Princeville and the Floodplain

Why this chapter exists

Most real estate writing about Princeville does one of two things. It leans entirely on the town's history and says nothing about the water, or it says "flood zone — check with your insurance agent" and moves on. Neither is useful to somebody trying to decide whether to spend their savings here.

So this chapter is the flood record. Gauge heights, dates, what the levee did and did not do, where the federal project actually stands, and what the town is building on higher ground. It is not a warning against buying in Princeville. It is the set of facts a buyer needs in order to make that decision themselves, in the same detail I would give a client sitting across a table.

The town, accurately

Princeville sits on the south bank of the Tar River, directly across from Tarboro. It was settled in 1865 as Freedom Hill by people who had freed themselves from slavery and had sheltered within Union lines during the war. The North Carolina General Assembly incorporated it on February 20, 1885, and it was renamed for Turner Prince, a resident carpenter and formerly enslaved man.¹

Princeville is widely described as the oldest town in the United States chartered and governed by Black Americans. That description is worth stating precisely, because sources differ on the superlative and a buyer deserves the accurate version rather than the marketing one:

• The NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources calls it "the state's first town founded by African Americans," and says plainly that "its claim to first in the nation is rivaled only by Eatonville, Florida."²
• NCpedia, published by the State Library of North Carolina, writes that Princeville "lays claim to being the 'oldest city chartered by black people in America'" — attributing the claim rather than asserting it.³
• The Town of Princeville itself describes the town as "one of the oldest towns established by blacks in the country." The town does not make the unqualified claim.⁴
• Brooklyn, Illinois is the serious competing claim. Founded around 1829 and incorporated in 1873 — twelve years before Princeville — it is called "the first incorporated Black town in America" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.⁵

Eatonville, Florida, the rival NC DNCR names, incorporated in 1887, two years after Princeville. So on incorporation date Princeville predates Eatonville and trails Brooklyn. None of that diminishes what the place is. It just means that if you buy here and someone asks, you should be able to say the accurate thing.

The flood record, from the gauge

The USGS has operated a stream gauge on the Tar River at Tarboro — station 02083500 — with records going back to 1897. It measures the same water that reaches Princeville. These are the five highest peaks in the station's history:⁶

Two things are worth pulling out of that table before anything else.

First: the two worst floods in 128 years of record both happened within the last 27 years. That is the single most important fact in this chapter. Whatever you believe about why, the recent record is the recent record, and a buyer planning to own a house here for thirty years should plan against it rather than against the 1919-to-1996 stretch.

Second: Hurricane Fran, in September 1996, was not one of these events. The 1996 water-year peak at Tarboro was 26.57 feet — not in the station's top ten. Fran devastated other parts of North Carolina. It is regularly and wrongly grouped with Floyd and Matthew in writing about Princeville. It does not belong there.

Hurricane Floyd, September 1999

Floyd made landfall near Cape Fear on September 16, 1999, onto ground already saturated by Hurricane Dennis two weeks earlier. Twelve to twenty inches of rain fell across eastern North Carolina; Rocky Mount recorded 16.55 inches in a single day. The Tar River crested at Tarboro at 41.51 feet — roughly 22 feet above flood stage.⁷

Statewide, Floyd killed 52 people in North Carolina, 36 of them by drowning, and FEMA declared 66 counties disaster areas.⁸ I have not found a verified Princeville-specific death count, so this site does not publish one.

In Princeville itself, NC DNCR's own account is that "the whole town was underwater for days." A Columbia University National Center for Disaster Preparedness case study puts the flooded share of the town at roughly 90 percent.⁹ The NC State Climate Office puts homes heavily damaged or destroyed at roughly 600, in a town of fewer than 2,500 people. Other accounts say more than 700. I have not been able to reconcile those two figures, so treat "roughly 600, possibly more" as the honest range.

Hurricane Matthew, October 2016

Matthew reached eastern North Carolina on October 8, 2016, dropping roughly ten inches of rain on Princeville. The Tar River crested at Tarboro at 36.29 feet on October 12 — the second-highest reading in the gauge's history.⁶ Forecasts circulating at the time gave 35.8 feet; the observed peak was higher.

Nearly 500 homes flooded. Roughly 80 percent of the town went underwater for days, and about 350 households sustained major damage. Town hall, the fire station, the public works building, the senior center, the elementary school and the museum all flooded.¹⁰

The mechanism in 2016 was different from 1999, and the difference matters. Reporting indicates the floodwater entered through a gap at the railroad tracks rather than by overtopping the levee. Contemporaneous accounts saying "the dike held" and accounts saying "the town flooded anyway" are both correct — the levee itself was not overtopped, and the town still took on water through a flank opening. Anyone telling you the levee protects Princeville is answering a narrower question than the one you are asking.

