A Black Water Weekend on the Lumber River

**An article from the Carolina Paddler “Different Waters” series**

Written by Jim Butler. Photos by Jim Butler, Rich Nathan, and John Butler

The Lumber

-I wanted to fit in one last overnight river trip before the holiday season and cold weather set in. I’m not sure how I got the Lumber River in my head. Alton Chewning had put me in touch with Mitch Lloyd, President of the Lumber River Canoe Club, earlier in the year when I was researching a Black River trip. A few times every week I thumb through Paul Ferguson’s “Paddling Eastern North Carolina” guidebook. Maybe the Lumber River caught my eye as I leafed through the pages.

In September, I spent a week on St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, one of the original eight National Wild and Scenic Rivers. I made up my mind reading the Lumber River is the only blackwater river in North Carolina to be designated as a National Wild and Scenic River by the Department of Interior.

Trip Background

My neighbor and good friend, Rich Nathan and my son, John joined me on the trip. John and I paddled my Old Town Camper canoe and Rich paddled his 12 ft. Eddyline Caribbean kayak. The three of us have done a couple of overnight trips already this year: the Neuse in May and the Black in September. We know the drill well.

I read the Lumber River sections 14 and 15 of Paul’s book very carefully. The trip would start at Boardman in North Carolina and end a few miles into South Carolina. Paul mentions, “alligator and black bear are sometimes seen.” He notes newly fallen trees are common in the NC part of the trip. In the description of section 14, Paul mentions KC Bullard, owner/operator of Lumber River Canoe Rental. I called KC and he said hurricanes had wiped out his rental business, but he still provides shuttle services. KC thought we might have to do several portages around downed trees in the SC section. He’s lived near the Lumber his whole life and has never heard of any trouble with ‘gators or bears.

By historical standards, the water level was going to be low for our trip.

Day 1 – November 10^th, 2024 Getting on the River

We arrived at the put in at Lumber River State Park Princess Ann Access: 2819 Princess Ann Road, Orrum, NC 28369 Coordinates: 34.390023, -79.00222 There was no one at the office but we filled out a “trip report” form that would allow us to leave a car parked there overnight.

Rich, Jim and John at Princess Ann access.

On the park website, fishing is promoted as one of the activities – https://www.ncparks.gov/state-parks/lumber-river-state-park/activities. An estimated 39,556 anglers spent an estimated 95,663 hours fishing the Lumber River during calendar year 2022. The angling effort was greatest for “anything that bites”. The estimated overall catch was 51,020 fish. Bluegill were the most frequently caught fish, followed by Largemouth Bass and Redear Sunfish. At the boat landing there were numerous fish consumption warning signs. A fish consumption advisory for largemouth bass and bowfin was issued in October 1994 for the entire Lumber River Basin due to elevated mercury levels in fish.

The Lumber River Basin is considered to have four different watersheds. They are the Lumber River, the Waccamaw, the headwaters of the Little Pee Dee and the coastal Shallotte/Lockwoods Folly rivers. The Shallotte River drains water from the Green Swamp and empties directly into the Atlantic Ocean. Lockwood Folly dumps into the Intracoastal Waterway.

The boat landing is very accessible. We dropped off gear leaving John to watch things and then drove to the takeout spot at Rice Field Cove Landing in SC. Coordinates: 34.22266700, -79.13064300 We left my car there and drove back to Lumber River State Park.

From the boat landing you can see how special the river is. We put in at 11:45.

We wanted to camp for the night a few miles past Fair Bluff which meant we had to cover 12-13 miles before it started to get dark around 5pm. Mike Lyle of the Lumber River Canoe Club had advised us to paddle hard and so we did. It is a beautiful stretch of water. Loads of cypress trees loaded with Spanish moss. There was almost no current.

About an hour into the trip we saw a school bus along the River. Must be an interesting story behind this.

At this point I realized I had left my 2 fishing poles at the boat landing where we put in. I am an avid fisherman and I spend most moments wetting a line when I am not paddling. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle this problem.

We got to Fair Bluff (10.5 miles) at 2:45PM. I thought I would walk around town and see if I could pay someone to fetch my rods and bring them back to us. I had forgotten reading downtown Fair Bluff was being bulldozed to make room for a park.

Downtown Fairbluff after Hurricane Matthew. River landing is on frame left. -photo courtesy Nelson Aerial Productions.

When Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina in 2016, every business on Main Street was underwater. A few had reopened in 2018 when Hurricane Florence brought more flood damage. With two floods in just two years, none of those businesses returned after Florence.

Billy Hammond, mayor of Fair Bluff, stands beside the town’s flag-lined Main Street. “We have a hard road ahead of us to recover and come back,” he said. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue

Mayor Billy Hammond and other town leaders ultimately came up with a dramatic plan to address the issue: build a whole new downtown-style commercial district a few blocks up the street on higher ground. It means saying farewell to a century of the Columbus County town’s history, but it is likely the only option to bring businesses back to town.

