About 1700, under the supervision of Daniel Axtell and his partners, the Axtell Dam was constructed on the creek known to local Native Americans as Boshoe. By 1830, a primitive map of the land where the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company planned to build New Summerville showed it as the Old Dam. The dam obstructed the creek's flow, and its waters filled ravines to the north and west. A nearby sawmill supported colonial lumbermen working in the adjacent pine forest. The extensive millpond flooded the area now known as Azalea Park and formed the reservoir for the Newington Plantation rice fields. Today, Boshoe is the sawmill branch, and the broken remains of the Axtell Dam still rest in the woods to the east.