US Route 70 road trip swings through western N.C.

Continuing the journey westward on US Route 70 through North Carolina in observance of the highway’s centennial celebration this fall, motorists may want to pause in Sedalia in Guilford County and visit the Charlotte Eugenia Hawkins Brown Museum.

The facility opened in 1987 as North Carolina’s first state historic site honoring its African-American heritage.

 

Lottie Hawkins started a preparatory school here in 1902 for African-Americans, and it continued to operate through 1971.

 

Its preservation as a historic site was ensured in 1982, through fundraising efforts led by Maria Hawkins Cole, an alumna (wife of Nat King Cole and mother of Natalie Cole).

 

Spencer in Rowan County (near Salisbury) is the home of the North Carolina Transportation Museum, which interprets all forms of transportation history from dugout canoes to airliners.

It’s located on the property of Southern Railway’s Spencer Shops and features the largest collection of rail relics in the Carolinas. 

The museum is operated by the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

 

Visitors to Burke County, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, may want to explore the small community of Valdese, which is Italian for “Valley of Our Lord.” 

The town was formed in 1893 by a handful of farming families (a sect known as the Waldenses or Waldensians) who came from northern Italy near France to exercise their religious freedom.

 

The Morganton Herald sent out a welcome message, stating: “This Waldensian Colony, the first foreign settlement in the state of any importance since the Moravian settlement at Salem (1766), is we hope the precursor of many such movements.”

Burke County soil did not prove to be fertile ground for agriculture. Other industrial pursuits proved more successful – namely textiles and bakeries.

 

Leading into Asheville in Buncombe County, US Route 70 is known as the “Tunnell Road” because motorists travel smack-dab through Beaucatcher Mountain. The 750-foot-long tunnel opened in 1929.

 

Beaucatcher Mountain was named in jest in the mid-1800s by James Washington Patton, a successful Asheville merchant. He observed his sister-in-law, Charlotte Kerry of Charleston, S.C., strolling the mountainside with her beau, seeking a bit of privacy.

Asheville author Thomas Wolfe’s 1929 novel “Look Homeward, Angel” referenced Beaucatcher Mountain…and at the very tip-top of the mountain is Helen’s Bridge leading to Zealandia Castle. The whole place is “ultra-haunted,” locals say.

 

Asheville is also the site of the majestic Biltmore Estate, built for the Vanderbilt family as a palatial 180,000-square-foot home, which is now a western North Carolina landmark.

 

Approaching Tennessee, Hot Springs in Madison County, with its natural mineral water in excess of 100 degrees, provides visitors with therapeutic relief for whatever ails them.

 

Hot Springs is known for outdoor recreation. The Appalachian Trail runs through the downtown and climbs the mountains on either side of the French Broad River. Rafting, kayaking, hiking and mountain biking opportunities abound.

Skipping into Tennessee, travelers may want to visit Sparta in White County, about halfway between Knoxville and Nashville.

Sparta is “Bluegrass USA,” the hometown of several bluegrass music legends. The most notable native son was Lester Flatt, a vocalist, guitarist and mandolinist. 

He was best known for his collaboration with banjo picker Earl Scruggs of Flint Hill in Cleveland County, N.C.

 

Performing as Flatt and Scruggs, the duo was joined by the Foggy Mountain Boys, resulting in one of the most successful bands in bluegrass music history, spanning approximately 20 years.

White County offers more caves, waterfalls and scenic overlooks per square mile than anywhere else in the United States. 

With more than 100 miles of paddleable river water, including “world-class whitewater and serene flat water,” White County is an “adventure tourism destination.”

Hear ye: US Route 70 deserves some respect

US Route 66 shouldn’t get to have all the fun. 

US Route 70 deserves some love as well.

While national publicity has been directed toward the revitalization of a “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” campaign, it’s important to note that both highways are observing their 100-year anniversary this year.

 

Each route was among the original “numbered-U.S. highways” that were authorized on Nov. 11, 1926, by the newly established U.S. Highway System. 

(The map showing US Route 70 is shown below.)

 

Kudos to the I-42/US 70 Corridor Commission for adopting a formal Resolution of Appreciation on Sept. 22, recognizing the historical significance of US Route 70 as one of the nation’s longest and scenic east-west transcontinental highways.

The I-42/US 70 Corridor Commission is a public/private partnership that was founded 20 years ago (in 2006) by key government and business leaders from five counties (Carteret, Craven, Johnston, Lenoir and Wayne) to advocate for the conversion of the 140-mile corridor from Raleigh to Morehead City into interstate-quality freeway.

 

The commission’s executive director Durwood Stephenson said: “Our organization wanted to be among the first to go on record in support of celebrating US Route 70’s centennial year, because the eastern terminus of the highway is in our own backyard – in Atlantic, an historic fishing village in the Down East section of Carteret County.”

“It’s an opportunity to reflect on US Route 70’s rich heritage and scenic beauty, while also showcasing the improvements and upgrades that are propelling us forward as we transition to I-42.” (Presently, nearly 32 miles are officially signed as I-42.)

 

Traveling the full length of US Route 70, about 2,385 miles from Atlantic in Carteret County to Globe, Ariz., is a “bucket-list adventure” for many travelers during the highway’s centennial year.

