Fallon Park - a long, fine necklace in Raleigh’s greenway jewels

 Fallon Park, just northeast of Five Points, and sloping with its long narrow shape down to Crabtree Creek at Anderson Drive, is a long necklace in Raleigh’s park jewels. The remains of a small mill structure lend even more interest to a wonderful rockfall along the creek that defines the park.  Fallon Creek is short : its headwaters gather right in the front yards of the very well appointed houses along White Oak Road off Anderson Drive.  The long skinny park has an unpaved path that is heavily used by joggers, walkers and doggers.  I never go on the weekend, but I have such fond memories of going there on weekday afternoons with my small children, chasing crawfish in the rockpools and climbing around the old mill structure.  It is a clean, rock-filled creek with a wide range of trees and plants arranged around its slopes.  There are small grass meadows at the top and bottom.  It serves a surrounding community that maintains rich, semi-organic plantings in its large yards, and it drains steep wooded slopes with older houses and little construction.  The creek’s quality reflects all of that.

Rockpools where Lily and Dori and I fished many times.

Rockfall and brick mill structure.

Fallon Park photo tour

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I posted at Raleigh Rambles about the Carolina Farm Stewardship’s  farm tour.  It was a fun couple of drives, and we saw plenty of nature to go along with the agriculture, as pictured below.

Above, a native plant area at the Piedmont Biofuel Lab Farm.  Below a large bird, perhaps a raven , that swooped down toward the highway for some time in front of us.  I suppose it’s probably a vulture, but it certainly didn’t act like one.

Crabtree Creek Floods The Middle Creek Greenway

     After Tropical Storm Hannah came through on Saturday, September 6, 2008, Crabtree Creek flooded the intersection of Hodges Road and Atlantic Avenue and also several sections of the Middle Creek portion of the Raleigh greenway.

 

above is the greenway underpass below Atlantic Ave.  Below is the same view 9/6/08.

This is the first time the greenway has flooded since October 2007 by my count.

creek levels post on Pecans & Mistletoe

photo album of Crabtree flooding after Hannah

 

Fletcher Park water feeds Pigeon House Creek

There is not a lot to update on the earlier post about Fletcher Park’s new water park, which remains in a distinctly unlovely stage of construction, but this project is interesting from several angles and seems worth another look.  The large cavities being excavated from the red clay are designed to hold the water headed down to Pigeon House Creek, which is the long-suffering waterway that parallels Capital Boulevard as it flows north toward its intersection with Crabtree Creek at Raleigh Swamp.  What look like huge pits will allow the water to deposit sediment and be filtered by plant activity before flowing on down the hill.

      A nice description of the benefits, which include hopes for “A new ecosystem for this area of the park [with] butterflies, dragonflies, and frogs, among other animal species,  “  can be found at The Raleigh Connoiseur.  But that post was in May, and the plan was for the water garden to be finished soon after.  But there it sits.  The upper pool shown below will cascade or slide down to the larger lower pool.

      This site was a Methodist orphanage, built in 1900 and still operating well into my lifetime.  The City purchased the property in 1982 and named the park for A.J. Fletcher’s recreation-loving son.  Fred Fletcher was inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame in 2007.

     The outlet seen above is the water’s exit toward Pigeon House Creek.  From this point the water dives underground and is piped under the railroad line and across N. West Street.  I cannot find a spot to view that intersection yet.  Below is a  picture of Pigeon House Creek just downstream.  We will follow it’s grim journey down Capital sometime soon.

Fletcher Park and Pigeon House Creek photo album

Hot Spring Critter Sightings!

This post was originally published in May 2008

This owl swooped down and landed on a branch directly above Crabtree Creek as I walked on the high greenway that traverses a steep hill off Capital Boulevard.  This is just east of the sad section that has recently had its woody buffer appropriated by bulldozers.

 It sat there for the 20 minutes or so I watched it from different angles.  I believe it’s a Barn Owl.  This was about half hour before dusk.  The owl was getting ready for work.

