100 years of history by Carol Pelosi
The 1940s brought several changes to Wake Forest even as war raged in Europe and the Pacific.
In 1943, the town board hired the surveying firm of Arrington and Arrington to survey the town limits and number all the houses.
Town residents voted for bond issues that improved the streets and water and sewer systems. New streets were opened – Woodland and Rayburn – and other streets – North College and South White below Elm Avenue – were extended and paved.
Rats were a constant problem. Both the State of North Carolina and the U.S. Army, which was operating the finance school on the college campus, pointed out the health problems the rats caused, and the town was always trying to exterminate them.
Although the desperate days of the 1920s and 1930s were just a memory, there were still some people who found it difficult or impossible to pay their taxes. The town took a first lien on the property when the taxes were not paid and even still bought some property at courthouse sales.
Most of the property activity, though, was in selling off the lots, including one in Youngsville, acquired in the 1920s and 1930s. Most of the lots sold for about $600 and most were valued for taxes at $40 an acre. The town property tax stayed at 90 cents per $100 until the end of the decade, when it rose to $1.
The big money-maker for the town was not property but electricity even though the rates were 8 cents, then 7 cents for the first 25 kilowatts. The electric system profit was $14,000 in 1940 and over $31,000 in 1949-50. Property taxes in 1949-50 brought in just over $10,000.
As soon as the war ended, people began thinking about replacing their wornout cars and purchasing all those electric appliances that had been unavailable since 1941. Wake Electric, with its office in town hall, was extending its lines through the country around town, and local stores were advertising electric stoves, refrigerators and freezers.
The town even began extending its electric lines outside the town limits. R.L. Harris had paid for the electric line down to his Forest Heights Service Station south of Forestville, and the town bought it back from him. Harris also paid to extend a water line and homeowners paid him to tap on. Privies largely disappeared in Forestville.
Water and electric lines went out the new Stadium Drive to Groves Stadium, now Trentini Stadium at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School.
“The site selected is nearly a half mile to the north of the Campus,” Dr. G.W. Paschal wrote in his 1943 History of Wake Forest College. “The stadium proper is beautifully located in a forest of trees, mostly pines through which here and there open distant vistas of hill and valley. It is of the best modern construction, with seats for 15,400, and with press and guest boxes on the south side. In the surrounding grounds are ample parking spaces, about 25 acres on each side, at present only partly developed. These parking spaces are approached from the north and south by a half-dozen roads connecting with highways leading in all directions, so that large traffic can move without congestion. Of the total cost, $105,000, Mr. Henry Groves contributed $25,000.”
The college had acquired the land, about 40 acres lying to the north of what was called the Caddell property, in 1939 and 1940. Of those 40 acres, eight acres were given to the college by Dr. Charles E. Brewer and included the spring called Rock Spring or Indian Spring. North of that was 23 acres which had been part of the farm property the college sold to Isham Holding in June of 1841, and the rest was land sold to Dr. Samuel Wait in 1842.
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Just a note about the swimming pool mentioned by Francis Lide in his memories of the golf course and The Pond published in the Feb. 4 issue.
Dr. Paschal said that the nine-hole golf course was built shortly after the college purchased the 155-acre Walters tract in 1915. When Durham Road was built in 1923, some of the greens lay in its right-of-way and had to be relocated onto land loaned by Dr. Paschal.
“The swimming pool was built about the year 1925 at the head of a small stream in the extreme western part of the (golf course) tract, Dr. Paschal wrote. “Though not ideally constructed it was most popular with the students, especially those of the summer school, and their friends, and was used once every season for a swimming tournament and beauty contest, but it has fallen into disuse since the opening of the municipal swimming pool in the summer of 1942.”
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