| Leland, NC
The Leland We Don’t Know: Connecting Newcomers to Leland’s Past
By Marimar McNaughton
Old Leland echoes the town’s history, whispering its secrets — Post Office, Old Mill, Old Village, Old Fayetteville. These relics of a bygone time still hold the place that the founders of this up-and-coming crossroads mapped out on parchment. A vintage roadbed for horse and carriage followed the trajectory of a train line that brought goods to the hamlet established in the late 1800s. A pair of old thoroughfares linked this waterfront village and its currents to the trading post, the steel rail and the hub of commercial trade over the river to Wilmington and through the woods to Fayetteville.
It is the Leland that only a few still hold dear to their hearts, the Leland largely unnoticed by the newcomers who flood to this town. It is, for many of the town’s residents, the Leland they don’t know.
Leland Councilman Herbert Barnes wants to change that.
Himself a Leland newcomer, Barnes was elected to the town’s council in 2007. A resident of Magnolia Greens, he was drawn to the area for the same reasons many professionals retire to southeastern North Carolina. “When it was time to retire,” Barnes says, “I wanted a place I could go, enjoy the weather, where there were numerous golf courses.”
By his own admission the former community planner for the city of Cleveland, Ohio, reared in Orlando, Florida, is a golf fanatic with a 26 handicap who is still trying to improve his putt after 29 years on the links. At his home course, he plays 18 holes three times a week. He found some golfing buddies among his neighbors, like himself, who only ventured into old Leland to use the post office on Village Road. When asked where they were from, they were more inclined to answer Magnolia Greens, Waterford or Brunswick Forest, all planned communities located within the town limits. The new Lelanders were more than a little removed from what they perceived to be a small country town and, more importantly, from its first families and its history.
“As we grew, the less we depended on Leland,” Barnes says about himself and his neighbors. Over a cup of coffee one Saturday morning in Two Guys Grille, Barnes waves his large hands around the dining room to indicate the scope of a tastefully planned urban development that has pushed Leland’s southern extremities down the U.S. Highway 17 corridor where Two Guys has established a foothold in this highly visible, architect-designed marketplace plaza, anchored on the opposite end by a Harris Teeter grocery store and flanked by new home sites and professional medical services.
“Because of these places,” Barnes says, “there was even less incentive to go into downtown Leland,” where the flagship grocery stores are a Piggly Wiggly and a Food Lion.
But is that downtown intersection of N.C. Highway 133 really the heart of Leland?
Not according to Niel Brooks, Leland’s Manager of Parks, Recreation & Environmental Programs. Brooks, employed with the town for three years, first as a planner, holds an undergraduate degree from journalism school at the UNC Chapel Hill and a masters of public administration degree from UNC Wilmington. Brooks, like Barnes, is a newcomer with a growing appreciation for old Leland.
One Saturday afternoon in early May, Brooks hosted a group of paddlers from Cape Fear River Watch, who were hand-toting their canoes and kayaks to the landing for a round-trip Saturday afternoon excursion down creeks and rivers to Eagle Island, where the Battleship North Carolina is berthed. In his visor and identifiable royal blue T-shirt, Brooks was the go-to person for the eco-tourists who approached him for guidance on a multitude of topics, from insect repellant to the lay of the land.
Joe Abbate, ornithologist, eco-tour guide and manager of the Cape Fear River Watch Boat House at Greenfield Lake, was among the 50 or more paddlers at Mill Creek that afternoon. Abbate was stoked about the voyage down the historic waterway. “This is where North Carolina’s liquid gold was brought to market,” Abbate says. “These are the old rice canals.”
At the landing was the vestige of an old farm, where tobacco, corn and hogs were cultivated, raised and harvested. Wilmington residents jumping over the river to view a raw and untamed Leland represents a shift that recreation professionals like Abbate and planners like Brooks recognize and value. Sustainable eco-tourism is priceless: Once the word leaches into the mainstream, the eco-tourist will flock to the destination and return again and again, time after time, to the same location.
Town-sponsored events, like the paddle or the familiarization bus tour, The Leland We Don’t Know, are all part of the new paradigm shift in Leland. The bus tour is Barnes’ brainchild, a tour of Leland for newcomers and old timers launched last spring. By all accounts it was a success measured by outcomes.
An unexpected turnout of 80 to 100 people signed on for the first jitney and came out on a soggy Saturday afternoon. Divided into two groups of New Lelanders and Old Lelanders, the two busloads fanned out from Town Hall in opposite directions, leaving 50 people behind on a waiting list. A second trip was held Saturday, June 13. Brooks sees it as an annual event.
A second goal, Brooks says, will be shedding the outworn neighborhood sensibility and building a cohesive sense of community in a rapidly changing town with a well-defined 80-page master plan. In the 2000 census, the Leland population numbered 2,500 residents. With 900 home sites in Magnolia Greens and another 1,000 at Waterford, that number quadrupled to 10,000 by 2007. With the annexation of Brunswick Forest, a few years ago, which is approved for 7,500 home sites, the town of Leland is one of the fastest growing towns in the country. Hard to fathom from a mid-1890s railroad crossing out back of Navassa.
On the hill near the historic intersection of Old Village and Lincoln roads stands what is presumed to be the oldest extant house in the town: an asbestos-shingled yellow bungalow with dormer windows set into its single gabled roofline built in 1874 and clearly added onto over the decades. The house is one of the many sites on the itinerary for the Leland We Don’t Know bus tour.
Historian David Covington, Cape Fear Community College faculty member, is one of the many accredited interpreters who will be on board during the tour to answer questions. So will Councilman Barnes, who says, “Once I was elected I felt as though the people should get to know one another.”
