Zebulon - roadside attractions, historic gristmills, merry go rounds, and site of school integration

We went to Zebulon to see the giant fiberglass cat, once used to promote a Mercury car dealership in town. It is one of only two fiberglass cougars to have been built in 1972, with the other going to Washington DC. The company that built the cougars is the same that was building fiberglass structures for the Walt Disney theme parks at the time.

But we were quite taken by this little municipal park.

 

After visiting, we learned that this park is the site of the Zebulon Little River Dam and Moore’s Mill. What you see in these pictures are the remains of a dam that was damaged in 2016 as a result of floodwater from Hurricane Matthew.

The dam was built in about 1870 and marks the site of Moore’s mill – a commercial resource for the towns of Zebulon, Wakefield, and Lizard Lick.

William C. Moore purchased 55 acres in 1868. The purchase included an existing grist mill and sawmill, previously owned by A.J. Foster. The mill stood 28x34’ and had one pair of mill stones. It was able to mill 200 bushels of corn a year, and 400-500 bushels of wheat.

The mill had an indoor merry-go-round with 4 seats that was water-powered.

Between 1915-1920, the mill was used to provide electricity to the town on Fridays and Saturdays, eventually contributing to power that supplied the 36 street lights in Zebulon.

 

The mill served as the local post office until an actual post office building was built in Wakefield in 1999.

Moore died in 1913 and the mill was sold. Dave Privette was the last operator of the mill. He hauled sand to the riverbank, creating a recreation area below the dam. It was called “Dave’s Beach.”

In 1923, Dave deeded the land where the mill stood to Zebulon. Locals recall swimming below the dam, and, black mussels were common (as were eels).

Despite the importance of the mill in the 19th century, as a town, Zebulon is a 20^th century development. Prior to 1907, Zebulon consisted of a one-room school and just three houses. The town flourished in 1903, when plans to build the Raleigh-Pamlico Sound Railway began. When the final route of the railroad were announced, investors Edgar B. Barbee and Falconer B. Arendell founded the Zebulon Company for land speculation and development. The town itself was incorporated in 1907 with a population of 483. Population is now over 5,600.

A major stimulus for the growth of Zebulon was a tobacco market that opened in 1907; the market was a considerably employer in town until the Stock Market crash of 1929.

The town is named after a Confederate officer turned governor turned state Senator, Zebulon B. Vance. After Vance’s parole post-Civil War, he practiced law. Among his clients was accused murder, Tom Dula – also known in song as Tom Dooley.

Today, Zebulon is part of the Research Triangle’s greater metropolitan area. The largest employer is GlaxoSmithKline, which employs nearly 25% of the town. It is home to a minor league baseball team (the Carolina Mudcats).

Zebulon was a key location in the integration of public schools. In 1969 -- 15 years after Brown V. Board -- Zebulon was set to integrate its two main schools the following spring. However, none of the African-American teachers or administrators were to be given contracts. The students walked the 7 miles to the white school in Zebulon to protest the hiring decisions.

All seniors who participated in the walk-out were barred from graduating in 1969 -- for disobedience and truancy. In 2017, a former African-American teacher from the school was living through the last few months of a terminal diagnosis and wanted to find one project to help someone; she decided to lobby for these diplomas to be awarded. At the time, students were told that in the move from one building to another, their records "blew off the truck." Nearly 50 years later, when this former teacher started asking questions, she noted that “all these years later, they decided that the records blew back on the truck." All graduates from 1969 were awarded their high school diplomas later that spring (2018).

The schools in this county have actually continued a trend of progressive educational decisions. Schools are currently integrated based on family income levels, and the district launched a series of public charter schools that require a socio-economic mix of students, requiring that no public school have more than 40% low-income students. The county also was one of the first in the country to start year-round classrooms in elementary and middle school. After 15 years of success with these initiatives, political pressures have more recently started a trend towards re-segregating schools based on geographic location of county residents.