it part of the federally maintained system now known as the Intra-coastal Waterway. Passage on the Albemarle-Chesapeake Canal was then toll-free, relegating the private toll-charging Dismal Swamp Canal to carrying insignificant local commerce. The latter's only advantage was that in Elizabeth City, the boater, whether commercial or pleasure, could avail himself of a variety of services, while not even the smallest town existed within miles of the southern end of the Albemarle-Chesapeake Canal. The Federal government finally acquired the holding company of the Dismal Swamp Canal in 1925, although actual possession of the canal was delayed until 1929; it then also became toll-free. Subsequent improvements to the canal were undertaken by the Federal government, including new lock chambers in 1940 and 1941. The canal, though increasingly popular with pleasure boaters, never recovered more than a local commercial importance (Brown, 1967: 113-114, 125). In 1904 a second railroad came to Elizabeth City, a spur of the Suffolk and Carolina Railroad which ran from the railroad's main line just south of Sunbury (Gates County) southeasterly through Perquimans and Pasquotank counties. It entered Elizabeth City on the west and continued down what is now Grice Street to a termination near Water Street and the riverfront. The Suffolk and Carolina line provided additional market outlets for the town's merchants and manufacturers and gave the advantage of railroad sidings to industries on the south side of downtown. It was absorbed into the reorganized Norfolk and Southern Railway in 1906, and in 1910 the name was changed again, to the Norfolk Southern Railroad Company (Prince, 1972: 13-14). By 1908 the old Suffolk line had two tracks leading to a large wharf house on Water Street, now the site of Mariner's Park. A railroad pier extended 180 feet into the Pasquotank River to provide dockage for steamers meeting the trains; this pier was removed after 1931 (Sanborn maps 1908, 1914, 1923, 1931; Prince, 1972: 13-14). |
During this same period, a rival appeared in Elizabeth City's long domination of the region's maritime transportation. Early in the century, the Norfolk and Southern Railroad began a waterborne railroad connection between the railroad's wharves in Edenton and the Washington and Plymouth Railroad (which the railroad acquired in 1904) at Mackey's Ferry. This allowed direct railroad connections from Norfolk through Edenton to Washington and New Bern, eliminating much of the company's north-and-south water traffic out of Elizabeth City (Prince, 1972: 194). This siphoning of trade from the Elizabeth City wharves was even more pronounced after the completion in 1910 of the Norfolk Southern train trestle across the Albemarle Sound that permitted direct railroad connections from Norfolk to the Pamlico and Neuse regions. Other steamship lines, however, continued to call in Elizabeth City, particularly those servicing the Outer Banks. Travel by steamer from Elizabeth City continued as a major means of reaching the beach resorts there until the 1930s. An even greater threat to Elizabeth City's century of transportation leadership was the growing popularity and reliance on the automobile. At first the automobile and improved roads brought the city's merchants within easier and more reliable access to greater numbers of consumers. Modern but narrow and quickly outdated brick roads were constructed in 1919 and 1920 leading south to Weeksville (formerly known as Newbegun) and north to Newland (Butchko 1989, 34, 78, 109). In 1925 a major state-funded road, now U. S. 158, was constructed through the Great Dismal Swamp from the northern part of Pasquotank County to Gates County, providing the first direct-road between the neighboring counties. An Elizabeth City newspaper urged residents of Gates County to visit the city often, because "after all, county barriers do not mean anything now" (The Independent, September 11, 1925; Butchko, 1991: 43). While such roads brought new customers to Elizabeth City, they further weakened the region's reliance on railroad transportation, a system which had been paramount in the city's economy for over a half-century. The completion in 1930 of the Wright Memorial Bridge across Currituck Sound to the Outer Banks was an ominous event to Elizabeth City's already declining maritime transportation system. While it enabled the large-scale development of oceanside resorts in Dare County, it ended the dependence of the Outer Banks residents on the maritime freight and passenger traffic that was largely based in Elizabeth City. The Dare County resident and vacationer no longer took the railroad to Elizabeth City, transferring there to a steamer for the journey to Nags Head or Manteo, but motored to the Outer Banks entirely in a private automobile (Stick, 1958: 245-247). Elizabeth City's role as transportation center had lessened again. The twentieth century witnessed a major improvement in access across the Pasquotank Narrows between Elizabeth City and Camden County. In 1903 the Camden Ferry Company was incorporated "to operate Toll Ferries, Toll Bridges, and Toll Roads" across the narrows of the Pasquotank River between Elizabeth City and Camden County; the major stockholder was Charles H. Robinson (Incorporation Book 1, p. 289). Two years later the company built a narrow one-lane bridge at the narrows, uniting the two counties for the first time by land. In the early 1920s, the North Carolina State Highway Commission bought the bridge and its rights-of-way from Robinson (be had acquired complete ownership in 1916), and built a new road across the low swampy land now known as the Camden Causeway. This was the much ballyhooed "floating road," a concrete surface laid on a layer of sand and dirt upon a base of floating logs. The problem was that the logs, with the added weight of sand, dirt, and concrete, did not actually float, and attempts to build up the low spots only added more weight to the bridge. While the state, with federal aid, built the present steel and concrete Elizabeth City Bridge in 1931, it was not until 1943-1944 that the modern Camden Causeway was completed (Pasquotank Year Book 1975, 94-99; Butchko 1989, 234-235). The Camden Causeway, although part of Camden County, was annexed by the City of Elizabeth City in 1986. The rise of the automobile, along with the commercial abandonment of the Dismal Swamp Canal, led to changes in the character of Elizabeth City's transportation services as the twentieth century progressed. In 1942 the city had seven automobile dealers, four truck lines, and a new (1939) bus station at 201 South Poindexter Street. In contrast, there were only two shipyards and marine railways and two boat lines--the Elizabeth City Carolina Line at the foot of East Colonial Avenue and the Wanchese Line at the foot of East Burgess Street (Miller 1942, 282,284). The Norfolk and Southern Railway continued service to its ca. 1910 passenger station at 109 South Hughes Boulevard and, because of World War II, was doing an active business. However, by the end of the decade, the decline of the canal and the railroad--the very means by which Elizabeth City prospered for almost 150 years--as the primary means of local and regional transportation would be complete (Butchko 1989, 245). | ||
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