Native Americans, probably of the Tuscarora traveled along the Tar River hundreds of years ago using dug out canoes. According to a 1733 Mosely map of North Carolina, a village was located near the mouth of Town Creek where it flows into the Tar River. The name given on the map is King Blount's Town. King Blount was the chief of a northern group of Tuscarora who chose not to attack the Europeans in the 1711 war around New Bern.

Settlers, some from southern Virginia and others coming inland from the coast, had established homes by the 1730s when Edgecombe became a precinct of Bertie County. It is believed the earliest settlement was around Town Creek and the area became Sparta.

According to early records a grist mill was constructed on the river not far from Town Creek. In addition to farming, people began harvesting naval products from the pine forests in the area. The naval stores of tar, pitch and turpentine were transported down river to the coast on flat boats. Flat boats were also used to move tobacco, cotton, and other products down stream. Letters and records John Gray Blount of Washington to his brother Thomas Blount, owner of the Blount Bridgers House of Tarboro, often mention the use of the flatboats to transport goods along the Tar river.

These flat boats, sometimes called bateaux in Virginia or pole boats in other colonies, were usually 50 to 60 feet long were navigated in the river by pushing poles along the banks or the river bottom. Because of the winding river, the area around Tarboro was as far upriver as the boats could come.

The flat boats were used for at least 100 years until the steam boats became more common on the river. The first steamboat to come upriver was the 85 foot long E.D. MacNair in 1836. That particular boat only traveled the river for about three years before it was moved to the Neuse river. The Wayne was the next boat to appear around 1847, but it burned.

In 1849, the Amidas, the newest steamer to sail the Tar river, towed several flatboats upriver to bring supplies to Tarboro. The local paper described her as a “beautiful little steamer.” In September she carried several passengers who described her as a luxury boat “well arranged with comfortable cabins, tastily finished and furnished, with an ample promenade deck.”

At some point during November 1849, the craft hit and damaged the wooden bridge that crossed the river at the Town Creek site. Damage to the boat was reparable but the bridge was so badly damaged that the people of Sparta sued the boat owners. Rather than repair the bridge, the steamboat officers reportedly tried to destroy the remains of the bridge. In Feb. 1850, an article in the paper printed the unanimous resolutions of the Sparta citizens:

“Whereas we, a part of the citizens of the county of Edgecombe, have met in public meeting to take into consideration the late attempt of the officers to demolish the public bridge near Sparta; and whereas the said bridge has a drawbridge or gate for the passage of steamboats, and said bridge is of the utmost importance to the people on either side of the river, and to the traveling community at large, and is now the direct mail route from Tarborough to Washington, NC and as cost the county about $2000; and whereas the officers of said boat have arrayed themselves in opposition to the rights of a community of citizens having equal rights, and locking on such conduct with indignation, we therefore resolve…”

Following that, the citizens felt the violation of law and the usurpation of power made it necessary for the magistrates to arrest the perpetrators and hold them in jail until an honorable resolution to the bridge could be worked out.

Subsequent reports were not found until 1854 when the paper reported that the Amidas was once again steaming in the Tar River after an absence of a couple of years.

An article by Gaston Lichtenstein in April 1924, mentioned the boat The Oregon first appeared in 1847, but that it was large and had trouble navigating the river. Historian Lichtenstein went on to say that the boat was purchased by the Confederate government and was renamed Col. Hill, but it sank at some point and “the old hulk rests a few miles below Tarboro at the bottom of the river, covered with tons of sand.”