On August 14, 1787, John Willis deeded 170 acres at the well known Red Bluff, where the courts were held, to the Lumberton Lottery Managers to be sold in lots for the creation of the Town of Lumberton. The site stood at the historic Red Bluff, and the deed’s beginning corner was a red oak on the bank of Drowning Creek, now the Lumber River, just west of the monument. That oak had also marked the beginning corner of a 1768 royal land grant to John Wilson for 250 acres and a 1774 land grant to John Willis for 500 acres, and together those grants included all of the original Town of Lumberton and most of the City of Lumberton as of 1987. In 1787 this was also the site of the bridge across Drowning Creek for two stage coach roads that crossed Robeson County and intersected nearby. Those roads and the Red Bluff, which served as a landing for river transportation, were the principal reasons Lumberton was located here as the seat of Robeson County.