Take advantage of the long, lazy days of summer with the Dan River Basin Association as its “First Saturday Outing” floats from Danville to Milton starting at 10:00 Saturday, June 6, from the boat ramp at Angler’s Park.

“For this leisurely 10.6 mile trip you can step back nearly 200 years,” said Forrest Altman, author of the DAN RIVER BOOK.  “You’ll travel in what feels like wilderness, seeing almost no sign of the 21^st century on either bank.”

Trip coordinator Tom Edmonds, a former president of the Association, notes that this section of the river, rated as Class 1-2, is suitable for novice paddlers.

In the relatively flat stretch from Danville to Milton, William Trout, author of THE DAN RIVER ATLAS, and Lindley Butler, North Carolina historian, have identified six navigation sluices, structures built in the early nineteenth century to deepen the channel for the massive batteaux that carried cargo on the river. These wooden craft, eight feet wide and 40 to 60 feet long, drew only about nine inches of water when fully loaded.

The navigation structures provide easy passage for modern canoes and kayaks through the rapids, as well as colorful names that recall the bygone era when the river served as the only highway into the region.

Participants in the June 6 outing will pass through Julius Allen’s Sluice, Noble’s Shoal Sluice, Dix’s Shoal Sluice at Hogan’s Creek, Wilkinson’s Shoal Sluice at Moon Creek, Thomas’s Fish Dam Sluice below Rattlesnake Creek, and Dodson’s Fish Dam Sluice.

Fish dams, built by Native Americans and early settlers, are low V-shaped or W-shaped rock structures that funneled fish into waiting nets or baskets as they returned seaward from their massive spawning runs. Descendants of these huge fish populations, now trapped by the dam at John H. Kerr Reservoir, are celebrated with the striped bass tournament each April at Angler’s Park.

About a mile below Angler’s Park is the site of Dix’s Ferry, near Hance’s Branch, where President George Washington crossed the Dan on June 4, 1791, on his southern tour during the second year of his presidency.  Farther downstream are the sites of Hunt’s Ferry and Blanch Ferry.

Other points of historic interest along the route are Antioch Plantation, near Blanch, which had an official tobacco inspection station in 1791, two years before Danville was founded, and Bursted Hill, a cone-shaped hill like a sugar loaf rising 130 feet on river right, first reported in a paper before Benjamin Franklin’s American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1790.

Boaters on this section of the river often see birds both large and small, deer and other mammals and aquatic life: fish, including some catfish said to be of legendary size, turtles and the northern water snake, which is nonpoisonous.

The outing will conclude at the public boat landing at Milton (Mill Town), founded in 1796 and, like Danville, a town that was a batteau port.

Participants in the outing are asked to bring boat and paddles, life jacket, lunch and water, to dress in layers of artificial (quick-drying) fabric and to sign a waiver.

Boats may be rented from Three Rivers Outfitters, 336-627-6215 or www.3-R-O.com, which will provide shuttle as well.

To reach Angler’s Park, exit the Danville Expressway (US 58/US 29 By-Pass) at Dan Daniel Park exit.  Turn east on River Park Drive (the opposite direction from Dan Daniel Park).  Turn right on Northside Drive; bear left at the front gate of North Water Pollution Control Plant to Angler’s Park, the southernmost point of the Riverwalk Trail.