Flooding could make Moores Creek battlefield inaccessible in 20-30 years

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National park faces challenge to preserve the Revolutionary War battlefield as flooding persists

CURRIE – Nearly 250 years ago, members of the Patriot militia of Southeastern North Carolina hid silently under cover of morning fog in the brush around Moores Creek Bridge.

Muskets in hand, they waited until the Loyalist militia, predominantly made up of broadsword-carrying Scottish Highlanders, attempted to cross the booby-trapped bridge before they pulled their triggers and fired their cannons.

The dizzyingly swift battle of Feb. 27, 1776 is said to be the first Patriot win in the American Revolution and a devastating blow to the Loyalists’ plan to advance toward Wilmington to reinforce Britain’s authority in the colony.

It was one of the first decisive battles of the American Revolution. But now, the Pender County site of the assault is staring down a formidable new foe making its advance – Mother Nature.

In recent years, Moores Creek National Battlefield, one of only two national battlefields in the state, has found itself at the mercy of increasingly intrusive flood waters coming off the Cape Fear River and the Black River. Major ’500-year events’ like hurricanes Florence and Matthew pushed six or more feet of water onto the site one right after the other, a historic amount of flooding that also affected much of the surrounding low-lying residential area.

But park staff have recognized even heavy rain events now open up the floodgates, putting them in a position to more frequently close the park out of safety concerns and inaccessibility.

“Where we are now, it doesn’t take a hurricane or even a particularly strong storm,” said park superintendent Matthew Woods. “We can have a sunny day here, but if the Fayetteville area west of us gets even close to 3-5 inches of rain, we are going to flood and likely have to shut down portions of the park.”

Those portions most affected by the floodwaters also happen to be the most historically significant areas, including the battlefield and the bridge that set the stage for the short-but-pivotal battle.

The latest rain event came in late May when a week of heavy downpours across the region dropped so much water – between 8 and 10 inches – that increasing flooding closed sections of the park for about three weeks, just as it was reopening from two months of COVID-19 closures.

The concern of flooding has become so imperative at the battlefield that Woods said it has brought up some tough questions about how staff can adapt to the conditions, and whether they will need to abandon certain facilities and relinquish the battlefield to water in the next few decades.

“Twenty to 30 years from now, based on the pattern we are seeing with this consistent flooding, I do envision that the visitor may not recognize what the park looks like,” Woods said.

The situation today

The intense flooding from heavy rains in May and June came as a surprise to Woods and his staff, even though they have been conditioned to prepare for rainfall west of them to swell the Cape Fear River, the Black River and Moores Creek beyond their breaches.

“But we hadn’t seen anything like this, at least not in recent times, except during hurricanes,” he said.

This comes as the region weathers a record wet few years. Since 2018, the Cape Fear region has seen 188 inches of rain, a two-year time frame that typically averages 139 inches, according to National Weather Service Wilmington meteorologist Tim Armstrong. Over five years, rainfall totals are up 28% and 2018 shattered the annual rainfall record, thanks in large part to Florence.

Feeding that wetter weather could be a number of factors, but one of the biggest culprits is likely climate change.

“It’s just the way the weather pattern has worked out, but part of it could be a signal of climate change as well,” Armstrong said. “We know a warmer atmosphere holds more water and that would translate to more rainfall, and we are certainly seeing that in the Cape Fear.”

It’s something that is plaguing a number of national parks in Eastern North Carolina, including Moores Creek’s sister sites at Cape Lookout, Cape Hatteras, Wright Brothers National Memorial and Fort Raleigh.

“We’re all dealing with flooding issues, whether it’s rising sea levels or storm damage,” Woods said. “We are all having these discussions about whether to wave a white flag in certain areas and retreat from places in our parks.”

The water invading Moores Creek in May, which was six feet at its deepest, stuck around for more than a week before receding, only to rise again for another week.

It submerged the gravel causeway and the reconstructed bridge from the battle, as well as a boardwalk built over the creek for visitors to get a different vantage point of the bridge site. The rising water has also begun overtaking portions of the two main trails further into the site, which lead from the visitors center to the bridge and battlefield.

“We are probably going to give in to what is happening and just build footbridges over those easily flooded places on the trails, which probably should have happened years ago,” he said. “It wasn’t part of the conversation then because it was something that happened once every few years. Now we see (some degree of flooding) 6 to 8 times a year.”

This all compounds bigger questions about the park’s future sustainability as staff face lofty challenges on how to continue maintaining and promoting the historical significance of a national battlefield visitors increasingly can’t visit.

“When our boardwalk floods, when our causeway and our two main trails flood, you are essentially cutting off the visitors to the main resource, the main reason why they would come out here,” he said. “But we are trying to get creative now to work around Mother Nature.”

A footbridge to the future

The dilemma of how to plan for the future at the site can best be summed up by a garden that staff planted prior to Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Woods said the colorful addition was grown in the low-lying area near the battlefield, only to have the storm wash it into the creek. So they replanted it, to a smaller degree, but Hurricane Florence washed it away two years later.

“Now we don’t have a garden and those are the kind of decisions we are going to have to make,” he said.

With multiple flooding events now becoming annual occurrences, the site is looking at whether it is worth it to continue investing in low-lying areas like the battlefield, boardwalk, bridge and even community favorites like the picnic shelter, Camp Caswell campsite for Scouts and demonstration areas – all of which were underwater just weeks ago even before hurricane season began.

