Guilford College Woods

“Runaway slaves used frequently to conceal themselves in the woods and thickets in the vicinity of New Garden, waiting opportunities to make their escape to the North, and I generally learned their places of concealment and rendered them all the service in my power.”

     -Levi Coffin, “President” of the Underground Railroad

The Guilford College Woods and the Origins of the Underground Railroad

History of the Woods Projects and Resources

The area now called the Guilford College Woods was once home to the Saura and Keyawee peoples, who systematically burned the underbrush, leaving an open grassy area with widely spaced trees.  The native peoples left the region before European-American settlers came to the region in the mid-eighteenth century, and it is thought that the area became heavily wooded by the end of the 18th century.  Friends (Quakers) originally from southeastern Pennsylvania were among the first European-Americans to come to this area, and they named their new community New Garden in honor of a Pennsylvania Friends meeting of the same name, which was in turn the namesake of an Irish meeting. 

The Friends of New Garden gradually turned the wooded region into a farming community, beginning with meetinghouse made out of three fallen logs that doubled as a horse pen.  Legends abound regarding the community’s early years, including the mysterious Anne the Huntress, who appeared in 1790, wearing buckskin and carrying a decorated rifle, which she used to beat the local men in a shooting contest.  She lived and taught in the community for nearly two decades before disappearing again.

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse at the close of the Revolutionary War thrust the nonviolent New Garden Friends into the midst of war.  The bloodbath ended with the British troops retreating down a wooded road from the courthouse toward the Friends’ meetinghouse (cutting directly through the modern Guilford Woods and coming out between the baseball and football fields).  The Quakers cared for the wounded, and buried the dead of both armies – about 20-30, lined up side by side, British and American, to show their brotherhood -  in a mass grave in the New Garden cemetery.  There are also graves at the intersection of Ballinger, New Garden, and Fleming Roads, containing British soldiers killed by American snipers.

In 1837, New Garden Boarding School was founded in the midst of a thriving Quaker community.  The Woods harbored fugitive slaves in the antebellum era; according to prominent abolitionist Levi Coffin, who lived adjacent to this land, and has been connected to the Underground Railroad, “Runaway slaves used frequently to conceal themselves in the woods and thickets in the vicinity of New Garden, waiting opportunities to make their escape to the North, and I generally learned their places of concealment and rendered them all the service in my power.”   During the Civil War, the wooded area also hid Quaker men trying to escape the Confederate draft.  Some of these men hid in the Boarding School’s barns; others took cover in a “cave” in the Woods that consisted of a pit covered with a camouflaged trapdoor.

In 1888, New Garden Boarding School became Guilford College, and by the mid-twentieth century, Greensboro’s development surrounded the nearly three hundred acre parcel of wooded land.  The Guilford College Woods has also served the college community throughout the years.  Clay mined from the bluffs to the east of the Old Apartments - behind the Pines and Milner Guest House - and carted to a kiln located near the football practice field was made into bricks to be used in the construction of early buildings on campus.  Parts of the Woods were once part of the College farm, with large sections fenced off for cattle pasturage.   The Woods was a popular picnic site in the early to mid-20th century, and an early annual picnic involved the entire school community and plenty of festivity.  The group cooked stew in a 25-gallon cast-iron wash-pot, carried to the picnic site on a horse-drawn wagon; college students hunted for meat for the stew in the Woods and surrounding areas. 

A lake was created in the college’s early years, about an eighth of a mile northeast of the current lake, as a water source for livestock.  Students also used it for recreation; swimming and skating were common seasonal entertainments.   The earthen dam that held this lake collapsed around the turn of the century and, while repairs were attempted, the lake was lost. The remains of the final concrete dam can still be found in the Woods.  There were also earthen dams located near what is now the Jefferson Gardens neighborhood.  The current lake was created in 1952 for recreation purposes, and for years it was used for swimming and boating, looked over by a lifeguard and restricted to use by Guilford students and faculty.

The steps by the current lake and the bridges, built by students in 1984 as part of a planned arboretum, were inspired by William E. Fulcher, a professor of biology at Guilford from 1962-1996.  The Greensboro Drug Action Council built a ropes course in the Woods with special permission from the College in the late 1970s, which was shut down twenty years later for liability reasons, although not completely dismantled until 2007.

Beginning in the 1970s the Greensboro Department of Transportation planned to construct a major highway called Painter Boulevard through the middle of the Guilford Woods.  The College battled this development for decades, getting the area recognized as a National Historic District in the process.  In 2001, in an effort to get the College out of financial difficulties, the Chief Financial Officer tried to sell the 12 acres of wooded land that serve as a corridor between the Guilford Woods and Price Park.  Vehement protest from the Guilford College community, including a letter from biology professor Lynn Moseley and other science faculty, managed to prevent the sale, and current College President Kent Chabotar assures the community that he will not sell any part of the Woods.  Around the same time as the attempted sale (2000/2001), after a May 2000 storm with 80 mph straightline winds downed trees all over campus, including fifty mature hardwoods in the quad, some neighbors of the Woods toward Jefferson Rd. complained that underbrush in the Woods posed a fire hazard.  In an effort to avoid liability, the College hired a tree cutter to clear out dead trees and fallen limbs, but the cutter went well beyond his contract and cut down a large swath of live trees in the process in order to sell the wood.

The expressions of student outrage in 1990 and 2005 with the clearing of portions of the Woods for expanded student housing further emphasize the importance of the Guilford Woods to the community; the Woods has been an iconic feature of the College for decades, and serves as a defining part of the Guilford experience for many students and other community members.

Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati: R. Clarke & Co., 1880.) 20.