Millions will be awarded to broadband providers across rural North Carolina to connect homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions to high-speed internet access.

The governor’s office announced last week that $26 million will go to bring 5,161 rural homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in 66 counties access to high-speed internet infrastructure by the end of the year through the Stop-Gap Solutions program.

A part of the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity, the program administers funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to coverage gaps in internet access. This is done by targeting broadband line extensions to reach individuals and small pockets of homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.

“These broadband projects will ensure more families can soon access telehealth, students can complete their homework, businesses can compete in larger markets, and communities can thrive,” Gov. Josh Stein said in the release. “I am committed to improving broadband access across the state and making sure no community is left behind.”

On the coast, FOCUS Broadband, also known as Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, has been selected to receive $1.65 million to connect 145 locations in Duplin and Pender counties.

Connect Holding II, LLC, doing business as Brightspeed, will be awarded $1.68 million to connect 2,439 locations in Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Tyrrell and Washington counties on the coast. Other counties to benefit from this award are Alamance, Bladen, Caldwell, Caswell, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Jones, Martin, Montgomery, Moore, Nash, Northampton, Orange, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilson counties.

HarvestBeam Inc., a broadband provider for rural North Carolina, will receive $413,260 for 95 locations in Craven and Pitt counties.

Roanoke Connect Holdings, operating as Fybe internet provider, will be awarded $2.4 million to connect 826 locations in Bertie, Chowan, Gates, Granville, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton counties. 

Wilkes & RiverStreet Networks has been selected to receive $959,828 to connect 306 locations in Camden, Currituck, Stokes and Wilkes counties.

Other providers to be awarded serve customers in Alexander, Bladen, Buncombe, Durham, Henderson, Hoke, Iredell, Forsyth, Jackson, Macon, Orange, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Swain, Transylvania and Yadkin counites.

“High-speed internet access is the foundation for health care delivery, public safety operations, workforce development, and economic growth in our state,” Teena Piccione, NCDIT secretary and state chief information officer, said. “This program allows us to move with urgency and precision to connect more North Carolinians.”

Help protect native habitats and support local wildlife Sunday afternoon by lending a hand to remove the invasive Japanese stiltgrass from Merchants Millpond State Park in Gates County.

North Carolina Wildlife Federation‘s Wildlife Habitat Stewards of Northeastern NC has organized the hands-on volunteer effort from 1 to 3 p.m. Oct. 19 to clear the invasive plant from along the park’s Coleman Trail.

“Japanese stiltgrass, originally from Asia, has spread rapidly across the eastern U.S. since its arrival in 1919. It crowds out native plants, offers little to no food for wildlife, and can produce thousands of seeds that linger in the soil for years,” according to the federation.

The state park in Gatesville is 10 miles south of North Carolina’s northeastern border with Virginia and centers on a 760-acre millpond more than 190 years old.

Parking and restrooms are available at the Coleman Trailhead. Register online for more details.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Gates County is yet another fascinating county that emerged from the original Albemarle settlements.

Its rural character, plantation history and natural beauty make it similar to other northeastern counties such as Chowan, Pasquotank and Camden.

Gates also has had to adapt to the decline of agriculture and find its place on the outskirts of metropolitan Virginia like all the northeastern counties. But Gates has a number of famous residents, plantation homes and a state park that makes it a worthy subject.

The area that is now Gates County was originally the home of the Chowanoke Native Americans. The Chowanoke were a sizable group whom Europeans eventually forced onto a reservation, which was dissolved by 1821. After the journey of John Pory down the Chowan River in 1622, Europeans began to settle in the area. Traders bought Native American land and were followed by farmers who grew corn and tobacco. During much of the 17th century, the current county made up the northwestern frontier of North Carolina.

Gates County was formed in 1779 and was named after Revolutionary War general Horatio Gates. According to David Leroy Corbitt, author of “The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663-1943,” the county was formed from the northeastern section of Hertford County and the northern sections of Chowan and Perquimans counties.

The county’s soil and proximity to the markets of Virginia made it a center for tobacco cultivation in the antebellum period. Planters built sizable homes such as Buckland in 1795 and Elmwood Plantation in 1822.

