N 35°56’12.12″ W 78°35’55.49″ Google Earth location
I can pin down this location much better than when it was taken, partially because there’s no date stamp on the slide frame and it sits in the ‘Abstract’ section devoid of further context that might lend a clue – I’m going to say 1999, and let you attempt to prove otherwise. I was on – well, off of by this point – some hiking trails that bordered this particular branch of Falls Lake, early one foggy morn. This little ‘bay’ of the lake had a narrow isthmus across the mouth, certainly manmade, for reasons unknown, but it had a couple of – cedar? – trees growing upon it and I chose them for the fog shot. If I remember right, it was either on the north shore of this bay, or the one immediately north of it, that I found an old stone fireplace almost hidden within the woods, the remainder of the cabin/lodge/satanic altar since vanished. The isthmus wasn’t likely to be a dam, since it was far too low, on a shallow water site anyway, the feeder stream into the bay far too low in volume, and a much easier place would have been near the tip of the bay where the sides of the valley were quite steep. A bridge? Perhaps, but it would have saved only a few hundred meters at best, and linked to nothing apparent; the sides of the lakeshore were fairly steep all through here and the hiking trails meandered around and up and down and, really, the area was for footpaths or horses – little else could handle it.
Immediately north of this on the next bay is a small pond at the tip of the bay, and that was likely created by a manmade dam, because it’s too straight and not at all a natural-looking bit of geology. But I have no idea what this was.