For hundreds of years, people crossed the Neuse River in this area on horseback and by stagecoach, wagon, or car. In the 1700s, before bridges were built here, Smith's Ferry carried people, carts, wagons, and horses across the river on a wooden raft with two low sides that men pushed with long poles. In the early 1800s, Hinton's Bridge, a wooden bridge over the Neuse River in this area, provided a crossing for Tarborough Road, a dirt road that ran from Hillsborough to Raleigh to points east toward Tarboro. In the early 1900s, the original wooden bridge was replaced with an iron bridge, and two piers that once supported it still stand at the river's edge not far from here. Today, the main river crossing in this area is the US 64 bridge about one-half mile downstream, and pedestrians and bicyclists can use the greenway trail bridge less than 1,000 feet downstream.