Topics Related to state parks

Image: The New River Gorge Bridge.George Santucci doesn’t worry anymore about the variety of spellings applied to his name in Ashe County, which he has called home for 25 years now after migrating from Long Island, New York. But he has lost most of his New York accent, and he’s a much-admired fellow in his adopted home, where he serves as the president of the New River Conservancy, charged with protecting America’s oldest river, said to be the second oldest in the world.“Once you get North of 350 million years,” Santucci says, “It’s a little iffy.”

Amid the swamps, forests, and fields of southeastern North Carolina lies an immense, shallow, strangely egg-shaped lake, whose rich natural environment and gently sloping freshwater shores have been an asset to the region’s industrial and touristic development for over a century and a half. The long and dynamic history of Lake Waccamaw reaches back not just centuries but millennia, beginning in a time when Columbus County looked more like Alaska than anything else.

With temperatures 10 to 20 degrees cooler, Western North Carolina provides a welcome escape during the dog days of summer. Imagine your face sprinkled with the mist of a waterfall as you rest on a cool rock under a forest canopy. If this sounds good to you, Western North Carolina is the place to be.Find your waterfall in North Carolina’s mountains. Here are five of our favorite places to chill with waterfalls:   

North Carolina is home to some of the most beautiful state parks in the country, and while many are popular destinations for tourists and locals alike, there are a number of lesser-known parks that are just as stunning and worth visiting. These parks are often less crowded and offer a unique and serene experience for visitors. Here are some of the least visited state parks in North Carolina that you should add to your must-visit list.

*Updated 6/19/2025There’s no better place for a day at the beach than North Carolina's barrier islands. A must-visit beach for the adventurers among us is the beach at Bear Island, the crown jewel of Hammocks Beach State Park.

On November 3, 1835, Elisha Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, announced that a peak in the Black Mountains of North Carolina was the highest in the eastern United States.

On May 21, 2007, the state of North Carolina purchased Chimney Rock Park in western Rutherford County from the Morse family, which had owned and operated the tourist attraction for more than a century.

When the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, activists sought to harness the increased consciousness Americans had about the environment and the counterculture movement then sweeping the nation to motivate people to speak out and act on environmental issues. In celebration of the watershed moment 46 years ago, here are the stories of eight North Carolina conservation leaders and the places they sought to protect:

Jordan Lake is younger than you might think. Learn more about the archaeological work that made the lake's construction possible.