The Dan River Basin Association’s October 6 outing will be a special river cleanup on portions of two rivers in Rockingham County, NC.

As part of North Carolina Big Sweep, the annual watershed cleanup in which the Association always participates, the float will cover six miles—1.5 miles of the Mayo River and 4.5 miles of the Dan River.

“This part of the Mayo River is rarely floated,” commented Trip Coordinator T Butler. “Since there is no public access point on the lower Mayo,” she said, “we have obtained permission to put in and take out on private property.”

The float will begin at the NC 135 Bridge in Mayodan, continue to the confluence with the Dan River, and conclude at the mouth of Jacob’s Creek.

Although this portion of the Mayo River flows through Mayodan and Madison, the river’s high forested banks hide the towns and provide a pleasant feeling of wilderness. Gravel and cobble bars may generate riffles, but the river tends to be shallow and easy to navigate.

The entire six-mile trip is rated Class 1 in difficulty.

Historic features on the lower Mayo include Mayo Ford, where the Petersburg, VA to Salem, NC Road crossed in Colonial times, and the stone pier from the 1892 Mayo River Bridge, which was replaced with the Dan Valley Road Bridge in 1965.  

Upon reaching the confluence with the Dan River, participants will encounter six historic structures from the batteau navigation system that made this river usable by flat-bottomed batteaux, the long, narrow workhorses of nineteenth century river commerce in the region.

Robertson’s Fish Trap Sluice includes a widened fish weir originally built to collect fish making their great spawning runs upriver from the coast. Slink Shoal Sluice and Wing Dams, called the navigation system’s “crown jewel,” consists of the longest sluice, or channel, and the only surviving log-crib wing dams on the river.

These and the other navigation structures direct the water into channels around rapids and ledges that would have blocked the batteaux, each of which carried several tons of goods. Present-day recreational users enjoy the effects of these structures, which have been self-maintaining for over 130 years.

The Dan River Basin Association has participated in NC Big Sweep cleanups since the Association’s founding in 2002, and it has won prizes several times for its contributions to cleaning up our watershed, both on water and on land. Cornerstones of its mission are education, recreation, and stewardship of our resources.

Participants are asked to meet at 10:00 a. m. at the Wall Lumber Company parking lot on the west side of the NC 135 Bridge in Mayodan, NC.  Please bring boat, life jacket, plenty of fluids, lunch, rain gear, work gloves, and a light pole or dip net or similar tool to aid in collecting trash.  North Carolina Big Sweep will provide trash bags. Although the trip is not technically demanding or hazardous, boaters will be asked to sign an “Assignment of Risk / Waiver of Claim” form.

In addition, those who sign a waiver for NC Big Sweep and participate in recording the trash collected will be eligible for prize drawings provided by the Rockingham County Beautification Council.

Asked about the possibility of low water because of this year’s drought, Butler replied, “We will meet at Wall Lumber Company at 10:00 as planned. If the Mayo is too shallow to float, we’ll drive to the nearby NC 704 Access Point in Madison and clean up only on the Dan River. Our take out will still be at Jacob’s Creek.”

All First Saturday Outings of the Dan River Basin Association are free and open to the public.

A cleanup on land in the Mayo River State Park will be held the previous Saturday. More information about both the park cleanup and the river trip may be obtained from T Butler, 336-349-5727 or members@danriver.org.

Information about the Dan River Basin Association is available at www.danriver.org .