Fight or flight: Princeville came back stronger after the first 100-year flood, but twice is proving too much for many in the historic town.

• Author: Williams, Allison

The first time, in 1999, he took a Small Business Administration loan and rebuilt his auto-repair shop off Main Street in Princeville. Next door, his wife did the same at Vines Beauty Shop. The Vineses were still repaying loans from Hurricane Floyd, a once-in-a-lifetime storm, when the waters of Hurricane Matthew washed away their businesses for a second time 17 years later. Vines can only stand in the sunshine, surrounded by flooded cars he can't sell, and shake his head. "One hundred years came back so fast, it wasn't even funny."

Mrs. Vines isn't coming back--in early February, her sinks stood empty--and her husband isn't sure what to do. At 70, he says he's too old to take out a second loan, but he still needs to work.

On this side of the Tar River, time stands still. But on the other side, downtown streets are busy in Tarboro. It's a scene that plays out across eastern North Carolina six months after the storm where a few miles, or even blocks, may mean the difference between business as usual and whether business will return at all. Here in Edgecombe County, less than a mile separates Tarboro from low-lying Princeville, on the wrong side of a bend in the river. Some say this is no accident: African-Americans were able to settle what is believed to be the oldest U.S. town chartered by freed slaves because white landowners in the 19th century did not want it. No one has tamed the Tar since.

The sign at shuttered Princeville Elementary School announces a fall carnival. Windows are still pushed open to dry out house after empty house, some with ruined belongings piled on the curb. Some residents are back, but most of Princeville feels like a ghost town. After Floyd left Princeville underwater the first time, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order to rebuild the historic town and protect it from future floods. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launched a study in 2001. When it was released in December 2015, less than a year before Matthew, it found flaws in the nearby levee and called for extending it. The swollen Tar didn't breach the levee in October--the water went around it.

It touched east Tarboro, too, but the town that served the region's tobacco, cotton and peanut farmers was largely spared. Though tobacco is no longer king in eastern North Carolina, Tarboro retains some of the golden leaf's grandeur with homes lining Town Common, a green swath of 15 acres of park laid out when the town was chartered in 1760. It has...