NC Highway 86 (Caswell County, NC)

NC Highway 14 South

Today's NC Highway 86 started life as NC Highway 14. It became 86 as part of the 1940-41 NC/Virginia highway renumbering program. Virginia 86 was there first, so the North Carolina highway was given a new number..

The photograph location is just east/southeast of Yanceyville, NC. To the right is the farm road that became part of South Gatewood Road (S.R.-1780). The view is down the hill to the Country Line Creek bridge. Click photograph to see a larger image. first.
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The Bee (Danville, Virginia) 18 October 1926 (Page 1)

Hundreds of Danville motorists tried out the new concrete road linking the Virginia line with Caswell county courthouse. This highway known as Route No. 14 is now a 16-foot causeway well finished with the "herring bone" design and well pitched, especially at the numerous
curves in the road. Motorists yesterday had to make the 200 yard detour paralleling the unopened stretch from Gatewood to the state line but the entire stretch is due to be opened today.

The road does not appear to be as wide as the Reidsville road, but it is a great improvement over the old dirt road, which at places developed the "corduroy" finish. Workmen will now finish building up the dirt shoulders to this road making it wider than is now the case. The stretch is 15 miles in length and will be a great benefit to the farmers coming to Danville from the fertile tobacco counties lying
beyond Yanceyville.

The road from Yanceyville to Hillsboro has been given oil treatment as an experiment. The gravel has packed down well and the road has the appearance of being asphalt and rides as smoothly as a hard surfaced road.
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In the mid-1950s an 18-wheeler with a trailer full of peanuts lost its brakes going down the hill to Country Line Creek and overturned. The unharmed driver encouraged those who came to observe the wreck to take all the peanuts they wanted! Many did.

NC Highway 14 North

NC Highway 14 (became NC Highway 86 N) between Yanceyville and Purley (in the Covington community: just past Budge Hatchett's Tree).
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N.C. 86 (and N.C. 14 before it) originally had its southern terminus in Carrboro, not Chapel Hill. Between Carrboro and Hillsborough the highway ran over today's Old N.C. 86 (of course it did, you say, that's why it's called Old N.C. 86). The Old 86 south of Hillsborough was 86'd in the mid-1950s in favor of today's alignment south to Chapel Hill.

Length: 55 miles.

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