Raleigh, North Carolina — If you’ve ever driven across the Neuse River on U.S. Highway 64, you may have wondered about the mysterious stone ruins crumbling to the side of the road.
This historical relic has become the center of debate among people driving by. Why do old stone chimneys stand beside local highways?
Some believe it is an old fireplace in an old private house. Some people think it’s all that’s left of the old riverside restaurant from the 1960s.
Historian Oakley Baldwin knows the true origins of the unusual structure. Decades ago, he drove by it for the first time, and like many others, he began to wonder what it had once been.
“I drove by it every day, sometimes several times a day,” he said. “And that’s what caught my eye.”
Barely hidden by trees, the ruins consist of two stone pillars, a large oven and towering fireplace, stone walls extending on either side, and a stone slab that serves as a table or countertop. In the past, there was a roof that served as a shelter, but now that has collapsed. Recently a fallen tree knocked down one of the pillars and the whole place is overgrown with plants and weeds.
Although partially hidden by overgrown grass, it is very easy to find as you head down US-64 toward Knightdale.
“It stuck out like a sore thumb,” said Baldwin, who first discovered the location while on patrol as a Wake County deputy.
Built during the Great Depression to feed highway workers
Most people don’t remember what it was like before US-64 existed. But back in the days of the Great Depression, hundreds of workers were hired as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps to build the first two lanes of the highway.
“This site is where the cooks prepare meals for the 200 to 300 service members working on US-64,” Baldwin said.
He said the workers earned as little as $1 a day, much of which they sent back to their families.
“It was during the Great Depression,” he said. “Most of these people were struggling. President Roosevelt came up with the New Deal and building this highway was part of that. It was a way to create jobs.”
Cooks worked all day in outdoor stone kitchens, preparing and delivering food for miles.
Even today, stone slabs next to the fireplace reveal where cooks carved whole pigs and prepared meals by the fire.
It was built in the 1930s and used until 1942, when the CCC was disbanded. It would then sit abandoned and unused for many years.
Antique ruins become part of new restaurant
Some locals swear the chimney and stove are remnants of an old restaurant along US-64 along the Neuse River. As it turns out, they’re not entirely wrong, according to Baldwin.
“King’s Riverside Restaurant was right across the street from a two-lane highway, and a lot of tourists and riverside people were eating there,” Baldwin said.
This ruin was not part of the restaurant itself. However, employees used the stove to cook for customers.
“A few years later, even more people were able to eat on this stove,” Baldwin said. “The only danger was that the employees had to leave the restaurant to prepare the food, cross the two-lane Highway 64, and then return with the food. He probably repeated that several times a day.”
The restaurant became a classic piece of small-town nostalgia for families traveling along Route 64.
Unfortunately, the roads that brought workers and customers would eventually cause the restaurant to disappear. The expressway has now been widened to four lanes. The site for King’s Riverside Restaurant will be around the median between the lanes.
New developments threaten this history of the Great Depression
Baldwin said people continued to use 1930s-era stoves for cooking even after the restaurants closed, at least until the 1980s or 1990s.
Fascinated by the ruins, Baldwin would check them out during his patrols.
“I found some fresh charcoal in the stove,” he said. “Someone was still using it.”
Families stopped along Route 64 to picnic and take memorable photos in front of the historic site.
Today, the ruins, which have survived since the 1930s, are crumbling, wedged between the road and a new development being built behind it. A fallen tree recently destroyed some of the pillars, and the roof is long gone. Baldwin worries that parts of the Great Depression and North Carolina’s history will be destroyed by construction or by nature.
Chimney “scheduled for removal”
So who owns this piece of North Carolina history since the Great Depression?
The current owner of the property is Rogers Lane Partners LLC, according to Wake County Real Estate Data records.
The land will be used for a development called Edgewater Commons, which is currently being built behind a stone chimney.
WRAL has discovered preliminary subdivision plans the developer has filed with the City of Raleigh. He has only one description of chimneys. A note on the map says “Old chimney (scheduled for removal).”
WRAL reached out to an employee of Rogers Lane Partners LLC to learn more about the potential removal of the site. No reply yet.
Baldwin hopes the stone chimney and its surrounding remains will be preserved or even moved to another location for safekeeping so they are not lost forever. Few people know about the site’s history, so he hopes sharing its story will help promote its preservation.
“We have to leave room for progress, but at the same time we have to preserve our history,” he said.
Podcast: What was it like exploring this ruin?
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