Chapter 6: Tufts Acquires Land for His Village

James Walker Tufts’ son, Leonard, was married on June 14, 1895. Immediately after the wedding, James left Boston for North Carolina with his close friend, Samuel F. Hubbard, to find property and get started on the project to build his “health resort”¹.

With the general location for his town fixed in his mind, James Walker Tufts needed to explore property in the Sandhills and decide on the optimum site. It’s likely his criteria for the site included (1) the availability of land for purchase, (2) its topography, (3) proximity to an established north-south rail line for people to access the Village, (4) the supply of labor for construction, and (5) a transportation system or additional rail line for freight and supplies to build and maintain the operation.     

After stopping in Raleigh to discuss locations with State Immigration and Agriculture officials and confirm their impression of the Sandhills as a desirable area, he continued on to Moore County. 

Arriving at the Ozone Hotel in Southern Pines, James Walker Tufts may have been somewhat set back to see the devastation left in the area, the result of years of exploitation of the Long Leaf Forest by the tar, turpentine, and lumber industry.   

Undeterred, knowing that he required a minimum of several hundred acres for his village and not wanting to build immediately next to an established town, Tufts sought out land owners in the Sandhills who owned sizable tracts of land in reasonable proximity to Southern Pines.

At that time Aberdeen, founded in 1877 as “Blues Crossing”, was established as a commercial center for the Sandhills with lumber mills and two rail lines headed both east and west off the Seaboard Airline Railroad main line. Aberdeen was also the headquarters and home for the Page family. The patriarch,  Allison Francis “Hank” Page, founded the town of Cary, N.C. before moving to Moore County with many of his nine siblings and eight children in the 1870s and 1880s.  Page family members owned thousands of acres of timberland west of Southern Pines, lumber mills, and the Aberdeen and West End Railroad⁴. 

After reportedly looking at land near Hoffman, southwest of Southern Pines, as well as property in the Fayetteville area east of Southern Pines, Tufts contacted the Page family to inquire about their land holdings.  Hoping to find a suitable location for the town,  James Walker Tufts spent time with Henry R. Page discussing their many holdings and potential purchase.  

In a scouting trip, about six miles out from Aberdeen on the Aberdeen and West End rail line, Tufts came upon a parcel owned by the Pages that had all the qualities he was looking for: it was only five miles from the rail station in Southern Pines so that guests could easily be transported to the village, it was serviced by a rail line (The Aberdeen and West End) so supplies could be brought in, and most importantly, a sizable piece of the property was reasonably flat with a spacious plain large enough for his village, the land gently sloping away from what would eventually become the center of the town. 

Finding a suitable location for his town, James Walker Tufts sent a young boy to the house of Henry A. Page Sr. to tell him that Mr. Tufts wanted to see him at his office in Aberdeen. They met and the sale of land for the future town was concluded.

So on June 21, 1895, one week after the marriage of his son, and only having been in the Sandhills for a few days, James Walker Tufts acquired from Henry R. and J. R. Page a “bond for title” for 4,703 acres at a price of $5,300. In addition, on July 9, Tufts acquired an additional adjacent 598 acres from Lewis A. Page for $700. All this acreage, with the exception of one small stand of Longleaf pines, was cut-over timber land of little use to the Pages. Tufts now had secured and solidified the location for his town and construction could begin.

This map, made in August of 1897, shows the property (5,980 acres) outlined in red that Tufts purchased for his Village. The map shows principal roads, streams, farms and the location of the woven wire fence (in yellow on the map) that was constructed around the Village in 1895 to keep wild hogs, grazing livestock, and other animals from entering the Village. Note the location of the electric trolley line to Southern Pines and locations of former turpentine stills and peach orchards in the area.

This is the rough map and survey of the town site Tufts decided upon for his Village, labeled “Town Site, Moore County, North Carolina”, drawn by Francis Deaton in June of 1895. This map covers an area approximately 2000ft by 3000ft.  Note the red “X” on the map - this is labeled "Beginning Stump”, the location Tufts decided upon for the “center” of the Village. This point can now be found in Tufts Park across the road from the Holly Inn.  The railroad line is the southern boundary of the map, which indicates where there is level ground and approximate slopes and ridges away from the chosen center for the Village.

This survey shows the core 100 acres where Tufts decided to build the Village.

Note that the map indicates the type of trees on the site, blue dots for pines and green dots for oak trees. The area in the lower right of the map with all the blue dots (pine trees) was the last remaining stand of long leaf pines on the property and is located where the Pinehurst Resort tennis courts are currently. This stand of pines was known as the “Pine Grove” when the Village was formed. 

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A summary of the land purchased by James Walker Tufts in 1895 and 1896³:

These transactions are all recorded in the Register of Deeds for Moore County

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References:

1. A History of Pinehurst, Unpublished Paper by Herbert Warren Wind, undated
2. A Pinehurst History, Unpublished paper by Richard S. Tufts 1976
3. Moore County Register of Deeds, Carthage, NC
4. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. Copyright ©1979-      1996 by the University of North Carolina Press

Image Credits:

"Allison Francis Page." Photograph. The life and letters of Walter H. Page. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Page & Company. 1923.

Map photographs courtesy of The Tufts Archives, Pinehurst, NC