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6 <br />The consultation grant will cover expenses incident to forming a partnership with <br />county, city, state, and federal stakeholders for mapping and developing the <br />landscapes and archaeology remnants at Stagville. <br />Orange County and Chapel Hill <br />Documentary evidence indicates the existence of a two village Native American <br />site of possibly great historical importance located in the New Hope Creek <br />bottoms on the Orange - Durham County line in southwestern Durham and <br />eastern Orange Counties. The likely site of these villages is less than three miles <br />from both downtown Durham and downtown Chapel Hill. According to one <br />reliable early 18th century map, these villages sat astride a critical transportation <br />node, the intersection of critical north-south (Central Coast Trail) and east-west <br />Trading Paths (the lower path to the Catawba and Waxhaws). <br />Consultancy monies from this grant will pay for archaeological and landscape <br />studies that will determine the precise location and dates of the villages and <br />reveal (by landscape analysis) their connection to Stagville and Hillsborough and <br />other existing heritage sites. <br />Person County <br />In the 17th century, when packhorse men first entered the backcountry, to avoid <br />the Occaneechi Indians who dominated trade in the backcountry, these <br />packhorse men crossed the Roanoke River at "Moniseep", a horse ford now <br />under Lake Gaston north of Warren County. The most direct route from <br />Petersburg to the Catawba and Cherokee for these traders, after crossing the <br />Roanoke at Moniseep, passed over Mount Tirzah in Person County, NC. <br />Recently, on Mount Tirzah the TPA found a two hundred yard long piece of <br />packhorse trail that has been out of service since the 1720s. This landscape <br />artifact confirms the early route of the traders and, in conjunction with the sites at <br />Stagville and in the New Hope bottoms is crucial to explaining and understanding <br />the evolution of trade routes and, hence, settlements in central piedmont. <br />Consultation money will allow archaeological confirmation of the antiquity of the <br />Mount Tirzah artifacts and will assist in the creation of a county level heritage <br />tourism initiative in Person County, a rural tobacco and textile-impacted polity. <br />In summary <br />This grant will facilitate gathering the expertise necessary to determine the <br />feasibility of a three county consortium for heritage tourism in piedmont North <br />Carolinas Orange, Durham and Person counties. These experts will catalogue <br />and assess the value of three heritage sites, one in each county, related to the <br />Trading Path to the Catawba from the earliest English settlements in Virginia. <br />These sites sit on the upper/high road (Person County), middle/main road <br />(Durham County), and lower route (Orange County) of the Trading Path. <br />Page 3 of 4