Wilkes: grants, Yadkin River, airport

September 16, 2020

Wilkes County Grant #1678 – Along The River’s Edge

Wilkes County Grant #1678 (NC Archives file #1517-1/2) is 640 acres to John Brown who is a trustee for Hugh Montgomery who was deceased. The land was entered (or formally requested from the state) on 12/11/1778. It was surveyed in 1797 and issued to John Brown on 12/5/1798. Shown below, it’s rotated so that north is up.

I overlaid the grant's 1797 survey on today's map. This is located on the south side of the Yadkin River and includes the western portion of Wilkes Community College. It also includes the YMCA. It was easy to pinpoint the location of this property because the grant mentions a corner being at the mouth of Moravian Creek. Since the creek flows into the Yadkin River at the same location today that it did over 220 years ago, we know where the property is.

The straight road along Lowe’s Park At Rivers Edge was the runway for the second Wilkes County Airport from about 1963 to 1990. (The first airport was 1.5 miles to the northeast near Wilkes Regional Medical Center.)

Notice the dotted line in the grant that represents the old wagon road. That follows the same path as Hwy 268. And Hwy 421 crosses the Yadkin at a point where there was an island in the river. That means it was a shallow section of the river that made a good crossing location which we still use today. Originally it might have been shallow enough for a wagon or perhaps there was a ferry. Today there is a modern bridge.

The metes and bounds say that one of the eastern points of the property was at the "Stone Quarry". This is near where the Daniel Hall building is at WCC, just west of The Walker Center. And there was a school house at the western edge of the property which is behind where the Little Market Basket convenience store is today.

This is the location on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1393854,-81.1959538,15.56z?hl=en.

Comments? jason@webjmd.com