People may look back in time and identify particular dates or specific short-term events that are, decades or centuries later, now viewed as being historical. Dates like July 4, 1776, December 7, 1941 are just two particular dates etched into most Americans’ minds as having great significance. Most folks can tell you the importance of those two dates – Independence Day and Pearl Harbor.
But sometimes it’s the regular – the mundane – that are rightly added to that category of “historical events,” and WIZS’s Bill Harris and local historian Mark Pace talked about several in Thursday’s TownTalk segment called “Around Old Granville.”
Take road expansion as one example. Road projects take years (sometimes decades) to complete, but the widening of U.S. 1 from Raleigh to Henderson and later the Hwy. 401 project between Raleigh and Louisburg, both are game-changers for the area.
Harris and Pace wrapped up a three-part series on events since 1960 that have historical significance for the four-county area.
Add to those road expansions the completion of “the Missing Link” that connected I-85 in southern Granville County back in 1973, and Pace said road construction has had a significant impact on the area.
Water systems, like roads, are critical pieces of infrastructure that communities rely on for daily life. A severe drought in 1974, coupled with the need to provide water to Soul City and the possibility of landing a beer manufacturer in Warren County led to the development of the Kerr Lake Regional Water System, Pace said.
“Old Milwaukee wanted to relocate to Warren County,” Pace said, adding that the manufacturer would require a tremendous amount of water. At the time, there wasn’t a water system capable of handling their demands.
Well, it didn’t work out with Old Mil but the water system today processes millions and millions of gallons of water a day. It is completing a huge expansion to grow the amount to 20 million gallons a day.
The area has seen its share of protests since 1960 – some successful and others less so.
Landowners in southern Granville had been upset over the creation of Camp Butner during World War II because they didn’t feel like they were being fairly compensated for the property the government was taking.
Ditto the creation of Kerr Lake in the 1950’s and Falls Lake in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s.
Those projects prevailed and are part of the fabric of the community, but there were other protests that caused a stir.
There have been protests against proposed repositories for hazardous materials and waste incinerators, Pace said. In fact, the PCB landfill protests of 1982 is largely credited with being the driver for coining the phrase “environmental justice.”
Pace said it was a “grassroots resistance movement that’s actually been echoed nationwide. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 50 years.”
What events, projects or particular dates will be added to that list of historical events in 50 or 60 more years?
But there could be other events that, for now, are considered regular, ordinary…mundane.
Will it be the Dabney Drive project, long-talked about but – so far, anyway – still in the planning stage?
Will there be “that date” when folks first learned about plans for a proposed data center, sparking a rise in protests and opposition?
Time will tell.
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