Perhaps the biggest structure in jeopardy is Patriots Hall, a 60-year-old multi-purpose event space that has become a popular venue rented out for community gatherings.

Woods said it is an important access point for residents not necessarily looking for a hike through history, but rather want to engage with the park for other activities.

However, since Matthew and especially during Florence, floodwaters have caused significant damage to the building, racking up repair costs. Its recent flooding history is even branded on the exterior wall around the entire building, where a five-foot-tall discolored portion visibly marks how high the floodwaters rose. Woods said they chose to leave it on the building to show people just what they are dealing with these days.

“Patriots Hall has far exceeded the cost replacement value in repairs from floods,” he said. “We have repaired it to a point that it is usable now and maybe it won’t flood again for another 20 years. But if it gets inundated with water again, there are conversations about just getting rid of it or moving it. It’s not a great use of our taxpayer dollars to essentially continue dumping it down the creek.”

History in jeopardy

As floodwaters rise and fall on the site, a 1930’s stone monument recognizing the significance of the location still holds its ground just a few steps from the reconstructed bridge.

“Here stood the bridge of Revolutionary fame where 1,000 Patriots under Cols. Richard Caswell and Alexander Lillington defeated 1,600 Loyalists led by Captain McLeod,” the monument reads.

The battlefield is an often unsung theater of war that played host to an early sea change in power in the first year of the revolution and illustrated the intensely personal nature of the conflict.

Local historian Chris E. Fonvielle Jr., who is working on a book about the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, said the possibility of floodwaters cutting off access to the battlefield is tragic because the site still hasn’t gotten its due.

“This was where the first Revolutionary War battle was fought in North Carolina,” he said. “It was a civil war battle – little ‘c,’ little ‘w’ – that pitted American Whigs, who would later be called Patriots, against Loyalists, and it was essentially a fight of brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor.”

Emboldened by their victory, which pushed the Loyalists out of the colony for more than three years, the battle directly led the Patriots to draft the Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776, in which North Carolina became the first colony to declare its intention to vote for independence.

Throughout the year, the site hosts reenactments, military demonstrations and historical programs to invite the public in and educate them on the history of the revolution and the stories of those who fought on the same paths they now walk.

Fonvielle said because the park, which opened in 1926, isn’t as easy to stumble upon as Fort Fisher or the historic homes in downtown Wilmington, it’s story isn’t as widely circulated. The potential of those visitors who do make the trip losing access to the actual site in the coming decades could only further deteriorate its legacy.

“The memory of all that happened there would be greatly lessened if people didn’t have access to that battlefield in some way,” he said.

A plan of action

Woods said that is what they are fighting to protect now, while they still have time.

Between unexpected flooding closures and limited staff due to COVID-19 restrictions, he admitted it’s hard to get a step ahead of the curve. But with the nation coming up on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, the park is in a good spot to possibly address some of its mounting hurdles.

The same year, Moores Creek will celebrate 250 years since its battle and the National Parks Service is starting to focus additional funding and support on its Revolutionary War battlefields and parks in anticipation of increased attendance and awareness.

Woods said that preparation could go a long way to helping tackle things like deferred maintenance and even start the process of installing additional footbridges over flood-prone areas.

But it can’t just be about the short-term solutions.

With the flooding potential not likely to retreat anytime soon, one possible means of protecting access to the bridge could be to build up the base and elevate the causeway (previous gravel elevations have since been washed away), raising them above the standard floodline from strong storms. That still leaves them at the mercy of those huge rain events from hurricanes, but it could buy time.

The National Parks Service has also entertained expanding the 88-acre park by possibly acquiring property south of the current site, the majority of which is on higher ground, Woods said.

Should that happen they could relocate things like picnic tables, shelters, the campsite, demonstration areas and Patriots Hall out of reach of the flooding. The monuments to the Patriots, the Loyalists, women involved in the revolution and others could also be moved, as they aren’t marking any specific locations.

“We could even divert some of our trails onto that high ground to still tell the site’s stories, but you will never replace the battlefield,” he said.

He compares it to how Fort Fisher tells visitors that portions of the Confederate earthworks are now in the ocean because of erosion since the Civil War.

“At some point, we won’t be able to fight the constant flooding, especially if the water continues to rise,” he said. “The battlefield will become a submerged resource and how you visit it may be from afar or by boardwalks.”

In a bit of irony, COVID-19, which shut the park down for almost two months, actually opened the door to introduce new technology into staff’s arsenal, with the park using videos, Q&As and other digital means to keep its followers learning.

Woods said it proved history can still be shared even at a safe distance. This time it was to stop the spread of a virus. In the future, it could be to stay clear of an invading watershed.

But Moores Creek National Battlefield still remains in a unique position because the history it is commemorating each day can’t be replaced or moved, no matter how many times it floods or how creative its protectors get.

Woods said communities and residents can opt to pick up and move away from flooding, but the battle that took place on the site 244 years ago forever bound the history to the land.

“This battlefield will always be here, there’s no moving it,” he said. “Now it is about how we change our preservation methods, and in time, the way the visitors experience the park will have to change and adapt with it.”

Reporter Hunter Ingram can be reached at 910-343-2327 or Hunter.Ingram@StarNewsOnline.com.