Six Forks? Bloodworth? Lead Mine? Where did Raleigh streets get their names?

With names like Six Forks, Bloodworth, Avent Ferry and Lead Mine, it’s easy to wonder where some of Raleigh’s more prominent streets got their names.

The answer is, there is a lot of history behind the designations.

Downtown Raleigh’s primary streets have had their names since 1792, when the city was incorporated on 1,000 acres of land the state purchased from Joel Lane.

The origins of the downtown street names are as follows:

▪  North, South, East and West streets mark the four sides of 400 acres of the Lane property on which Raleigh is centered, according to the North Carolina History Project. Nearby Lane Street is named after the former land owner whose house – now the Joel Lane Museum House – is the oldest in Raleigh.

▪  The names of North Carolina’s eight judicial districts were each assigned to a downtown roadway: Edenton, Fayetteville, Halifax, Hillsboro (Hillsborough), Morgan, Salisbury and Wilmington streets and New Bern Avenue.

▪  Nine members of a commission (one from each judicial district and an at-large member) appointed to choose Raleigh’s site and plan the city each got their name on a street sign: William Dawson (Edenton district); Joseph McDowell (Morgan); James Martin (Salisbury); Thomas Blount (Halifax); James Bloodworth (Wilmington); Frederick Hargett (New Bern); Henry William Harrington (Fayetteville); Thomas Person (Hillsborough); and at-large commissioner Willie Jones.

In his centennial celebration address on “The Early History of Raleigh,” on Oct. 18, 1892, former UNC president Kemp Plummer Battle noted that Halifax, Fayetteville and Hillsborough streets and New Bern Avenue also point in the direction of the cities that bear their name.

▪  Davie Street is named for William Davie, a revolutionary general considered the father of the University of North Carolina.

▪  Lenoir Street took the name of William Lenoir, a state Senate speaker who was also a revolutionary general.

▪  Cabarrus Street is named for Stephen Cabarrus, a state House speaker and UNC trustee.

Raleigh expanded its city limits for the first time in 1857. By 1928, a map showed 316 total streets in Raleigh.

As the city boundary expanded, newly-added streets took the names of the owners of the incorporated properties, according to an article in the Nov. 26, 1933 edition of The News & Observer.

▪  Saunders Street, for example, is named for judge, congressman and minister to Spain, Romulus M. Saunders.

▪  Boylan Avenue led to the mansion of William Boylan, where his family lived since before 1820.

▪  Glenwood Avenue was once the northern continuation of Saunders Street, according to an article in the Nov. 12, 1933, edition of The News & Observer.

Some of Raleigh’s more unique street names can be found outside of downtown.

▪  Like Falls Lake, Falls of Neuse Road (aka Falls of the Neuse) is named for the rocky falls and cascades in the Neuse River that have been submerged since the reservoir was completed in 1981, according to ncgeology.com.

As unfriendly as it sounds, the word Neuse comes from a group of Native Americans known as the Neusiok, meaning “peace,” according to the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.

▪  Six Forks isn’t a trendy North Raleigh eatery and doesn’t have anything to do with silverware. The road is named for a former “community in northern Wake County near the head of Mine Creek where six roads come together,” according to William Powell’s “The North Carolina Gazetteer.”

The six roads appear to be Strickland and Six Forks in both directions, and Baileywick and Old Lead Mine. Before being called Six Forks, the community was called Tippers Crossroads – after the Tippers family that settled there as early as the 1790s, according to “Wake, Capital City of North Carolina,” by Elizabeth Reid Murray.

▪  Nearby Lead Mine Road would have been more accurately named Graphite Mine Road. The N.C. Geological Survey said a map drawn by a resident in 1979 shows three vertical shafts and a drainage passage leading to two horizontal tunnels in a graphite mine just north of Lynn Road, between Lead Mine Road and Candlewood Drive in the area of the Greystone community.

The mine dates back to the 1820s and ceased production in 1906, according to the geological survey. Surrounding street names – including Mine Shaft, Prospector and Nugget – follow suit.

▪  Millbrook Road took the name of another community that settled before 1860, according to the Gazetteer. The community was named for a brook where a gristmill operated.

▪  Avent Ferry Road (also found in Holly Springs) actually does involve a ferry that operated from 1775 to 1926, according to the Sir Walter Raleigh Chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames. The ferry helped people cross the Cape Fear River near N.C. 42 until a bridge was constructed.

▪  Pullen Road makes sense as the name for the street that runs alongside popular Pullen Park. Both the land for the park and for the N.C. College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts – now known as N.C. State University, was donated by R. Stanhope Pullen.

▪  Jones Sausage Road near Garner takes its name from the Jesse Jones Sausage Company that General Mills purchased in 1968. The site along Interstate 40 later housed ConAgra Foods, which closed in 2011 after a 2009 explosion killed four at the Slim Jim plant, and has since been in possession of the Garner Economic Development Corporation.

This story was originally published March 1, 2018 at 9:56 AM with the headline "Six Forks? Bloodworth? Lead Mine? Where did Raleigh streets get their names?."