By Marimar McNaughton
Old Leland echoes the town’s history, whispering its secrets — Post Office, Old Mill, Old Village, Old Fayetteville. These relics of a bygone time still hold the place that the founders of this up-and-coming crossroads mapped out on parchment. A vintage roadbed for horse and carriage followed the trajectory of a train line that brought goods to the hamlet established in the late 1800s. A pair of old thoroughfares linked this waterfront village and its currents to the trading post, the steel rail and the hub of commercial trade over the river to Wilmington and through the woods to Fayetteville.
It is the Leland that only a few still hold dear to their hearts, the Leland largely unnoticed by the newcomers who flood to this town. It is, for many of the town’s residents, the Leland they don’t know.
Leland Councilman Herbert Barnes wants to change that.
Himself a Leland newcomer, Barnes was elected to the town’s council in 2007. A resident of Magnolia Greens, he was drawn to the area for the same reasons many professionals retire to southeastern North Carolina. “When it was time to retire,” Barnes says, “I wanted a place I could go, enjoy the weather, where there were numerous golf courses.”
By his own admission the former community planner for the city of Cleveland, Ohio, reared in Orlando, Florida, is a golf fanatic with a 26 handicap who is still trying to improve his putt after 29 years on the links. At his home course, he plays 18 holes three times a week. He found some golfing buddies among his neighbors, like himself, who only ventured into old Leland to use the post office on Village Road. When asked where they were from, they were more inclined to answer Magnolia Greens, Waterford or Brunswick Forest, all planned communities located within the town limits. The new Lelanders were more than a little removed from what they perceived to be a small country town and, more importantly, from its first families and its history.
“As we grew, the less we depended on Leland,” Barnes says about himself and his neighbors. Over a cup of coffee one Saturday morning in Two Guys Grille, Barnes waves his large hands around the dining room to indicate the scope of a tastefully planned urban development that has pushed Leland’s southern extremities down the U.S. Highway 17 corridor where Two Guys has established a foothold in this highly visible, architect-designed marketplace plaza, anchored on the opposite end by a Harris Teeter grocery store and flanked by new home sites and professional medical services.
“Because of these places,” Barnes says, “there was even less incentive to go into downtown Leland,” where the flagship grocery stores are a Piggly Wiggly and a Food Lion.
But is that downtown intersection of N.C. Highway 133 really the heart of Leland?
Not according to Niel Brooks, Leland’s Manager of Parks, Recreation & Environmental Programs. Brooks, employed with the town for three years, first as a planner, holds an undergraduate degree from journalism school at the UNC Chapel Hill and a masters of public administration degree from UNC Wilmington. Brooks, like Barnes, is a newcomer with a growing appreciation for old Leland.
One Saturday afternoon in early May, Brooks hosted a group of paddlers from Cape Fear River Watch, who were hand-toting their canoes and kayaks to the landing for a round-trip Saturday afternoon excursion down creeks and rivers to Eagle Island, where the Battleship North Carolina is berthed. In his visor and identifiable royal blue T-shirt, Brooks was the go-to person for the eco-tourists who approached him for guidance on a multitude of topics, from insect repellant to the lay of the land.
Joe Abbate, ornithologist, eco-tour guide and manager of the Cape Fear River Watch Boat House at Greenfield Lake, was among the 50 or more paddlers at Mill Creek that afternoon. Abbate was stoked about the voyage down the historic waterway. “This is where North Carolina’s liquid gold was brought to market,” Abbate says. “These are the old rice canals.”
At the landing was the vestige of an old farm, where tobacco, corn and hogs were cultivated, raised and harvested. Wilmington residents jumping over the river to view a raw and untamed Leland represents a shift that recreation professionals like Abbate and planners like Brooks recognize and value. Sustainable eco-tourism is priceless: Once the word leaches into the mainstream, the eco-tourist will flock to the destination and return again and again, time after time, to the same location.
Town-sponsored events, like the paddle or the familiarization bus tour, The Leland We Don’t Know, are all part of the new paradigm shift in Leland. The bus tour is Barnes’ brainchild, a tour of Leland for newcomers and old timers launched last spring. By all accounts it was a success measured by outcomes.
An unexpected turnout of 80 to 100 people signed on for the first jitney and came out on a soggy Saturday afternoon. Divided into two groups of New Lelanders and Old Lelanders, the two busloads fanned out from Town Hall in opposite directions, leaving 50 people behind on a waiting list. A second trip was held Saturday, June 13. Brooks sees it as an annual event.
A second goal, Brooks says, will be shedding the outworn neighborhood sensibility and building a cohesive sense of community in a rapidly changing town with a well-defined 80-page master plan. In the 2000 census, the Leland population numbered 2,500 residents. With 900 home sites in Magnolia Greens and another 1,000 at Waterford, that number quadrupled to 10,000 by 2007. With the annexation of Brunswick Forest, a few years ago, which is approved for 7,500 home sites, the town of Leland is one of the fastest growing towns in the country. Hard to fathom from a mid-1890s railroad crossing out back of Navassa.
On the hill near the historic intersection of Old Village and Lincoln roads stands what is presumed to be the oldest extant house in the town: an asbestos-shingled yellow bungalow with dormer windows set into its single gabled roofline built in 1874 and clearly added onto over the decades. The house is one of the many sites on the itinerary for the Leland We Don’t Know bus tour.
Historian David Covington, Cape Fear Community College faculty member, is one of the many accredited interpreters who will be on board during the tour to answer questions. So will Councilman Barnes, who says, “Once I was elected I felt as though the people should get to know one another.”
