As a young boy I can remember Dad bringing home random arrowheads and stone rock Indian artifacts from out on the range. While I never witnessed one of his lucky chance finds, I was with him once when he pointed to another piece of western history — ghostlike narrow tracks through dry hard packed alkali ground. From out of nowhere and scattered tumbleweed these parallel impressions were the dirt markings of the old Butterfield Stagecoach he explained. This seemed so incredulous to me that day and I retained the memory.

That was 60 years ago and even at the time the trail remnants would have been dated by a century. Local knowledge. I categorized his factoid as legend or folklore.

Present day and watching an old James Stewart/John Wayne cowboy western re-run (1962 and available on streaming media), I spied a stage. This movie prop rekindled my early intrigue, for barely legible on the side of the coach roof in faint paint was Butterfield.

This prompted a deep dive [web] search. There was in fact a stagecoach express so described: The Butterfield Overland Mail Company. Accordingly, it operated between St. Louis and San Francisco funded by a 4 year U.S. Postal Department contract. Recalling the glimpse of rutted arid San Joaquin Valley tracks gives one pause; it would have been a rough tough dusty ordeal and how far we’ve come…

Full circle. Dad was onto something! Excepting that reproduced historical map creations are not necessarily precision navigation and that evidential proof has been obliterated by agricultural progress the mapped area of trail discovery does happen to highlight the territory of my one time visit. I like to think that Dad was spot on.

A 1971 USDA historical aerial photo from UNC Chapel Hill libraries showing the neighborhood now known as Charleston Woods. Before the houses were built, Charleston Woods was actual woods! The point location was determined by taking angles from the Bond Lake Dam (under construction), the White Oak Creek and a transmission line which transits. It is a general estimate.

There are also aerial photographs of the county from 1959 and 1938 that also show pine and hardwoods here. The farmland fields that are present in these images are limited to low flat areas of Crabtree Creek; what is now Bond Park Baseball Diamonds 5 & 6 and the Prestonwood Soccer Complex northward. The survey depicts rail tracks and 2 public roads that precede these dates — Highhouse Rd. and Old Apex Rd. None of the streets that we enjoy today had been built yet. The actual full resolution photo file taken on February 24, 1971 can be retrieved easily from here.

After measuring the [29″] diameter of a particularly large Loblolly Pine in the backyard it can be assumed that the area has not been recently cultivated. A 36″ tree is considered mature and that size equates to about 150 years age. There have been people in the area since before the Civil War so it is of course possible that the area had been logged, farmed, or burned. The 1938 shows faint trace remnants of bare dirt that may have been encroaching trails. These are no longer noticeable in subsequent surveys.

Developers had there way made progress and this area has forever lost its out in the sticks nature. It would have been easier to clear cut but to their credit many of the trees were spared.

Update: (according to this source) Before the first Europeans set foot on the [North Carolina] Piedmont Plateau, the land was 99.5% covered by Old Growth forest (oaks, maples, pines, hickories, poplar and tulip poplar, persimmon, elm, hemlock, beech, magnolia, cedar, ash, willow). Some scholars write that the Old Growth was harvested entirely by 1750. All agree that these magnificent trees had been taken down by the start of the Revolutionary War in 1776. When the Old Growth was gone, they started in on the secondary growth. This greatly over-simplified history explains the proliferation of fast-growing pine trees common today.