The levee, and where the federal project actually stands

The existing levee is about three miles of earthen embankment along the south bank of the Tar River, built under the Army Corps' Section 205 Continuing Authorities Program and completed in 1967 at a cost of roughly $4 million.⁴

Its design event is the flood of 1919 — the 34.00-foot crest in the table above. Congressman Don Davis put this on the record in testimony to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: the project "is rooted in the 'Design Event,' referencing back to the historic flood of 1919. Unfortunately, Hurricanes Floyd in 1999 and Matthew in 2016 surpassed this threshold."¹¹

That is the crux of it. The structure protecting Princeville was designed against a flood that two storms in the last three decades have already exceeded.

What has happened since:

• 2019–2020. Congress appropriated, and the Corps announced, roughly $39.6 million for a Princeville flood-risk-reduction project.
• June 2023. The Corps told Princeville residents that revised modeling showed a new levee "would threaten thousands of buildings across the river in Tarboro, as well as upstream and downstream as far as Greenville," and that they were unable to complete the project at that time.¹² This is induced flooding — you cannot lower the risk on one bank without raising it on the other.
• 2024. The project was tabled. Before anything proceeds, the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works must approve funding for a re-evaluation report exploring alternative flood-mitigation infrastructure. No timeline was given.¹³

The higher ground

The other half of the story, and the half that almost never gets written about, is that Princeville is not simply waiting.

After Matthew, with state assistance, the town acquired 53 acres outside the floodplain and designated it for relocated essential services. In 2019 it acquired an additional 88 adjacent acres. FEMA announced nearly $11 million for stormwater infrastructure at the new higher-ground town site.¹³ As of a February 2026 regional news report, development of the 53-acre site was underway and expected to be complete by June 2026 — a single-source date I have not been able to corroborate, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.¹⁴

It is also worth knowing that of roughly 100 FEMA buyout applications submitted since Matthew, only eight had been completed as of 2024 reporting, and Mayor Bobbie Jones has been explicit about the town's position: "We're open to expansion, but we are not going to leave."¹³

What this means for a buyer

Here is how I would actually advise someone looking at a Princeville property, or at anything else on the low ground along the Tar.

Princeville is not a place you talk somebody out of. It is a place you make sure they walk into with their eyes open, holding a written insurance quote and a flood zone determination for the exact parcel.

Data note: Gauge figures are from the USGS annual-peak record for station 02083500 and are stable historical measurements. Levee-project status, relocation progress, and FEMA mapping all change; every claim about them is dated in the footnotes below. Verify anything time-sensitive before relying on it.

Sources

1. NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, "Princeville, Founded by African Americans, Incorporated in 1885." dncr.nc.gov ↩
2. Same source as note 1; the Eatonville comparison is DNCR's own wording. ↩
3. NCpedia (State Library of North Carolina), "Princeville." ncpedia.org ↩
4. Town of Princeville, "Town of Princeville History." townofprinceville.com — also the source for the 1967 levee completion and its approximate $4 million cost. ↩
5. National Trust for Historic Preservation, on Brooklyn, Illinois. savingplaces.org ↩
6. USGS National Water Information System, annual peak streamflow, station 02083500 (Tar River at Tarboro, NC). waterdata.usgs.gov ↩
7. NC State Climate Office, "Floyd's Flooding Overwhelmed Eastern North Carolina" (2019). climate.ncsu.edu ↩
8. NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, "Hurricane Floyd: Devastating Eastern North Carolina." dncr.nc.gov; statewide toll and damage figures per note 7. ↩
9. National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School, Princeville NC case study. ncdp.columbia.edu (PDF). ECU's "just below the height of rooftops and church steeples" description: ecu.edu ↩
10. Grist, "Princeville, North Carolina" (2024), corroborated by the ECU and Columbia NCDP sources above. grist.org ↩
11. Rep. Don Davis, written testimony, House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee WRDA Member Day. transportation.house.gov (PDF) ↩
12. East Carolina University, Office of Campus Sustainability, "Princeville" (February 1, 2024) — reporting the Corps' June 2023 statement to residents. ecu.edu ↩
13. Grist, "Princeville, North Carolina, FEMA grant, Army Corps" (July 10, 2024) — project tabled, re-evaluation requirement, the roughly $11 million FEMA stormwater award, buyout application counts, and Mayor Jones's quote. grist.org ↩
14. WITN, February 26–27, 2026, on the 53-acre higher-ground development. witn.com — single regional-television source; the June 2026 completion date is reported, not independently confirmed. ↩