People are ready for it to go,” Hammond said. “They said at one time they hated to see it go, but now it’s getting to be at the point where it is getting to be rundown and getting to be an eyesore.” The new business district will be called Uptown Fair Bluff. There’s room for 16 businesses in a two-story brick building fronting Main Street. It’s nearing completion and will welcome its first tenants in 2024. The hope is to bring businesses back to a Main Street that had dwindled to a single restaurant, a gas station, a used car lot and a Dollar General.

Finding someone to help me with my errand was going to be tougher than I thought. I walked to the nearest business that was open, which was a gas station. Turns out it was run by some folks from Yemen. My mind started spinning. How did a Yemeni family end up in Fair Bluff, NC? I didn’t have time to go down that rabbit hole. I asked the man behind the counter if he had any relatives that wanted to make some quick money. He told me to call “Mike” and gave me his number. I rang up Mike and our conversation lasted less than a minute. He was not interested in talking with a stranger on the phone who had a business opportunity for him.

At this point I was startled to see my son John standing near me. He had followed me to see if he could help. We stood outside the gas station looking for prospects. Met Billy, who was standing at the side of station. I asked Billy if his friend, Willard, who was sitting nearby in his car, was interested in running an errand up to the Princess Anne put-in. They both scratched their heads wondering where in the world I was talking about. I found this interesting since it was less than 10 miles away. They had a brief chat and announced they were “not interested”.

John and I stood around chatting with them. Billy and Willard hang out at the gas station for “something to do.” Suddenly, out of the blue, the tide turned. Willard told us he would be willing to go to Princess Anne if we joined him. John and I were puzzled but we got in and the four of us drove off. Ten minutes later we were at the park and found my rods.

This was our “Blue Highways” moment of the trip, the moment of serendipity when your life crosses with a local person. As we drove, we explained our canoe trip plans to Billy and Willard. I made the mistake of asking about ‘gators and they said they no longer fish the Lumber River for fearing of getting attacked by gators. When we told them we planned on camping on a sandbar they said they expected to read about us in the newspaper. Not exactly an encouraging discussion.

We said our goodbyes to Billy and Willard and rejoined Rich at the boat landing who had had his hands full while we were gone. (We didn’t have time to check how many calendars were in the gas station.) A family with a large boat had come to the boat landing and Rich was forced to move both the canoe and kayak by himself. The owner of the boat asked Rich about the conditions on the river. Rich advised him that the water was very low. The boat family was not to be deterred. They put in and promptly got stuck. After lots of motor revving they unstuck and returned to the boat landing.

We got back on the river around 3:30 but were now pressed for time. We wanted to be on a sandbar by 4:30 so again we paddled hard. We paddled 2-3 miles and saw numerous sandbars. We settled on one around 4:30 and immediately set up camp.

For dinner, John and I had Neuske’s smoked chicken breasts with grilled peppers. We put our cooler in the canoe to keep it away from animals. We heard very few animal noises during the night but a loud train awakened us after midnight.

Day 2 – November 11^th, 202

We awoke to a slight drizzle that steadily grew stronger. I fished from shore with only a small sunfish to show for my efforts. The fishing was disappointing with only the single sunfish caught the entire trip. Breakfast was hashbrowns and peppers without the anticipated fish filets. My body mercury level is probably better without the fish.

The rain eased up and we got on the river around 9:45. The River continued to get wider and wider. We were quite relieved that we didn’t run into any downed trees. We stopped several times for snack breaks on sandbars. John waded in but we were leery of gators so no swimming on this stretch. We didn’t see any gator or bears but we did see loads of belted kingfishers.

We missed the concrete SC border marker at milepost 3.7 though there was an interesting sign that said Fair Bluff and pointed upstream. At mile 4.7, Griffins Landing is accessible via a small canal. We never saw an offshoot that looked passable.

The Fair Bluff to Rice Field Cover Landing is a nice stretch with easy paddling. We were expecting tougher conditions.

After 14 miles of paddling, we arrived at the Rice Field Cove Landing around 2:30pm. At the landing there were even stricter fish consumption signs from the state of SC warning not to eat any fish of any kind. We forgot our usual take-out group photo.

At this point the Lumber joins the Little Pee Dee and the river downstream is called the Little Pee Dee. The rivers and names for a larger basin designation can differ between state and federal agencies. This region is called the Pee Dee Basin or Lower Pee Dee Basin by the USGS.

I am accused of having a “recency bias” but I think this has been my favorite Carolina paddle trip so far, which begs the question “why?”. There is very little development. We saw maybe a dozen homes/shacks the entire trip. The only boat we saw the entire trip was the family at Fair Bluffs. Other than Fair Bluff, we saw 2 people in 2 days – a fisherman on shore and a person standing under a bridge, perhaps a temporary resident. The cypress trees draped with Spanish moss make for great scenery. The put-in and take-out spots are very accessible. On day two there are numerous sandbars making camping very easy. No real downsides other than mercury levels in fish and perhaps risky swimming. Highly recommend this stretch of water.