From the Archives: Lake Waccamaw
Part 1: Icy Origins
Amid the swamps, forests, and fields of southeastern North Carolina lies an immense, shallow, strangely egg-shaped lake, whose rich natural environment and gently sloping freshwater shores have been an asset to the region’s industrial and touristic development for over a century and a half. The long and dynamic history of Lake Waccamaw reaches back not just centuries but millennia, beginning in a time when Columbus County looked more like Alaska than anything else.
Looking down, early aviators over the coastal plain of the Carolinas were mystified to realize that the landscape below them was peppered with repetitive ovals, some farmed, others filled with lakes, swamps, or a mix of both, all apparently lined up on a northwest-to-southeast axis. When examined on the ground, these structures often proved to have a raised, sandy rim, but usually, only on their eastern and southeastern shores. Pilots and photographers were not the first to notice these structures, but the photos they produced for the Soil Conservation Service in the 1930s were the first to bring these “Carolina bays” — so named for the sweet bay, loblolly bay, and red bay trees that often grew within them — to the attention of the wider scientific community.
Early aerial photographs of the bays led to a flurry of theorizing about their origins. A 1933 paper by two University of Oklahoma researchers proposed that the eerily regular pattern of bays and rims could be explained by the impacts of a swarm of meteorites. Later geologists sought to verify this theory by searching for “magnetic anomalies” around the bays, which they hypothesized could result from iron meteorite fragments below the surface, and by firing a gun into a vat of clay in an effort to produce similar patterns. Exciting as it was, the impact theory rapidly became the most popular explanation for the origin of the bays, but it has since been refuted. Meteorite impacts are such incredibly violent events that bullet impacts make for a poor analogy. Meteorites almost always vaporize on impact, and any fragments that survive are far too small to produce magnetic anomalies. And the burst of energy released by a meteorite carves out a circular crater centered on the exact point of impact rather than preserving any sign of the meteorite’s direction — look at Meteor Crater in Arizona, for example, or satellite photographs of the Moon.
Modern theories about the origins of the bays are a bit quieter, but still, provide a window into the natural history of eastern North Carolina. The most widely accepted explanation for the regular shape and direction of the lakes is that their banks were slowly worn into those shapes by prevailing winds that blew out of the southwest and stirred up particular currents within the lakes. To this day, southwesterly winds reliably blow across the lake into the town of Lake Waccamaw regularly. Recent research has dated the emergence of the Carolina bays to the prehistoric Pleistocene epoch — which is to say the last ice age — and noted that the Carolina bays resemble other patterns of “oriented lakes” in Alaska and the southern tip of Chile, among other places. Interestingly, a recent study on the Alaskan lakes claims to demonstrate that they grew into their strange, elongated, aligned shapes through a regular pattern of “thaw slumping” as the frozen soil of the banks thaws each spring, allowing the lakes to stretch slowly towards the sea. As for their sand rims, another theory points to the fact that bay lakes have sometimes been known to freeze over in modern times — Lake Waccamaw, for instance, was frozen solid for a full week during the winter of 1917–18. It stands to reason, this theory argues, that during the last ice age, the lakes froze every year and that the wind could have ground slabs of ice into the sandy shores of the bays, piling up the lakes’ characteristic ridges. So perhaps the Carolina bay lakes are a relic of a time when North Carolina’s coastal plain was a windswept, half-frozen tundra. The area was also covered by the ocean for a time — a three-million-year-old skull of a baleen whale turned up in the shallows in 2008.
Of those Carolina bays which are still filled with water — many clotted into swamps as the centuries passed — Lake Waccamaw is far and away from the largest. It’s also one of the clearest, as the lake’s north shore is made up of limestone, which chemically neutralizes the acidic water of its swampy tributaries, allowing Lake Waccamaw to be filled with clear, freshwater rather than the acidic murk that trickles out of the swamps into many bays. For this reason, Lake Waccamaw supports fish and mollusk species found nowhere else and has also proved attractive to humans over the years.
The vicinity of Lake Waccamaw has been inhabited for thousands of years, but its archaeology remains relatively unexplored. In 2001, three teenagers playing in the lake happened to find a canoe, evidently made — in the absence of iron tools — by burning out the middle of a 22-foot-long log, and similar vessels were found last year, having apparently been uncovered after Hurricane Florence churned up the sediment in which they were buried. The lake’s name comes from the Waccamaw Siouan people who live in the area; originally they lived across the whole region from the lake to the Cape Fear River and the coast, but it seems that, after the Tuscarora and Yamasee Wars of the 1710s, they were forced to abandon their more coastal territories and withdraw into the vicinity of Lake Waccamaw and the Green Swamp.
