The New River

Not "new" at all, the New River, the second oldest in the world, is more than 320 million years old. Only the Nile is older. The river received its original English name, Wood's River, perhaps from Colonel Abraham Wood who explored the area in 1654, from the 1671 expedition on which he sent Thomas Batte and Robert Hallom, or from Thomas Wood (possibly his son) who died on the 1671 trip. The name New derives from New Brittaine or New Virginia, for the western territory of the Carolinas and Virginia where the river begins, as mentioned after 1651 in official London reports.