When I started out exploring, the main method for finding interesting places was scattershot driving around. As time has marched on various resources have made things a bit more organized and a bit less costly. These include Google Earth, various aerial photo archives, historical maps, and other digital assets that a person can access from the comfort of their own home.
One of the newest tools available to the masses can be a game changer, allowing you to see beyond the aerial photos and Google Earth images. It allows you to see what’s on the ground, under the trees and ground cover. What I’m talking about is, of course, LiDAR.
To describe LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) as simply as possible, what we’re talking about is mapping using a sensor that emits an insane number of pulses every second, ranging from thousands to millions depending on how detailed you want your map to be. This can give you extremely precise maps showing contours of the earth, sometimes revealing things that are not even visible to the naked eye. In some places, the ghosts of structures still remain.
For example, let’s look at the former site of Davis Hospital in Statesville.
To begin with, here’s an aerial of what the site looks like currently. The large building on the bottom right is Mitchell College’s new health sciences building, which was finished in 2020.
Second, here’s what the LiDAR of the empty field looks like, clearly showing the footprint of the old hospital.
Compare that LiDAR scan to an actual aerial of the building from 2018, when it was still standing and you’ll see just how accurate it can be picking up soil disturbances, old foundations, and details on the ground that aren’t readily apparent. What you essentially have then is a free geophysical survey that anyone can access. It’s not as detailed as ground penetrating radar, but it can give you clues that you wouldn’t otherwise find.
Recently, while using LiDAR to look for possible hidden graveyards, I came across something interesting on a property I’ve explored previously. This particular piece of land has had people living on it since the late colonial era and was still a working farm in the 1950s/1960s. Most of what you’ll find is therefore rutted farm fields that have been planted over and over (and indeed are still being cut for hay). But what I saw was something very different.
Where there is nothing but trees and a small muddy track today there was what one might call a rectilinear feature. Something geometric and clearly manmade.
Looking at the LiDAR above you may notice the jumble of shapes in the lower right-hand corner. It doesn’t look like much, but there’s some method to the madness you’re seeing. For one, this is not a small bunch of ruts in a hillside. This feature is about the length of a football field. And it clearly fits into the rest of what looks like a planned landscape. You’ve got the big features right up against what looks like a rutted farm field to the north and above that several large pits at the base of a hill.
What is any of this? I don’t really know. It could be very old or very modern. But I don’t think it’s too modern. For one thing, the oldest aerial photo I could find of the property from 1956 does show what looks to be one or maybe two very small buildings or structures on the southernmost end of the feature, but the rest of the land looks relatively flat and clear with just a few clumps of trees. All of those ruts and ditches aren’t clearly visible on the aerial and don’t correspond to buildings or otherwise identifiable structures.
This all intrigued me enough to fire off several e-mails to people I know as well as one to the State Archaeology Office about this property. No one local was able to suggest what I’m looking at and I’m still waiting on a reply from the state. Although I sent them a message in May of this year and I’m writing this at the end of July so I believe I likely won’t get one.
What records there are don’t mention what this might be. There were slaves on this property and they likely had their own area separate from the white owners. In my wildest dreams this might have something to do with that but I don’t know what the chances are of a literal slave village surviving in any form or fashion. But whatever this was, it was so large that it had to be meaningful. This wasn’t just a strange orchard or garden. It looks for the world like there were structures here.
So, with no help from the state or the available records, I did the only thing I could. I covered myself in bug spray, tucked my pants in my boots, and I pushed through the mud.
I came in from the south end of the property, crossing a stream and paralleling the pathway (which was mostly mud after some heavy rains) and climbed up the hill, past the feature to come in from behind it, approaching it from the west. The land behind it is mostly flat and was very obviously cleared in the past. Few of the trees there now are all that old. But as you approach the area where you should start seeing something, you’re actually coming to a crest and heading down a slope toward what was probably only a gulley with a stream in it 100 years ago, but which is a full-fledged pond today. Whatever this was, it was constructed on a hillside overlooking a water source.
What I found was, well, something. None of it shows up very well in pictures so I’ll attempt to point out some features in one photo while showing the original photo side by side. Note that this is only a small portion of what’s there.
While I don’t have great recording quality, I also shot some video which allows you to see the lumps and bumps more clearly. The sort of “ring” and depression on this first one looks very reminiscent of an old building foundation.
This second video shows a ditch or path that runs down the hill and takes a sharp turn around a platform as well as another ditch that parallels it, creating a raised area between them (where I am standing.)
What does any of this mean? Again, I’m unsure. But something was going on here. My current hypotheses are that this cluster of features is either the remnants of some sort of post-Civil War tenant/sharecropper housing, or more fanciful and much more exciting, possible slave quarters. Both may be wrong, but there isn’t much else that makes sense. What would you build on a hillside with numerous divided plots having raised platforms about 10 x 10 feet with irrigation ditches leading away to a gulley and a well defined path running north to south at a right angle? If you know, contact me, because I don’t.
Right now the plant life makes it even harder to discern just what might have been here or even record it in any meaningful way. But, I hope to be back this winter with a better camera, a surveyor’s tape, and maybe a GPS marker if I can find one that will map this the way I want it to.
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