It was during this period that colonial explorers, venturing inland from settlements along the coast, wrote down the oldest written descriptions of the lake. One of these comes from colonial America’s first major botanist. John Bartram, a Pennsylvania Quaker, traveled throughout the colonies, befriended Benjamin Franklin, and corresponded widely, such as with Carl Linnaeus (a Swedish scientist who developed the taxonomic system biologists use to this day). Ironically, although Bartram helped connect the colonies with the Scientific Revolution then proceeding Europe, and even knew Latin, he actually had very little formal schooling. Perhaps that explains the extraordinary spelling with which he described his visit to Lake Waccamaw in his journal, in the 1760s:
[July] 29 foggy yet A fresh air thermometer 79m but rose at noon to 90 rode to ye Wocoma lake 14 mile distance ye road very wet by reason of abundance of heavy rain & much savana ground. greate variety of lovely plants & flowers & in generaly ye finest lofty pines I ever saw: …ye lake is 8 mile long & 5 broad & about 12 foot deep & very shoal toward ye borders in some places. ye north east side is well inhabited being A bold shore & good land but ye So. west is very swampy ye outlet is at ye so. end into ye Wocoma river which runs A course of 50 mile & most of ye way very stil water ye lake abound with fish of several kinds as large Cat fish, pearch shad & herings: much of ye great Colocasia grows in it & on ye borders grows elm linden ash scarlet & red oak large mirtle pavia Cephalanthus hicory walnut Chiananthus maple willow white berried Cornus willow leaved oak & plenty of ye broad leaved black oak ye best oak for burning; ye banks is generaly 12 foot above ye surface of ye lake ye uper strata is A sandy virgin mould next A very tenatious clay or marl some red some brown 4 foot deep more or less then some loose oister shels then limestone full of several kind of sea shells as oisters muscles clams schalops of monstrous size cockles all cememented in A solid mass to an unknown depth as I have observed at low water on our sea shores as well as on ye tops & sides of our high mountains near ye head of our great rivers there is many clam shels of different sises cast on ye shore by ye waves ye very same with our sea clams: very white: & perfect as if ye fish was just taken out but thay have lost ye fine violet color within side if these was bread in this lake as doubtles thay was it must be long ago when ye sea flowed here: for ye lake is now very fresh & produceth now ye common fresh water muscle as all our rivers do & ye river runs now near 50 mile fresh below ye lake in A straight line
Bartram’s description of the lake, and even of its prehistory, is quite accurate once you untangle it. Although it’s not clear that Lake Waccamaw was ever haunted by “schalops of monstrous size.”
Another more cogent description comes from a traveler from England, one Patrick Tailfer, who visited about three decades earlier, and published his journal when he returned to London:
We… reach’d Mr. Nathanael More’s Plantation, which is reckon’d forty Miles from Brunſwick [probably thirty miles up the Cape Fear River from modern-day Wilmington]. …I mention’d to Mr. More the great Deſire I had to ſee Waccamaw Lake, as I had heard ſo much Talk of it, and had been myſelf a great Way up the River, that I was ſure by the Courſe of the Country, I could not be above twenty Miles from thence… On the 18th of July we ſet out from his Houſe on Horſeback, whith every one his Gun… We rode about four Miles on a direct Courſe thro’ an open Pine Barren, when we came to a large Cane Swamp, about half a mile through, which we croſs’d in about an Hour’s Time, but it was aſtoniſhing to ſee the innumerable Sight of muskeetoes, and the largeſt that I ever ſaw in my Life, for they made nothing to fetch Blood of us thro’ our Buckſkin Gloves, Coats, and Jackets : As ſoon as we got thro’ that Swamp, we came to another open Pine Barren, where we ſaw a great Herd of Deer, the largeſt and fasteſt that ever I ſaw in thoſe Parts: we made Shift to kill a Brace of them, which we made a hearty Dinner on. We rode about two miles farther, when we came to another Cane Swamp, where we ſhot a large She-Bear and two Cubs. It was ſo large that it was with great Difficulty we got thro’ it : when we got on the other Side it began to rain very hard, or otherwiſe, as far as I know, we might have ſhot ten Brace of Deer, for they were almoſt as thick as in the Parks in England, and did not ſeem to be in the leaſt afraid of us, for I queſtion much whether they had ever ſeen a Man in their Lives before, for they ſeem’d to look on us as amaz’d; we made Shift as well we could to reach the Lake the ſame Night, but had but little Pleaſure, it continuing to rain very hard, we made a large Fire of light Wood and ſlept as well as we could that Night, The next Morning we took a particular View of it, and I think tis the pleaſanteſt Place that ever I ſaw in my Life : It is at least eighteen Miles Round, ſurrounded with exceeding good Land, as Oak of all Sorts, Hickery, and fine Cypreſs Swamps : there’s an old Indian Field to be ſeen, which ſhews it was formerly inhabited by them, but I believe not within theſe 50 Years, for there is ſcarce one of the Cape Fear Indians, or the Waccumaws, that can give any Account of it. There’s plenty of Dear, wild Turkeys, Geeſe, and Ducks, and Fiſh in Abundance we ſhot ſufficient to ſerve 40 Men, tho there was but ſix of us, we went almost round it, but there is on the N. E. Side a ſmall Cypreſs Swamp ſo deep that we could not go thro’ it ; we return’d back again on a direct Line, being reſolved to find how far it was on a ſtreight Courſe from the N, W. Branch of Cape Fear River, which we found did not exceed 10 Miles. We return’d back to Mr More’s that ſame Night, having ſatisfied out Curioſity.
Tailfer and Bartram, between them, had anticipated the two features of Lake Waccamaw that would in the future prove its greatest economic assets: its trees and its scenery. But to reach the period when industry began to get into full swing on the lake, we must skip ahead to a period after the invention of the railroad (and, mercifully, regular punctuation).
