The Hart Access, located adjacent the Highway 704 bridge at the Dan River crossing is the “first” station on the Dan River Trail, a series of five public access sites in Stokes County and five in Rockingham County. Many of these sites are at bridges; all are accessible by road. At each there is a parking area and either a concrete boat ramp or a flight or two of steps leading from the parking area to the river. So far as feasible, these access sites are placed so as to provide day trips of convenient length by paddlers.
The initiative for these access sites began in Stokes County and spread to Rockingham with the encouragement and active participation of the Northwest Piedmont Council of Governments, particularly Joe C. Matthews. Floyd Rich was instrumental in making contacts, and his endless work on these sites and “Wildflowers of the Sauratown Mountains”.
About 2 ½ hours of river time from the Hart Access appears “Lunch-Stop Rapid”. Its most memorable feature is a huge rock on the left bank into which the full force of the river is directed so that it is undercut and therefore hazardous. After sweeping past the rock in a two foot drop, the river enters a quiet eddy. Some of the best rapids of this part of the river are located between Lunch-Stop Rapid and the Dan River’s intersection with Highway 89. They occur very close together, one after another. Some of them are narrow, some shallow, some challenging and all of them interesting.
A mile below the Hart Access, the river has cut a broad flood plain which continues for nearly two miles, after which Peters Creek, a major tributary enters river left.
Peters Creek is a considerable stream. It rises on the eastern flank of Pikes Mountain in Virginia for at least eight winding miles, past the community of Peters Creek on Highway 103 and, just inside North Carolina, the community of Aarons Corner. Peters Creek is crossed by NC 704 near the community of Harts Store. It was at Peters Creek, on the border of Stokes County, that William Byrd’s party in 1728 ceased its work and turned back eastward. The last tree which the surveyors marked was a red oak growing on the bank.
William Byrd and the Name Dan
“This being Sunday,” writes William Byrd in his Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, “we gave God thanks for protecting and sustaining us thus far by Divine Bounty.” From here Byrd’s party could see mountains (probably the Blue Ridge rather than the Sauratown), extending “from the NE by the West to the SE.” The Sauratown would have been almost due south.
William Byrd had a great deal to do directly with the naming of the Dan River, but there is disagreement over the source of the name. Some claim that the Indians’ name for the Dan River was “Moratock”. Did Byrd know the name Moratock? None of his reports provide any indication. Some say the river was named for “Danapaha”, a Saura Chief. Some refer to “Danaho”, “Danapaugh”. The name in still another spelling (Donnaha) designates a town on the Yadkin River in northwest Forsyth County, NC.
Following the confluence with Peters Creek one can occasionally glimpse the peaks and ridges of the Sauratown Mountains, some of which are within the boundaries of Hanging Rock State Park. From west to east, these peaks are named:
Eatons Mountain
Ruben Mountain
Huckleberry Ridge
Moore’s Knob
Cooks Wall Mountain
Cole Gap Mountain
Hanging Rock
Flat Shoal Mountain
Over 400,000 people visit Hanging Rock State Park each year spending many contented hours in the park in all seasons hiking, camping, boating, swimming, rock climbing, trail building and simply hanging out with the chipmunks, raccoons and tall trees. The park has over 25 miles of trails, group and family campgrounds, canoe and rowboat rentals, historic bath-house, naturalist program, vacation cabins and some remarkable special events.
This is the most popular section of the river for fishing, sun-bathing, picnicking and tubing. There are places where people drive not only to the river but even to the gravel bars with their pick-up trucks. There are also places where four-wheelers have made tracks to the river and along the banks, even fording the river.
The river at Clements Ford is shallow, a continuation of the shoals above the access. Immediately below the bridge Big Creek enters river right. It does not influence the direction of the river, which continues its essentially southerly flow for another 1.5 miles. Somewhere below the confluence, possibly near an occasional tributary river right, some 1600 feet below the bridge, was Matthew Moore’s Ford, site of which is now unknown. Moore’s house on river right, built in 1786, is now a private home.
One mile below the bridge North Double Creek enters river right. Presumably it is so named because South Double Creek enters 0.5 miles downstream, also on river right and on the same broad flood plain, which promptly disappears. The river makes a sharp swing left and starts a half-mile flow to the east. Geology no doubt determines this dramatic change of direction; the right bank is a steep rocky cliff. A thousand feet later Cascade Creek flows in from the right. This creek, rising in Hanging Rock State Park, has three branches. The longest one, rising near the park’s Family Campground, plunges down a steep gorge behind the Family Cabins and, joined by the flow from Hanging Rock Lake, forms Upper Cascade Falls. It passes under Hall Road and, after being joined by the two other branches, leaps over Lower Cascade Falls. Its fury spent, it docilely parallels Moore’s Spring Road until, arriving at Moore’s Spring, it passes through the campground and joins the Dan River.
Moore’s, a natural spring, was discovered in 1866. It was the center of a local health resort from about 1900 until the 1920’s. The water continues to flow beneath an historic gazebo on the property.
For years following its demise as a resort, Moore’s Spring functioned as a private campground, loosely supervised. It has now been acquired by the North Carolina Cooperative Extension and is operated as Sertoma 4-H Educational Center, open to the public. Just downstream from the campground the river turns northeasterly, then northerly, then north of northeast for more than a mile. In this section there is a broad flood plain on the left, with gravel and sand bars. Emeralds have found on some of these gravel and sand bars.
Demon Rock (the name was “Denman’s” in 1800 but became corrupted over the years) is the 60-foot-high rock cliff on river right. Just below Demon Rock, the border of Hanging Rock State Park is marked by a tiny sign not over 5” across.
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