Carvers Creek State Park, Spring Lake, N.C.

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Carvers Creek State Park

One day, we can hope, Carvers Creek will be a major state park offering a variety of activities spread across 4,000 acres of the Sandhills north of Fayetteville, as the state’s master plan calls for. Today, the public area of the park’s Long Valley Farm section. surrounds a 100-acre cypress pond and a yet-to-be-restored Rockefeller estate home (below).

The park offers about 11 miles of what its website calls “scenic, contemplative hiking through longleaf pine forests” for hiking and biking, as well as fishing, canoe rentals (in season) picnicking, ranger-led interpretive programs, and occasional tours through the vacation home of the late James Stillman Rockefeller, who bequeathed the property for conservation. The Sandhills access, another section of the park, allows horseback riding.

About 1.75 miles worth of walking trails around the pond and the Rockefeller House were open at Long Valley Farm when we visited in November 2013. A portion of that was a quarter-mile dirt road between the temporary visitors center and the park-proper, which passed an open field on the right and pine woods on the left.

In September 2016, flooding damaged the dam and drained the pond, but it was reopened in September 2020. Here’s a look at the house from across the pond.

The pavilion, below, sits to one side of the Rockefeller house and a small shelter with a picnic table is on the other.

The spring house and mill wheel sit below the pavilion.

A wide, easy trail runs along the edge of the pond before looping back through the woods.

A spur of the trail leads out onto a peninsula that provides views back across the pond before coming to a picturesque point looking out toward a stand of cypress trees.

McDiarmid Pond is open to fishing and is known for catfish, bluegill and minnows.

The park ranger on duty when we visited told us that paving the road and building a parking lot at its end near the rear of the Rockefeller house was the next scheduled construction project, and constructing more trails would follow that.

Read more about plans for Carvers Creek.

Carvers Creek State Park is off of East Manchester Road between U.S. 210 and 24/27 north of Spring Lake in Cumberland County.