LITTLE BEACH
LITTLE BEACH.
This was sometimes called Nile Beach. It lies immediately north of the mouth of the Nile River and about half-a-mile south of the Nine-mile Beach, from which it is separated by a rise called Parsons’ Hill. The latter name is not derived from any cleric, but from the owner James Parsons, keeper of the Welcome Inn that stood at the extreme north of Little Beach and was, after the closing of Hall’s Hotel, the first stopping-place for southbound coaches after leaving Totara. The first landlord was James Parsons, an ex-pilot of Constant Bay. In 1911 the licensee was Adrian Mitchell, and the last keeper was Mary Hampton, who allowed the license to lapse in 1933. The old landmark still stands, empty and neglected, a dilapidated memorial of times that were. Many tales it could tell of happenings during its long years of life; of the streams of goldseekers that trod the road beside its door, of coaches laden with pioneers, of lumbering wagons, carts, packhorses, riders and swaggers, and gold escorts. Now, tourists go a mile or two out of their way to view its falling timbers and paneless windows, and to speculate upon its history while scanning its inside walls papered with the prints of last century, many of the latter being still readable.
Little Beach was not combed extensively, though claims operated there. Its rights are now held by Hampton Brothers, who work upon it occasionally.
Parsons’ Hill was Section 4 (ten acres) of Square 137 of Nelson Land District and the Welcome Inn was on Section 6.
Little Beach was a portion of the beach-route, but soon a road was formed around its fringe and afforded a better way for vehicles. A strip of land, a few chains across, to the south of this beach, separated it from Small’s Beach, a sandy spit in the Nile basin. Beside the road over this strip (on Section 43) was the cottage of the Nile signalman, Henry Small, who supervised the entrance and departure of the little steamers after the Nile River became the port of Charleston. As related in another chapter, Little Beach was, in Charleston’s earliest days, a landing-place for sea-borne supplies, vessels landing them upon the beach, and Nees’s Tramway conveying them “to the diggings.”
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