Why are all the streets in Pine Valley named for Confederates?
Well not quite all of them — there’s Haig Drive, which more likely owes its name to a British field marshal, while Reagan Court might honor the 40th president of the United States rather than the Confederate postmaster general, John H. Reagan of Texas. Still, there are a lot of Confederate generals down there, and even an admiral. (Semmes Drive honors Raphael Semmes, commander of the raider CSS Alabama.) Why is that? Well, Pine Valley grew up around the Pine Valley Country Club (founded 1955), in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Pine Valley Baptist Church and Pine Valley United Methodist Church were both organized in 1961. Now, one of the big deals in 1961 was the centennial of the American Civil War. (Life magazine devoted a cover story to it. Bruce Catton’s “American Heritage History of the Civil War came out in 1960, and Shelby Foote was in the middle of publishing his three-volume Civil War history — Volume II came out in 1963.) In New Hanover County, street, road and drive names ar
