Qualla: Haw River

Haw River: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kmusser, CC BY-SA 3.0. The river's name is older than English. The Catawban word sakyapha means foothill, from sak for hill and yapha for step, and the Sissipahaw people who lived along its banks used some shortened form of it long before the English botanist John Lawson wrote it down as the Hau River in his 1709 A New Voyage to Carolina. By the time the colonists arrived, the Sissipahaw were nearly gone, and the river that carried their name kept running anyway - 110 miles of Piedmont water rising near Kernersville, looping around Greensboro to the north, then turning southeast to feed Jordan Lake and finally, below the dam, joining the Deep River to make the Cape Fear.

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Image: Kmusser | CC BY-SA 3.0

Haw River: How the Water Falls

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anthony Crider, CC BY 2.0. The Haw rises high in Forsyth County, just north of Kernersville near the Guilford line, and flows northeast. It crosses the corner of Rockingham County, passes through Haw River State Park above Greensboro, then bends southeast through Alamance County - past Ossipee, north of Bu...

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Image: Anthony Crider | CC BY 2.0

Haw River: Mills on the Fall Line

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The Piedmont gives water enough drop to turn a wheel, and from the 1850s onward the Haw turned plenty of them. The first dam went in at Saxapahaw. Glencoe, Granite Mills, Indian Valley, Altamahaw, Swepsonville, Puryear, Bynum, B. Everett Jordan - the river is studded with dams, s...

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Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Haw River: Poisoning, and Patience

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DiscoA340, CC BY-SA 4.0. Industry that built the river towns also nearly killed the river. Twentieth-century textile dyes and finishing chemicals went into the Haw because the mills were on the bank, and for decades the water ran in colors no fish should swim through. The decline of the mills reduced the...

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Image: DiscoA340 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Haw River: The Trail and the Wine

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The Haw River Trail, formally undertaken by local governments and private groups in 2006, is the modern restoration in physical form. A combined land trail and paddle trail will eventually connect Haw River State Park to Jordan Lake State Recreation Area, with the land portion st...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

Haw River: Wildlife and the Long Future

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Blue herons stalk the shallows. Beavers cut willows along the banks and rebuild their dams every spring. White-tail deer ford the river at dusk; river otters fish the deeper pools; bluegill and bream rise to dry flies in summer. None of this was guaranteed forty years ago. The Ha...

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Image: Mx. Granger | CC0