From the beginning, Princeville’s fortunes were intertwined with the caprices of the Tar River, which flooded the town every few years. Floodwaters would seep through pipes, contaminating drinking water, and the puddles that accreted by the banks of the river attracted hordes of mosquitoes. When the Tar crested its banks, residents would watch their homes and stores wash away. Not even those that were built on stilts were safe. A local legend holds that during the great flood of 1919, a less-than-honorable mayor was seen fleeing downriver on a rowboat, clutching a chest full of money purloined from the town treasury.
In 1958, 75 years after its founding, Princeville was still vulnerable to every flood event. After the town was submerged for the eighth time in its short history that year, local leaders began a concerted and ultimately successful campaign to lobby the federal Army Corps of Engineers to build a levee along the Tar River.
When the Corps completed the levee in 1967, it was as though the town had been reborn. The levee, a grassy rampart that stretched three miles along the river bank, rose a steep 37 feet at the water’s edge and sloped gently back down toward the town settlement. It was almost unthinkable that the water would ever rise high enough to flow over the rampart. An entire generation of residents grew up without fear of flooding, and dozens of businesses sprung up, many of them owned by locals. There were convenience stores, mills, a blacksmith, an auto shop, and a psychic by the name of Madam Rose.
“We were a very small town, but it was quite serene,” recalled Delores Porter, who grew up just off Main Street, near the spot where Princeville was founded. “We didn’t have to worry about being worried. We could keep our doors unlocked at all times, and we just had fun, and you knew everybody. I always say that we were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor.”
The peace was not to last. Princeville’s decades-long reprieve from flooding came to an abrupt end in September 1999, when Hurricane Floyd made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 3 storm. Though the levee was built to withstand even strong hurricanes like Floyd, the timing could not have been worse. Ten days earlier, the smaller Hurricane Dennis had passed over North Carolina not once but twice, soaking the ground and raising the water level in rivers and lakes. The rainfall from Floyd swelled the Tar River to almost 42 feet above its normal flow, high enough to overtop the levee.