Carvers Creek

Located in Fayetteville, NC, Carvers Creek State Park is one of the newest additions to the North Carolina State Park system.  There are currently two sections of the park with additional land acquisitions planned for the future.

The Long Valley Farm section was formerly the winter estate of James Stillman Rockefeller, the great-nephew of John D. Rockefeller. During the first half of the 20th Century many wealthy families from New York vacationed in the Sandhills of eastern North Carolina.  And, thankfully a few of those same families donated their estates to help conserve the land they had grown to love. James and his wife Nancy donated to many causes in both New York and North Carolina, including to the nonprofit conservation organization called the Overhills Foundation. In 2004, Long Valley Farm was bequeathed to the Nature Conservancy, who transferred the property to the state in 2010.

The Sandhills portion of the park is located more than 10 miles from the Rockefeller home and includes Carvers Creek itself, which is a tributary of the Cape Fear River.   

The photo above was taken near the Longleaf Pine and Wiregrass Loop trails. I visited in the Spring, and it was getting late in the afternoon. I was tired and had almost put my camera away, but decided to venture off the trail into the high grass. This was one of the last photos I took before walking back to my car and driving home.