Henry F. Shaw Cross Creek Linear Park

Henry F. Shaw Cross Creek Linear Park. . , Green Street , The heart of earliest Fayetteville from its colonial days as the village of Cross Creek was centered in these few hundred yards west of today's Green Street., In colonial days, Green Street was part of the "King's Highway", a north-south wagon path that intersected with east-west path just where the creek today passes under the street. An early historian and "enterprising men" picked the creek and the strategic road crossing as a perfect spot for a commercial settlement., By 1755, Quaker millwright John Newberry had a waterwheel mill turning grindstones on the south bank where the water of Cross Creek still pours over a later mill dam. The mill did bustling business grinding grain for the farmers of the neighborhood. Few commercial spots in North Carolina have had so continuous a history as the mill site. Few places can point to the very earliest site in their history. As recognizable today as 250 years ago. After the American Revolution when the colonial village became Fayetteville, the mill was in the center of the district of stores, inns, churches, taverns and residences lining today's Green Street. In the 20th century, it was known as "McNeill's Mill" and boasted large rugged millstones like the one on display here. The mill ceased operations in 1940., In the early 19th century, an early British artist painted "Mill Dam at Fayetteville," the first known visual image of a Fayetteville scene. It depicted the mill and the mill pond behind the dam., Major fires that burned much of antebellum Fayetteville started in buildings just above the mill. first in 1792 in the lost at Dekeyser's Tavern, and in 1831 in the kitchen of a residence. After each fire, the town rose from the ashes. Cross Creek flowed on through the heart of the rebuilt town as it had before the disasters just as it does to this day.