 

Sources say that “US Route 70 is well known amongst motorcycle and bicycle enthusiasts as the preferred transcontinental highway.”

The North Carolina portion of US Route 70 drapes across the breadth of the state, from east to west, like a 488-mile jeweled necklace.

Traveling west from Atlantic, motorists quickly encounter a stretch of US Route 70 that is contained within the “Outer Banks National Scenic Byway” and includes the villages of Sea Level, Masontown, Stacy, Davis, Williston, Smyrna, Otway and Bettie. 

(Perhaps this is the only section of the entire US Route 70 corridor that is part of the National Scenic Byway network.)

 

We’re all fairly familiar with the “US Route 70 highlights” that exist between Beaufort and Clayton in Johnston County, but continuing eastward into Raleigh, known as the “City of Oaks,” motorists will discover two functioning carousels. 

One is at Pullen Park (shown above) near the North Carolina State University campus. The other is at John Chavis Memorial Park (shown below) near Shaw University.

 

Moving on, Durham is the site of Bennett Place, an old farmhouse that was the location of “the largest surrender of Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.”

 

It is here that Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Confederate Gen. Joseph Eggleston Johnston peacefully hammered out the terms of surrender. 

The Confederate soldiers formally laid down their arms on April 26, 1865, ending the war for 89,270 Rebel troops who were still fighting in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

The Sarah P. Duke Gardens, on the Duke University campus in Durham, is ranked as one of the top 10 public gardens in the country.

 

Another top attraction is the Duke Lemur Center, which is a world leader in the study, care and protection of lemurs – considered to be the world’s most threatened group of mammals. 

More than 200 lemurs live within the center, one of the most diverse collections of lemurs found outside their native Madagascar.

Lima beans came ashore on America’s West Coast

Big juicy lima beans have been on America’s vegetable plate for nearly 160 years. Tasty and plump, these beans were introduced to the New World in the late 1860s, arriving in Santa Barbara, Calif., on a ship from South America.

 

Local farmer Robert McAlister took 10 pounds of the beans off the incoming vessel when it docked and planted seeds in his garden. 

The yield was so successful that ranchers from all over the fertile Oxnard Plain came to see the new bean. McAlister was generous with the seed, and many other plots were sown with equally good results.

 

Horticulturist Henry Fish began experimenting with lima beans on his ranch in nearby Carpinteria, Calif. The plantings thrived due to the rich soil and foggy summers, and the Henry Fish Seed Company was born.

Fish wrote to several seedsmen who came to examine his beans. In 1908, the W. Atlee Burpee Company (Burpee Seeds) offered the best price. 

The company had been formed in 1878 by Washington Atlee Burpee of Philadelphia, Pa. He dropped out of medical school at age 18 to breed and sell farm animals as well as seed products.

 

By 1888, the family’s Fordhook Farm in Doylestown, Pa., was transformed into an experimental research station to test and evaluate new varieties of vegetables and flowers as well as produce seeds.

 

One of Burpee’s most famous items was his lima beans, which he named as Fordhooks.

 

Atlee Burpee seized on a new retail idea, the mail-order catalog. Light and compact, seeds were perfectly suited for postal deliveries to rural America.

Since most of Atlee Burpee’s customers were farmers rather than home gardeners, he named his catalog “Burpee’s Farm Annual.” Soon, Atlee Burpee was running the world’s fastest-growing mail-order seed company.

 

He soon extended distribution to include “market gardeners, florists, farmers’ clubs and extension service agents.” Burpee personally wrote most of the copy for his catalogs. Burpee set up an advertising department and offered cash prizes for the best advertisements to promote “Burpee Seeds Grow.”

The 1891 catalog was the first to feature engravings made from photographs, and this changed the whole industry, as hand-drawn illustrations in catalogs disappeared. 

In another break with tradition, Burpee printed testimonial letters from growers.

Writing for NPR, journalist D. Cameron Lawrence of Louisville, Ky., said lima beans were on her “childhood list of despised foods – bulbous, starchy and bland…green lumps staring back from the school cafeteria tray.”

Now, as a grown-up, she said: “Limas are…often, the star of a meal. They’re easy to fix with just a bit of olive oil, margarine or butter, salt and pepper. I like their heft as a side dish, meaty little bundles that complement lighter fare.”

 

“These little beans are nutrition powerhouses, packing protein, fiber, iron, manganese, folate, thiamin, potassium and other nutrients into a modest calorie count, with just a speck of fat and no cholesterol,” Lawrence wrote.

 

“Fordhooks are large and pale green. Baby limas are not immature Fordhooks but a separate variety that are smaller, less starchy and more delicate tasting.” In fact, baby lima beans are about half the Fordhooks’ size.

 

“Other varieties come in many shades besides the common cream or green color, including red, purple, brown, black and the speckled ones,” Lawrence said. “Many of these, like the festive Christmas lima, are heirloom varieties. The Christmas bean is cream-colored with maroon mottling and has a flavor reminiscent of chestnuts.”

 

We just missed it. The Pinson (Ala.) Butterbean Days, a big two-day event (near Birmingham), was the first weekend in October.

 

But, mark your calendar, National Lima Bean Day is coming up on April 20.