The owl is somewhere in the scene below.  Crabtree takes a sharp bend as it approaches Capital Boulevard near the beltline.  It is turned by a large rock outcrop that underlies the hill on which a large former car dealership resides, framed by the south ramp off the beltline.  The slope from the back of the car dealership down to the creek is some really interesting terrain, and the troublesome but dramatic walkway that clings to the hillside is one of my favorite stretches in the whole system. One reason being it’s a great place to spot turtles, as you will see below. (snapper story below that)

Below is the rock that turns Crabtree.

               

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Snapper Lays Eggs

The family of one of my students had a female snapping turtle crawl up into a sandy area near their backyard creek and lay some eggs.  She finished and went on  back to the creek, and now they get to watch for babies.  Good luck to Carson and her family!

 

Lassiter Mill and Raleigh mill history

This post was originally published April 28, 2008.

I remember the day in my high school years when they closed Lassiter Mill bridge. It was old time rickety but somehow made it to modern Raleigh - the 1970s- before being closed and then destroyed. I had conscientiously driven my 68 VW carefully over the twin tracks several times, fully aware I was testing out a soon-to-be piece of history. The iron on the right is part of the original bridge structure - iron and wood, and a thing of beauty it was. That bridge gave off an air of classic American architecture of a century past, and was fun to drive across as well, following old Lassiter Mill Road off of the new one.

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The site was originally called the “Great Falls of Crabtree” and was used by succesive mills starting about 1780, a decade before Raleigh’s creation. Cornelius Lassiter purchased it in 1908 and built two 40-horse turbine wheels to mill grain and lumber. It burned in 1959, but the family continued to make use of the property until current times.

Well-heeled homes now surround the entire site, but the area south of dam and lower pool, and downstream to (the new) Lassiter Mill Road, constitutes a small city park. There are picnic tables, a canoe put-in, and truly fine fishing - I have watched fly fisherman work below and above the dam many times. This is the spot where the city animal control folks bring misplaced snapping turtles for release - I’ve seen them wrestle some real monsters out of their truck. The fishing is also perfect for young ones, as my own can attest. Dorian’s first small-mouth bass came from just below the tailrace, and he had the enormous satisfaction, not only of helping to clean, cook, and eat it, but make his sister sick to her stomach as well. Below is his lucky fishing hole.

You can also put a boat in very easily just off the cul-de-sac, and paddle your way as far upstream toward Crabtree Valley as the downed trees and water levels will let you. The deep water above the dam is like a linear lake right through the backyards of million dollar homes. As the water get shallower, you start to see some really nice slate deposits on the banks and realize you have climbed out of East Raleigh’s muddy ditch sections of Crabtree and gotten into some cool Raleigh Belt geology. This reminds us that Lassiter Mill literally and precisely marks the Fall Line in central Raleigh. I’ll run pictures of that trip this summer.

This is the deep water above the dam. Dams like Lassiter Mill present a problem for migrating fish and the mussels dependent on them for reproduction (a long story we’ll get into sometime). Someday we may make an ecological choice to remove the dam. I will miss the easy canoe trip, but I understand the value of unencumbered stretches of water. Amazing to think of all the gristmills (and dams) that used to dot the Raleigh area - road names alone give you some idea - Lassiter, Edwards, Yates, Ligon, etc. A future gem of a post will explore the remains of the small mill still visible in Fallon Park. We used to live closer to nature - but we also exploited nature in ways we have given up.

Flower Power!

This post was orginally published April 22, 2008.

  

A sitarist at downtown’s Earth Day festivities and Sunday night’s rainbow.

Flower Power!!  Here are some local beauties to follow up on the Asheville post.

 Henbit at Lassiter Mill.  Leaves can be just as pretty as petals.

front yard volunteers. bluebells of a sort? 

Lady Banks blossom on ferns

Buttercups beside Hodges Road

 

Atamasca Lily stand on Buckeye Trail.

Happy Spring, Katie & Russ!