Yep! Actually most of Durham County is in the basin. I have overshot a lot of wells in Cary/Durham b/c the material is so compact that groundwater doesn’t flow very well in the unconsolidated material. I did slug testing at a project in Durham (right across from Duke actually) and 2 hours after inserting the slug, there as zero change in head in the well. That means the material was very compact with very low transitivity.
10 Likes
And yet, somehow there are very few historic brick buildings in Raleigh. Places like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lousville…they’re mostly brick.
2 Likes
There are a bunch of illegally permitted septic systems in that area of Durham cCounty because of that soil too. Meaning the County violated State law in doing so but put in a few thousand anyway. No willpower or money to fix it so you have a bunch of poorly functioning septic systems doing their thing. The soil sucks for about everything. My history teacher in high school said heading west on Purnell Road in north Wake County is where all the Irish families were forced to live because the English families got all the fertile land around Wake Forest proper and the land got worse and worse as you approached the basin. Never researched the families out that way but I remember it distinctly. @Nickster I am not a soils guy but think I saw a presentation that said all the dikes from the rifting contribute to the groundwater flow problems as well. Is that true?
2 Likes
I was told in high school that the discovery of this clay basin lead to Wedgwood pottery. Their distinctive blue and white was based on NC clay!
And since the Irish arrive much later, unless its the Scotch(Ulster)-Irish. Either way, I can totally believe what your HS teacher told @Mark
3 Likes
Well shit…she might have said Scotch-Irish. Which, at the time, I didn’t know who they were at all, and I still don’t really know a great deal about European immigration patterns, but she mentioned it as a tangent about surrounding farms when we were doing a walking tour of north Main Street. Maybe Irish, maybe Scoth-Irish. Wake Forest has quite a few of its original antebellum farms still standing (as an aside) with at least one Revolutionary Colonel (Ransom Sutherland) who most certainly would have known Joel Lane.
1 Like
Yes, there are diabase dikes cutting through the Triassic Basin. They basically act as dams for groundwater flow. Completing groundwater assessments at the sites I work on is always complicated in the basin. The rules we follow in other areas (Piedmont and Coastal Plain) don’t really apply in the Triassic Basin because nature has thrown out the rule book 
3 Likes
I think it’s very interesting where this banter is going in relation to the Scotch influence in NC and the TV show “Outlander”. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. While the show starts off with no ties to the US, much less NC, it’s worth following along through the seasons. I promise you, you won’t be disappointed. I’ll leave it at that as to not spoil anything.
Up for discussion if this is a fun fact? lol
4 Likes
Oh goodness. My wife and her friends are Outlander fangirls of the first order. The books are big, and they devoured all of them. She use to quiz me about NC geography. It is very cool how much of it is set in NC.
1 Like
For those of you who are of that ethnic background, I’ve heard both Scotch-Irish and Scots-Irish. I’ve heard some people get really upset about the former (Scotch) being incorrect. What say you???
NC State probably has the best collection of older brick buildings in the city.
https://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu/timelines/campus-buildings-grounds
3 Likes
There’s apparently a whole article about this, explaining way more than I ever wanted to know LOL.
3 Likes
@John As a McKenzie on one side and a McClure on the other, I’ve used both. It depends on how highfalutin I feel that day.
@GucciLittlePig this is just the tiny tip of the iceberg of information on the Scotch-Irish. It is actually a major area of historical scholarship, particularly in southern history since the vast majority of those that arrived, especially in the 18th century, moved down the Great Wagon Rd into western Virginia, NC & SC. There are very few Euro-American Southerns who do not have some Scotch-Irish in them. Some argue its why southerners like to fight so much! It certainly explains the huge number of Presbyterian churches.
I will be glad to provide some links if anyone is interested in this theme.
5 Likes
Have also heard that the whole moonshiner tradition of making your own booze came from the Stotch-Irish as they adapted Scotch and Irish whiskeys to ingredients they had readily available in the southern us - mainly corn.
3 Likes
Bluegrass music also seems to be at least partly descended from their influence as well (I have also read that slaves first used banjos and of course that is a heavy influence in bluegrass sound now too…not quite sure to be honest but want to cover all the possible bases).
@pBeez My last name originates in the northern most English counties so likely had some Scotch DNA rolled up in there…original settlers came into Isle of Wight County but quickly ended up as Appalachian roughnecks traceable to at least the 1850’s. Just drawing a line from possible Scotch-ness to western VA as well. RE Wake County, if anyone has lists of last names for the area that would help nail down if my History teacher’s words were correct.
The Ulster Scots (known in America as Scots-Irish did indeed settle mostly throughout Appalachia and into the Carolinas. It was the Catholic Irish that settled in the big port cities.
2 Likes
When I moved here in 1970, the “belt line” went from capital Blvd to Poole road.
2 Likes
My Scottish roots go back to Daniel Alexander McPhail who entered through New Bern (then the capital of NC) in 1740, just escaping the Battle of Culloden. Most of my ancestors stayed in Sampson and Harnett Co until some moved to Wake. The Irish started marrying in the early 1800’s. Outlander is awesome.
4 Likes
But there wasn’t a Capital Blvd, only Downtown Blvd and North Blvd. 
In fact, Capital Blvd previously marked as two different names is in in fact a fun fact about Raleigh!
2 Likes
I feel like I’m at work …
Yes, I remember that @R-Dub, and how it did not connect to any other interstate, except 40W which just ran out to the park and ended. When the Beltline was finished, I drove all the way around Raleigh just to do it!!
1 Like