CityView Magazine - Fayetteville, NC
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/35097
1962 and Robert DeNiro and Nick Nolte 30 years later. “Cape Fear,” the thriller flick, tells the tale of a psychotic rapist released from prison who sets out to kill his lawyer’s family for revenge. The great climactic scene is set on the family’s houseboat on the Cape Fear River. When I mention to out-of-state acquaintances where I live they invariably, often incredulously, say something like, “Oh … you live on that river?” It was early seafarers who coined the name Cape Fear back in the mid-1600s. They applied it to the southern tip of Bald Head Island — “a naked, bleak elbow of sand, jutting far out into the ocean,” as James Sprunt puts it so eloquently in his 1916 book, “Chronicles of the Cape Fear” — where the river of the same name surrenders itself to the Atlantic. Look at a map of North Carolina and there’s a well- defined point along the southeast coast, shaped like the crest of a wave about to break and curl southward onto Myrtle Beach. Mariners and cartographers dubbed it Cape Fear because ships would so often wreck in the shoals and shallows that expand for more than 20 miles from the cape. There’s a reason the North Carolina coast is called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” Before the river reaches that dagger of sand, it writhes 200 miles from its rocky- bottom origins in Chatham County, at the rendezvous of the Haw and Deep Rivers. By the time it rolls beneath the I-295 bridge north of Fayetteville, the rocks have faded from view and the Cape Fear is deep and navigable. If you have no boat, you can always step aboard Freddy Mims’ pontoon at Campbellton Landing, just below the Person Street bridge. He charges $25 per adult for a two-hour cruise and $40 to ride four hours. Kids 12 and under are free. If you’re really ambitious, you can pay him $100 for a 110-mile, 10- hour voyage all the way to Wilmington, though he needs at least six people for that run. He also offers an overnight trip for $400 per person. A Fayetteville native, he’s always been lured to the Cape Fear “because it’s pristine and wild looking,” he says. “It’s really not all that wild, but it certainly gives you the impression.” True, the river is no longer bounded by forest primeval. It glides beneath interstates and two-lanes, past farms and factories, past cabins and cell phone towers, past towns big and small. The Cape Fear is also partitioned by three locks and dams that were built to ensure a navigable channel for commercial boats, keeping the water depth at least eight feet. The first (or the last, depending on one’s direction) is Lock and Dam Number 3 about 20 miles south of Fayetteville near the DuPont plant. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns and operates these structures, which are no longer used for navigation. Commercial traffic hasn’t plied the river in decades. Still, Fayetteville and Wilmington do rely on the water impounded behind the dams for their water supply. Recreational Cape Fear River Boat Cruises with Freddie Mims 910.391.1246 Cruises start at Riverside Marina at Campbellton Landing CityViewNC.com | 37