Then again, you might think of it as our own Dracula.

Eno Drive -- the Un-Dead Eno Drive. It's a vestige of the go-go '60s (as opposed to the '60s you can't remember if you were there). Supposedly dead and buried these five years, its spectral presence keeps on, like the fabled count, coming back ...

The latest manifestation is on the Friends of West Point Park's new Web site. See fowpp.org and click on "Urgent Alert."

Eno Drive, it seems, has its fangs in 60 woodsy acres next to the park best known for the eco-boosting Festival for the Eno.

Eno Drive never existed except on paper, but it remained on the books of NCDOT and in the minds of Durham from 1966 until 2003.

An eco-threat to some, a panacea for jammed traffic on Roxboro Road and Duke Street to others, and to yet others an opportunity for filling stations and beer stores. (This was before they became the same thing.)

The Drive was to run from I-85 near the Orange County line, along the Eno River through what was then the city's sparsely settled fringe, reconnecting with the interstate near Gorman -- actually part of an urban loop suggested by an N.C. State traffic engineer, Prof. W.F. Babcock, in 1954.

It came up for public hearings just about the time the Eno River Association formed, and blocking it became one of that group's first crusades. A deal struck with the city council in 1969 took the project off the table for 19 years, during which its route grew up in subdivisions and parkland.

Subdivisions, in due course, created traffic and traffic conjured Eno Drive back to life. From the late '80s into the 21st century, the road -- in assorted versions and under assorted names -- remained a bone of contention among friends of the earth, local officials and DOT. Finally, five years ago, a compromise all around took Eno Drive off the drawing boards and into the trash.

And yet, along its imagined right-of-way, relics remained in the form of land pre-zoned in anticipation of those filling stations and beer stores -- and office parks and condos.

About this time last year, word came out that Chapel Hill developer Keith Brown wanted to build 235 houses and townhouses on an eco-sensitive tract adjoining West Point -- a plan perfectly permissible under the land's vintage zoning.

The park's friends and neighbors organized a generally quiet opposition. Negotiations ensued and continue among the interested parties, including the city, possibly leading to the land's purchase by some eco-friendly agency.

Meanwhile, the city is trying to exorcise the relics. One rezoning case is done. Another met with opposition by neighbors and developers both and rests in bureaucratic limbo. Eno Drive at West Point Park is on deck.

The developer is entitled to a subdivision. The owner, Mildred Lee Ray of Sun City Center, Fla., wants $4.2 million.

The Eno River Association is getting an appraisal. Some friends of West Point are getting impatient.

Hence, their Urgent Alert: Get after the council and commissioners to find some money before it is too late. The Un-Dead is among us, and putting this one down will take more than a (surveyor's?) stake in the heart.