Land of the Little Rivers: How Water Shaped Perquimans

The first time you cross the US 17 Business bridge into the town of Hertford, you feel it before you see it. The deck hums under your tires, the river glints through the trusses on both sides, and you realize you are driving across water that has been carrying people here for over three hundred years¹.

Perquimans County calls itself the land of the little rivers, and the name fits. The Perquimans runs down the middle of the county into the Albemarle Sound, the Yeopim borders the west, and the Little River anchors the east. The Census Bureau counts 81.759 square miles of water against 247.173 of land². Nearly a quarter of the county is water, and every acre of it has a story.

The Rivers That Started It

This was one of the original precincts of Albemarle County, the first county the Lords Proprietor created in 1663³. Settlers came south from Virginia in the 1660s, and they did something unusual: they bought the land from the Yeopim people instead of taking it⁴. George Durant, whose 1662 deed is often cited as the first recorded land transaction in North Carolina, signed his at a spot on the Perquimans.

That practice set the county’s character. Quakers arrived early, and their faith shaped how land changed hands here. William Edmundson held the colony’s first religious services in the spring of 1672⁵. By 1680, monthly meetings gathered in homes along the Little River, the Perquimans, and Yeopim Creek⁶. Because Quakers bought rather than seized land, they did not immediately control the best tobacco ground, so early Perquimans farms leaned on wheat and corn⁷. The county’s oldest neighborhoods, Belvidere and Old Neck, still trace to those meeting-house communities.

Ferries Before Bridges

For the first century, the river was a road, not a barrier. In 1715 the county court ordered a ferry across the Perquimans from Mrs. Anne Wilson’s landing to James Thickpenny’s side, and told her no one else could run a boat within five miles above or below that spot⁸. Ferries carried court-goers, muster troops, and freight until 1798, when the town of Hertford got its first bridge: twenty feet wide, floating on empty whiskey barrels, and privately owned. The county bought it for $5,786 and abolished the tolls⁹.

The Swing Bridge That Still Opens

The famous S-shaped swing bridge came later. NCDOT calls it Bridge No. 8, built in 1929 (most news coverage says 1928)¹⁰. By 2015 its sufficiency rating had fallen to 3 out of 100. The old span came out in July 2021, and the bridge crossing the river today is a 2022 replacement built to honor it: a truss swing span, Oregon rails, pedestrian lights matching the town’s streetlights, and the original bridge plaque reused¹¹.

And it still opens. Federal regulation 33 CFR 117.835 requires the draw to open on signal from 8 a.m. to midnight April through September, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. October through March¹². Commuters learn the rhythm fast. A boat captain tapping the horn is part of the morning.

What the Water Still Means for Buyers

The river behaves differently than most buyers expect. It is wind-driven, not tidal: NOAA’s Coast Pilot 4 says the rise and fall depends on the direction of the winds, and the river water is fresh at the town of Hertford, turning brackish downstream¹³. A hard northeast blow pushes water up the river; a westerly pulls it out. Depth is real but unmaintained, about 8.8 feet to town, with no federal dredging project behind it¹⁴.

That water is also why lots here cost a fraction of comparable frontage an hour east in Currituck or Dare¹⁵. Perquimans is one of North Carolina’s twenty CAMA counties, so the 75-foot estuarine shoreline buffer and the 30 percent impervious-surface cap apply to most waterfront builds¹⁶. The rules are specific, but so is the payoff: nineteen National Register listings, five historic districts, and a river you can actually use¹⁷.

The Bottom Line

You trade the conveniences to live here. No hospital in the county, no big-box stores, and a drive to Elizabeth City or Greenville for most errands. In exchange, you get a river that still works like it did in 1715, a bridge that still opens on signal, and a waterfront market where the history is not a slogan, it is the lot itself.