E
By Al Slover and Keith Starner
lizabethtown, population 3,583 (2010
census), is the County Seat of Bladen County,
and is located in the Inner Coastal Plain of
southeastern North Carolina. The area was
originally settled by Scottish Highlanders in
the early part of the eighteenth century, when
the nearby Cape Fear River was used as a
major transportation route. Tory Hole Park
is within town limits along the south bank
of the Cape Fear River and was the site of a
1781 Revolutionary War battle, where Whigs
broke Tory Power in Bladen County.
The Town is located on a bluff just south of
the Cape Fear River and is geographically
located between Fayetteville, about 40 miles
to the northwest and Wilmington, about 45
miles to the southeast. The local economy is
based on agriculture and local services, and
the terrain in the area is generally flat except
for areas where streams or rivers have cut
into surrounding sediments.
The resort town of White Lake is seven
miles east of Elizabethtown. White Lake (1
½ miles long by 2 miles wide) is one of the
Carolina Bays, which are shallow elliptical
depressions that can be seen on topographic
maps, aerial photographs, and satellite
imagery. The Bays are oriented in the same
general direction, (northwest-southeast) and
are named, oddly enough, for the Bay trees
found growing in them. Topographic maps
and aerial photographs of the Elizabethtown
area reveal many Carolina Bays in the
vicinity, seen as ovoids (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
USGS topographic map showing
Carolina Bays near White Lake
The origin of the Carolina Bays is still
up for debate. Some of the many theories
(more than 19 different theories exist) of
their formation include the impact of comet
fragments about 13,000 years ago (the most
current thought on the subject), meteor
impact craters (however, no fragments or
gravitational anomalies have ever been found
in the Bays), and the unbelievable theory that
the Bays are “Whale Wallows”, or fish-bed
like depressions created by spawning marine
life. Whatever their origin, there are more
than half a million of them documented on
the Atlantic Coastal Plain as far north as New
Jersey, and as far south as Florida (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Carolina Bays seen from the air
Elizabethtown’s
water
system
has
approximately 58 miles of distribution line
that serves 2,058 connections and supplies a
customer base of more than 3,700 persons.
The system has an 8-inch interconnection
with Bladen County WD (West Bladen).
The average daily water use for the Town is
System Spotlight on Elizabethtown
32
NCRWA.COM |
Spring 2014
feature
Figure 1
