"Our County Album:
Cub Creek Flows Through The Years, Parker's Mill to
Noah Hole"
by Bertha Hodges
At age 92, Bertha Hodges has watched Cub Creek flow from her
Brocktown Road home, from low trickle to rampaging flood, and has
also watched history develop around the creek. This Our County contribution
reminds us that the creek has been a part of life for many Wilkes
residents.
Mrs. Hodges taught school for 44 years, beginning at the old Brocktown
School in 1915 and retiring from Moravian Falls School in 1959.
She has since been a leader of the Pores Knob Homemakers and active
in senior citizens organizations and in Walnut Grove Baptist Church.
She writes about the upper end of the creek, before it meanders
down through the town of Wilkesboro.
Cub Creek begins on the Brushy Mountains at a spring that is on
farmer Mitch Davis's land. It got its name from the passed-on story
of a man who kept a bear with a cub or two nearby.
The creek came on down the way where a Mr. Sid Parker built a corn
mill which was powered by the creek. Many people of the Brushies
brought their corn to this mill to make meal both for feed for animals
and food for man.
Coming on down the rough and rocky way, the creek came to a place
called the Falls Hole which a small fall in the creek had made into
a little pool. Many boys enjoyed going in swimming there. Then going
on another mile or so, a Mr. Bud Brock built a corn mill which was
also powered by the creek. There had to be built a pond to make
use of the power. This mill, too, was very useful to the neighbors
to get their corn ground into meal. Of course, this pond was used
by the neighboring boys and maybe some girls, too, for swimming
in the summer and skating in the winter.
The next place of interest was an old sawmill. This mill probably
was built sometime after the 1860s. The power was furnished by the
creek. It was a sash operating mill where the saw was run up-and-down,
an older method than the big circular saw. Near this sawmill there
was a blacksmith shop.
Below the mill, in the creek, was a natural little pond. A man by
the name of Noah Pearson played so much in the pond that people
began calling it the Noah Hole. The hole was used by many churches
for baptizing and still is used by some churches.
Leaving the creek at the Noah Hole and going up the road about a
half mile where the road enters the highway is the place that used
to be called the Head of the Lane. Then, coming back to the Noah
Hole where it is and has been used for a recreational area, parents
often bring their children to wade in and enjoy the water.
Two of the main tributaries of the creek are the little Brown Creek
and the Katy Creek. On Katy Creek is the beautiful falls known as
West Higgens Falls.
The early settlers living near the creek were the Parkers, Duncans,
Joineses, Brocks, Bebbers, Reavises, Pennells, and others. The mother
of the Pennell family was the sister of Professor Greene who helped
start the famous Moravian Falls Academy.
Some crops raised nearby the creek are corn, wheat, melons, fruit,
and many other kinds.
The creek has much history. One Baptist church is named for it.
The creek has had many floods. Two well-remembered ones are the
1916 and 1940 floods. Much damage was done by these floods, and
even one life was lost. A woman was swept off a bridge near the
Yadkin River and died in the angry waters.
The Cub Creek finally runs into the Yadkin River.
- from The Journal-Patriot, Monday, December 4, 1989
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