CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/35097
Cruising | Boat operator Freddie Mims, opposite page and above takes Noah Arnold, above and at left, and Tony Arnold for a ride. LIFEBLOOD OF A REGION The Cape Fear courses through southeastern North Carolina like an aqueous vein, pulsing into our lives in ways we likely don’t even notice. We drink from it, shower in it, fight fires with it, keep our grass green with it, and yes, like any river in a landscape where bipeds tread, we let it carry our waste to the sea. It’s such a vital artery, this river, even our hospital is named for it: Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Look in the phone book and you’ll count no fewer than 100 businesses — an archery range, a chimney sweep, a barber shop, a smoke shop, a bladder control program — that bear the name Cape Fear. “It’s the whole reason Fayetteville is here — it’s the only reason Fayetteville is here,” says Freddie Mims. Though we 36 | July/August • 2011 share a last name, Mims is not a relative of mine. He offers pontoon cruises on the river. The city sprung up where it did because this was as far as barges and steamships could navigate upriver before scraping bottom. It made for a natural inland port, a commercial hub in the era of King Cotton. Fayetteville is situated along the Fall Line, so named because this is where rivers fall over the last rocky ledges of the Piedmont hills and commence their slow, flat-water journey through the broad coastal plain to the sea. Consider other cities in the South that have sprouted along the Fall Line: Richmond, Va., Columbia, S.C., and Augusta, Ga. Of course, the name Cape Fear enjoys some chill-down-the-spine Hollywood notoriety, thanks to Gregory Peck in