See also: Blossom's Ferry; Cape Fear and Deep River Steam Navigation Company; Ferries; Steamboats; Albemarle Steam Navigation Company; Yadkin River Navigation Company; Tar River Navigation Company; Dan River Steam Navigation Company; Neuse River Navigation Company; New River Navigation Company; Deep and Haw River Navigation Company
Despite less-than-ideal conditions, early explorers and settlers managed to use rivers to great advantage. English explorers pressed deep into North Carolina by way of the Roanoke and Chowan Rivers in 1586. The Cape Fear River gave passage to Spanish settlers under Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon in 1526 and English settlers in the 1660s, although neither colony was successful. Virginian settlers observed Saura (Cheraw) Indian tribes on the Dan River in the late 1600s, later finding others on Drowning Creek, which would become the Lumber River in Robeson County. (The Lumbee Indians remain centered around the Lumber, now a national Wild and Scenic River noted for animal life.) Other settlers from western Virginia staked out lands along rivers that flowed into Albemarle Sound beginning in the 1650s; others later followed the Neuse, Pamlico, Tar, and Cape Fear Rivers. The long navigable stretches of the Cape Fear and its tributaries encouraged a thriving trade in produce and naval stores through the ports of Brunswick and Wilmington.
Early settlers in the piedmont found their rivers to be more barriers than highways. Most rivers in this region are relatively small, and many are interrupted by rocks and rapids or waterfalls. Of the major rivers in the piedmont, the Dan flows into Virginia before uniting with the Roanoke and winding back into North Carolina, and the Catawba and the Yadkin-Pee Dee begin in the mountains and flow into South Carolina. Although of limited use for navigation, the piedmont rivers became valuable sources of waterpower-first in running gristmills, then in operating cotton mills and other factories, and finally in powering hydroelectric projects. Although often grand and beautiful, the mountain rivers were too shallow and rocky to be of much use as travel routes. Many of them also have been harnessed to provide electric power.
Following the American Revolution, particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century, North Carolina undertook a program of internal improvements to enhance its economy, an important facet of which was to improve the navigability of watercourses. During and after the colonial era, the legislature empowered the county courts to order the clearing of navigable rivers and streams within their jurisdictions. From the Revolution to the Civil War, however, the General Assembly often addressed specific waterways, mandating the county courts to require mill owners to provide slips for the passage of boats and occasionally appointing individuals to clear streams. Generally those efforts were unproductive.
Ferries have carried passengers across North Carolina's rivers since at least 1699. Early ferries were wooden flats usually guided across a stream by a cable. The cable could be lowered into the stream to permit other boats to pass. Today, the state maintains free ferry service across several rivers, ranging from large ferries that cross the Neuse, Pamlico, and Cape Fear Rivers to small, two-car ferries, such as the one at Sans Souci on the Cashie River in Bertie County.
By the late nineteenth century, boats powered by gasoline or diesel engines began to replace steamboats. Commercial river travel in North Carolina declined significantly, pressed by competition from railroads and later from automobiles and trucks on the expanding network of paved roads in the state. Half a century later, passenger service on the rivers (except for ferries) was long a thing of the past. Commercial river business consisted of hauling bulk cargoes such as logs, fertilizer, oil, farm products, pulpwood, and fish. Barges towed by motor vessels still carry bulk cargoes on some rivers in the coastal plain, and Wilmington, 30 miles up the Cape Fear River from the Atlantic, remains the state's major port. North Carolina's rivers are now seen less as highways than as an important part of the environment, crucial for their role in supporting wildlife and providing drinking water. Many residents and tourists seek out these rivers for recreation, fishing, or simply to appreciate their natural beauty and their role in history.