State ferry service ‘connects’ the Crystal Coast to Oriental

North Carolina’s Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry run observes it 50-year anniversary in 2023. The service in a vital link between the riverfront community of Oriental in Pamlico County and the Crystal Coast of Carteret County in North Carolina. 

Since the free state ferry began operating in 1973, the drive from Morehead City to Oriental has been reduced to about 40 miles. Including a 20-minute ferry ride across the Neuse River, it’s just about an hour-and-15-minute journey between the two towns.

 

Oriental is a nice addition to our vacationers’ itinerary, making it an easy daytrip adventure. The laid-back community of Oriental is widely known as the “sailing capital of North Carolina.” It’s strategically situated where the Neuse River opens up into the spacious Pamlico Sound.

 

Oriental has more boats than people. Oriental’s human population bounces around 900, but there are some 3,000 boats parked along the river and up a bunch of creeks that dump into the Neuse.

 

Kenneth Lambert Midyette Sr., 85, a native of Oriental, explained that “each boat serves a different purpose,” and in his case, it’s driven by his passion for fishing.

Kenneth Midyette is in the East Carolina University Athletics Hall of fame as an All-American diver on the championship swim and dive teams from 1956-59.

He’s got a pontoon boat, Ms. Midge, for recreational fishing with friends; a sit-on-top Hobie kayak for casting light tackle on still waters; and the 23-foot cuddy cabin, Wee Chablis, for serious fishing in the sound and on the river. 

From the Wee Chablis, Midyette reeled in his first Atlantic tarpon in 1993, fishing while dang near naked. (It was a pretty big deal. The complete “G-rated” story is available on the town website.) 

Kenneth Midyette is a descendant of Oriental’s founder, Lewis Brason Midyette, who “discovered” this place quite by accident. 

Lew Midyette hailed from Roanoke Island. Although just a teenager in 1872, Midyette was working as a commercial fisherman. He made regular deliveries of fish to markets in New Bern, trading for dry goods. 

One night, a gale forced him to anchor his sailboat in protected waters at the mouth of the Neuse on the northern side of the river. Storytellers claim: “The next morning Lew went ashore and climbed a tree. He was captured by the beautiful landscape and all of the waterfront created by the many creeks.” 

Upon his return home, Lew persuaded family members to relocate to the land he had discovered. 

Their settlement along Smith Creek caught hold, and by 1878 a post office was established for the new fishing village of Smith’s Creek. That name didn’t sit too well with Lew’s wife, Rebecca “Becky” Wise Midyette, however. 

She reportedly found a nameplate that had washed up from an ocean vessel named Oriental. The ship had run aground off Bodie Island in the northern Outer Banks and sank during the Civil War in 1862.

 

The ship was practically brand new – a 218-foot steel steamer built in 1861 by Neafie, Levy & Co. in Philadelphia, Pa. It was designed as a merchant ship to transport sugar from Cuba into the United States, but the vessel was one of the first boats “drafted” to build up President Abraham Lincoln’s Union navy. 

Oriental historian Lou Ostendorff said the vessel “was hastily converted to a troop carrier/cargo ship” and was sailing from New York City to Port Royal in Beaufort County, S.C. Miraculously, all passengers and crew were rescued.

 

The wreck lies about 100 yards offshore at a depth of about 20 feet directly across from the Pea Island Visitor Center. 

Becky Midyette got her way. Smith’s Creek became Oriental in 1886. There’s so much more to learn about this place….