They also constructed mills that ground corn and powered saws to process the county’s sizable lumber stands. One of these mills created the landscape that later became Merchants Millpond State Park, one of only two state parks in North Carolina in the Albemarle region.

The wealth of Gates County planters came at the expense of the county’s sizable enslaved population. According to the 1860 Hergesheimer map, 48.3% of Gates County’s population was enslaved in that year, the 18th highest total in the state. The Hergesheimer map shows the distribution of the slave population of the southern United States.

Along with a large number of slaves, Gates County also had a robust free African American population, partly because of the county’s border location. In his history of free African Americans in North Carolina, John Hope Franklin noted that “In the counties bordering on Virginia and South Carolina were to be found a large number of free Negroes whose very presence in these areas bespoke the more liberal treatment of free Negroes in North Carolina than in the neighboring states.”

The 1860 census counted 361 free African Americans in Gates County. They were significant members of the community and held a wide variety of professions such as carpenters, blacksmiths and coopers. But free African Americans also held a precarious place in North Carolina society. Their activities were restricted, they had few legal rights, and were constantly viewed with distrust by white society.

Gates County escaped the Civil War with little war-related damage. The county’s rural location was not strategic to the war aims of either the Union or the Confederacy, and so it avoided major battles or raids. But following the war, the county had to rebuild its economy.

Peanut cultivation flourished in the county along with truck farming of fruits and vegetables and livestock. Gatesville, originally incorporated in 1830, served as the only sizable community in the county. The hallmark of the town was and is the Gates County Courthouse, built in 1836 and enlarged in 1904, which became known for its Greek Revival details and cast-iron railing as noted by Catherine W. Cockshutt in her nomination of the building for the National Register of Historic Places.

Gates County also played a role in Reconstruction. African Americans and white Republicans reshaped county government and filled numerous political offices. One of the county’s residents, John Wallace, left the county for Florida and served as a Republican state senator and representative. He later became known to historians for a controversial book which, according to historian James C. Clark, in “was critical of his fellow blacks and Radical Republicans, and frequently complimentary of white conservation (conservative) Democrats.” The true authorship of the book remains in question.

African Americans in North Carolina were disenfranchised following the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900. They still played a role in the economy and society of Gates County, however. A prominent example of this engagement was the establishment of Rosenwald Schools, centers of African American education across the South funded by Sears President Julius Rosenwald. Gates County was home to seven Rosenwald Schools according to a 1930 report from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Two are still standing, most notably the Reid’s Grove School, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 20th century, Gates County was home to a number of prominent North Carolinians. Thad Eure (1899-1993), born in the southern part of the county, was the North Carolina Secretary of State for 53 years and holds the title of longest-tenured elected office holder in American history.

Herman Riddick was an influential African American football coach at what later became North Carolina Central University, coaching for twenty seasons according to Central’s Athletics Hall of Fame website.

Calvin Earl, famed African American singer and educator on spirituals, is also from Gatesville.

Today, Gates County is a rural curiosity on the border with Virginia. It is the second-smallest county by population in the Albemarle region behind Camden County, and its only town, Gatesville, has fewer than 400 people. The county is removed from whatever traffic may be associated with interstate construction on U.S. 17 or the mid-Currituck bridge. But Gates County has room for growth, nonetheless.

Merchants Millpond attracts a young visitor base with its trails and paddling opportunities. As noted in Indian Country Today, the Chowanoke Native Americans have started purchasing land in the county and hope to open a cultural center. There is also the possibility of development from Hampton Roads, with Suffolk, population 90,000, only about 10 miles away from the county’s northern border.

Like the counties to its east, Gates County will have to tackle the question of whether it will become a satellite of southeast Virginia or will continue the rural character that has defined it for centuries.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has awarded a nearly $4 million contract to improve roads in Chowan, Gates and Perquimans counties.

The $3.9 million contract, awarded to Rose Brothers Paving of Raleigh, includes milling and resurfacing U.S. 17 Business, or Queen Street, in Chowan County, milling and resurfacing U.S. 13 in Gates County, and milling, resurfacing and shoulder reconstruction on several secondary roads in Chowan, Gates and Perquimans counties, according to officials.

Work on the projects can begin as soon as March 22 and is expected to be complete by the end of June 2022.