Looking at a sprawling construction site near I-40 in Mebane, cars whizzing by, it’s hard to picture how this swath of land looked hundreds of years ago, when, some activists say, Indigenous people traversed it as a trading route.
On a Saturday afternoon, Crystal Cavalier-Keck is asking a group of about 30 people to try. She gestures toward a nearby tree with a thick limb jutting out at a right angle and tells the group to look where the limb is pointing.
“That was one of the ways we marked our path,” said Cavalier-Keck, a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, tracing her finger from the tree across the street and into the 32-acre expanse where a new Buc-ee’s, projected to be the world’s largest convenience store, is expected to open by May 2027.
This is the final stop on a four-hour trek organized by 7 Directions of Service, an environmental justice organization helmed by Cavalier-Keck, along portions of the historic Occaneechi Great Trading Path—an ancient route that once linked tribal nations from present day Virginia through the Carolinas…