New Bern's
300^th Birthday Celebration

These days a low, humming sound can be heard in New Bern. On New Year's Eve, December 31, 2009, you will hear it more clearly — full force rising, lifting every voice. It is a "Happy Birthday" song for the City of New Bern

A First Night celebration will be held in Historical Downtown New Bern and Union Point Park that will set a yearlong stage for a magical calendar of celebrations, fetes, feasts, concerts, showings and changes. Hang on to your hats, New Bern. It's your 300th birthday

Swiss Bear Downtown Revitalization Corp. is working to plan the year, to make it fun, and to make it more tangible than just the memory of more fireworks on the Fourth of July. There will be more fireworks on the Fourth, of course, but many of the planned physical projects will remain years into the future.

Susan Moffat-Thomas, head of Swiss Bear, and a host of committees have been preparing for the event, dealing with everything from themes to special events to take place during the year — trying certainly to make all things bright and beautiful, but lasting as well.

"The schedule is still not worked out," said Moffat-Thomas, "so what I can talk about now is goals and objectives. The city wants it to be something that everyone can participate in with long-lasting outcomes and use it as a real catalyst to complete the revitalization effort and then celebrate. We are celebrating 300 years, not the founding of New Bern."

It has taken a tremendous amount of planning, according to Judy Harkin, chairman of the Colonial Capital Scottish Festival, one of the entities preparing for the 300th celebration.

"There will be two Scottish music festivals held in Lawson Creek Park, one April 25 and 26, 2009, and one April 24 and 25, 2010," said Harkin. "Two headliners; we will have some well-known Scottish talent — MacTalla Mor and Colin Grant-Adams — that will emphasize the arts, culture and the music. A dance school is coming from the Chapel Hill/Durham area. This is the first Scottish festival held east of I-95. There are more people in North Carolina who claim Scottish heritage than live in Scotland."

Tom McGraw, head of the Connectivity Committee, said the idea was to create some linkage between all the activities and make them synergistic.

"There were 88 things around the town that were considered. Some were dead ends. We're approaching 11 projects," said McGraw.

At the top of the list is the River Walk, a 3.1-mile stroll from the intersection of Queen and Front streets, around Union Point Park and the downtown district to Lawson Creek Park. The walk will include Tyron Palace's planned (2010) North Carolina History Education Center and existing Leander Morgan City Park. There will be a footbridge — 300 feet long with 15-foot clearance — across the water from Leander Park to Lawson Creek Park.

"We are planning a tribute to New Bern's 300 years of history with the two rivers," said McGraw. "We are negotiating with the N.C. Ferry Division for the Herbert C. Bonner, a retired ferry boat that was built in New Bern in 1970. We're attempting to partner with them on this project."

Parts of the Alfred Cunningham bridge — the 28-foot gear that turned the bridge for 50 years, the dedication plaque that was laid when the bridge was built as well as the bridge tender's tower — will be given to the city. A digital film crew has been recording opening and closing sounds and images of the old bridge with the hope of an interactive display reproducing the sights and sounds of the bridge tender's job. Plans are to reproduce the Neuse River Lighthouse, which operated at Piney Point past Oriental in 1862. The platform it stood on (called the screw pile) is still there.

"We want to rebuild that and put it in the water on the other side of Jack's Island," said McGraw. "You would approach from a sloping dock-like structure that would permit handicapped persons to get out there. That would house our indoor collection of river artifacts."

There are other projects to be considered — the remains of a river ferry existing in River Bend, two replica canoes of the type built by Tuscarora Indians and slaves, the boat-hauling machine from the bushes behind Maola Dairy, the beehive burner (an icon of the lumber industry in the county) and the re-creation of a step mast to commemorate the sailing industry. There is also a public appeal to ask people to donate ballast stones for a commemorative pathway.

An F-11 Tiger, at one time flown by the Blue Angels and donated to the City of New Bern in 1973 by the Marine Corps as a symbol of cooperation, will be restored and moved to a place of honor.

The Tower Clock project is completed on a clock built and installed in 1911 in the City Hall. The clock has not been used since 1999 when the city went to an electronic clock system. The parts have been removed, cleaned and repaired.

The final project, Fordham Cemetery, located behind the Days Hotel on Broad Street, is a tiny plot set aside by Benjamin Fordham for burials in 1753. The first burial took place in 1759, the last in 1828. The sixth-grade class at Epiphany School, taught by Cille Griffith, has researched, mapped the graves and contacted the remaining Fordham family in Georgia. They have applied for a grant through the History Channel to renovate and repair the cemetery as well as present a Powerpoint presentation to the New Bern Preservation Foundation lecture series.