Copyright Notice: This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Some place names included in The North Carolina Gazetteer contain terms that are considered offensive.
"The North Carolina Gazetteer is a geographical dictionary in which an attempt has been made to list all of the geographic features of the state in one alphabet. It is current, and it is historical as well. Many features and places that no longer exist are included; many towns and counties for which plans were made but which never materialized are also included. Some names appearing on old maps may have been imaginary, but many of them also appear in this gazetteer.
Each entry is located according to the county in which it is found. I have not felt obliged to keep entries uniform. The altitude of a place, the date of incorporation of a city or town, may appear in the beginning of one entry and at the end of another. Some entries may appear more complete than others. I have included whatever information I could find. If there is no comment on the origin or meaning of a name, it is because the information was not available. In some cases, however, resort to an unabridged dictionary may suggest the meaning of many names."
--From The North Carolina Gazetteer, 1st edition, preface by William S. Powell
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Bearpen Mountain |
N Madison County parallel to Former Camp Branch. |
| Bearpen Ridge |
N Madison County between Hickeys Fork and Rock Branch. |
| Bearpen Rock |
a mountain in W Avery County. |
| Bearpond |
community in S Vance County, named for a local tradition of a celebrated bear hunt there. In 1785 a practical joke was played on Zeke Brown to put an end to his tall tales of bear killing. A mock bear hunt was arranged at the present site of Bearpond in which a local citizen, Jake Sims, dressed in bearskins and gave Brown such a scare he left the county for "Orrapeake." The community is now known locally as Buena Vista, after the plantation of Dr. Robert Christian Pritchard (b. 1812) in nearby S Warren County. |
| Bearskin |
community in W central Sampson County near Bearskin Swamp. |
| Bearskin Creek |
rises in N Granville County and flows N into Grassy Creek. |
| Bearskin Swamp |
rises in W central Sampson County and flows SW into Little Coharie Creek. |
| Beartown Mountain |
on the Mitchell County, N.C.-Carter County, Tenn., line. Alt. 5,481. |
| Beartown Ridge |
NE Mitchell County between Beartown Mountain and Big Rock Creek. |
| Beartrail Ridge Gap |
on the Haywood-Jackson county line. |
