THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 2, 1995 TAG: 9507020059
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: COLUMBIA LENGTH: Long : 153 lines
When members of the Northeastern Economic Development Commission came to Columbia across Albemarle Sound in Tyrrell County for a mid-June meeting, they ignored an invitation to look at the tiny town's remarkable new waterfront.
'Twas a pity.
For nearly three years, the Economic Commission has been struggling to spend $2.4 million the pump-primers got from the General Assembly to create good works in the Albemarle. One idea has been a HarborTown project to make local waterfronts attractive to tourists.
If the planners had inspected the Columbia waterfront where the Scuppernong River slides slowly into Bull Bay they might have discovered that in the last few years, the Tyrrell townlet with a population of 900 has joined with 4,000 county cousins to raise no less than $17 million for their own good works.
All by themselves.
``Looking back, I think a lot of us are surprised at what we've done so far,'' said James Daniel Brickhouse,Tyrrell County administrator who is generally credited for inspiring the upbeat efforts in Columbia.
The best time to see what Columbia has wrought is to drive at dusk across the new U.S. Route 64 bridge over the Scuppernong. All around the riverfront for thousands of feet, diadems of boardwalk lights sparkle across the dark water.
The lights, set unobtrusively low, mark a walkway, wandering for more than a mile through unspoiled timber wetlands along the riverbank. Visitors are welcomed by night sounds from rustling wildlife, and in puddle and pond, basso bullfrogs clear their throats.
A stroller last week was astonished to see a black bear cub ambling in daylight along the boardwalk, apparently too lazy to struggle through the swampy underbrush below.
``I think a lot of this started about 10 years ago when we heard about then Gov. Jim Martin's Coastal Initiative,'' said Charles Ogletree, who has an astonishing identity as Columbia's only lawyer.
Like Martin, Ogletree loves sailboats and in the early 1980s, managed to keep his cruising sloop spotless amid the rotting piles and tumbledown wharves of Columbia's old waterfront on the Scuppernong.
Today Columbia has one of the loveliest little marinas on the East Coast.
``I think we all realized that Columbia and Tyrrell County neither had or needed a big industrial base,'' said Ogletree, ``What we had was our wilderness and our beautiful Scuppernong that is navigable for canoes and small boats for many miles upriver.
``I believe there was an almost spontaneous decision to develop what we called Eco-Tourism. We wanted to encourage nature lovers to come here and enjoy our unspoiled land,'' said Ogletree.
The idea blossomed.
Brickhouse said it happened because of the enthusiasm of town and county citizens who formed an advisory board to see what could be done with Eco-Tourism.
On the very first page of the advisory board's recommendations for Columbia was this comment that set the mood for all that followed:
``There should never be stores or restaurants that are so fancy or expensive that local people do not feel comfortable in them . . . The architecture should remain of human scale but eclectic, expressing the contradictory ideals and independent eccentricities of the town . . . ''
And so it has turned out.
``From the beginning we had the idea that the best way to get help was to help ourselves,'' said Brickhouse.
``I remember when we were building a little park on the river at the end of Main Street. We ran out of bricks for the walkways and the next thing you know here comes a local fellow with a load of bricks.
``Somebody else said we needed a fountain and somebody wanted a gazebo.
``As you see, we now have a beautiful fountain and an elegant gazebo - all made possible by folks who believed in what they were doing,'' said Brickhouse.
But it is the nature boardwalk that startles and delights visitors.
``We hired John Wilson, an architect who used to be mayor of Manteo, to work up some plans that would best utilize our riverfront,'' said Brickhouse.
``Wilson wanted the nature walk through the wetlands, so we stretched yellow tape through the swamps in a way that made sure we wouldn't cut down any trees,'' Brickhouse added.
Today one of the marvels of the boardwalk is the way it scrupulously twists and zigs around towering forest giants and squatty flowering bushes that would have soon disappeared in more chainsaw-oriented communities. Wide turnouts make it possible for wheelchair passengers to enjoy the Greenway, too.
As the project flourished, conservation agencies found out what was happening in Tyrrell County and offered to help.
The R. K. Mellon Foundation came up with $9.2 million to buy thousands of acres of the Pocosin lands that form the watershed of the Scuppernong. Pocosins are peaty woodland islands that evolve in the stretches of savannah south of Columbia.
The General Assembly, encouraged by state Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, and other influential members of the northeastern delegation, talked the Department of Transportation into building a new U.S. Route 64 bridge across the Scuppernong.
And wouldn't you know: The Columbia-Tyrrell bootstrappers then charmed the DOT into building a $154,105 boardwalk extension on the side of the new bridge. The bridgewalk extends to the west bank of the Scuppernong.
``We're building a veteran's park over there and we'll put more boardwalk on that bank, too,'' said Brickhouse.
Canoeists will find small signs along the shore that give directions and advice for paddlers.
The boardwalks, built of local lumber shaped in Tyrrell county mills, were hammered together by members of a Youth Corps sponsored by an Eckerd Family Foundation that is a spinoff of the Eckerd drug store chain. Half a dozen other foundations have happily contributed more millions.
The main Greenway boardwalk passes under the new U.S. Route 64 highway bridge and past the busy ongoing construction of a new visitor center that will soon be one of the most elaborate in North Carolina. The center will provide still another access to the wilderness walkway.
Plans are being pushed in Congress for final funding of the Walter B. Jones Center for the Sounds, a ``bioregional megasite'' just south of the new tourist welcome building. The Jones complex, commemorating the late U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones Sr., an Albemarle Democrat who served northeastern North Carolina for 26 years, will contain museum rooms, auditoriums and instruction facilities for professional training in wildlife management.
``We hope to get the final money for the Walter B. Jones center during this congressional session,'' said Brickhouse.
Much of the management of the Greenway through the swamps will come from the Partnership for the Sounds, a tax-free organization dedicated to preserving the Albemarle-Pamlico environment. The Partnership includes Beautort, Bertie, Hyde and Tyrrell counties.
Eventually, the offices of the Partnership will move into the new Visitors Center and will provide guides and management for the boardwalk wilderness.
One of the managers will be Linda Cieslik, a diminutive young University of Wisconsin Ph.D. in environmental science.
``I have the best job in the world,'' Ceislik said during an inspection of new boardwalk construction deep in the Greenway. ``Look - there's some wild clematis and some swamp mallow, all blooming . . . ''
And turtles and jumping minnows and fat ducks.
The list of state, federal and private funding that has so far helped the burgeoning Columbia-Tyrrell Greenway fills a long, single-spaced legal page. The bottom line shows a figure of $11,326,197.
``That's out of date. It's up to $17 million now,'' said Brickhouse, a happy summer blooming all over his face. ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON/Staff color photos
Kirk James, 10, fishes on the boardwalk at Columbia. Officials there
have invested in ways to make it easy for people to get close to
nature and the Scuppernong River. Last week, a stroller on the
walkway there saw a black bear cub ambling along in daylight.
A boardwalk at the Columbia waterfront wilderness has become popular
for anglers and pedestrians. Officials hope that ecotourism will
beneift the town, and instill in people an appreciation of the life
around them.
Map
by CNB