- [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat bluegrass music) - [Narrator] Camping, hiking, mountain biking, boating, all things you might enjoy in a North Carolina state park.

North, east, or west of Charlotte, you're only a short drive from three unique parks.

Lake Norman State Park offers up a large swim beach, camping, boating, and for the adrenaline junkie, mountain biking.

Looking for a view and history?

Morrow Mountain State Park not only delivers this scenic view, its connection to Native Americans goes back over 10,000 years.

And to the west, a group of environmental activists took a stand in 1971, leading to the creation of Crowders Mountain State Park a few years later.

So join us as we explore these three parks and meet those with a passion to protect them.

All that and more on "Trail of History."

(upbeat music) (relaxing bluegrass music) Turn back the clock (train whistle blows) more than a century ago to a time when our state's natural resources seemed never ending.

- [Glen] Back then, the forestry practices that we have today were nonexistent.

The logging was basically just clearing vast mounts of land.

- [Narrator] But that all changed when then North Carolina Governor, Locke Craig, visited Mount Mitchell.

- He was so disturbed at what he saw, he was able to convince the logging crews at the time around Mount Mitchell to stop the logging until he could get back to the General Assembly.

- [Narrator] The actions of the Governor and the State Legislature resulted in Mount Mitchell State Park, the first of its kind in North Carolina.

- The mission in North Carolina State Parks is conservation, recreation, and education.

People love state parks.

They love taking their families to state parks.

A lot of memories created at state parks.

(cheerful guitar music) - [Narrator] Naturalist John Muir once said, "The mountains are calling and I must go."

For folks in the Charlotte region who answer that call, often that means a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.

But to the east in Stanly County, there's another option.

- [Jeff] We're at Morrow Mountain State Park, right in the middle of the Uwharrie Mountain Range that goes up through the middle of North Carolina.

- [Vanessa] It's beautiful.

It's tranquil.

- [Narrator] Somewhere around half a million visitors pass through the gates at Morrow Mountain State Park each year, visitors like Vanessa Mullinix.

- I call it decompression to hear the animals and the birds and play.

I grew up playing in the woods, so I love it.

- [Narrator] Inside the nearly 6,000 acre park, you'll find plenty of things to do.

- There's a lot of opportunity for exploring.

You can come visit some of the historic sites.

We have a natural history museum where you could come and you can see the geology, you can see the Native American history, the early settler history, the natural history of what animals are found in the park today.

- [Narrator] Morrow Mountain State Park was created in 1935, the same year President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States mainland, and baseball player Babe Ruth retired.

- The Morrow Mountain State Park was the third state park in North Carolina following Mount Mitchell State Park that was created in 1916.

Fort Macon came shortly after that.

- [Narrator] The mountain hasn't always been called Morrow Mountain, that name came when James Morrow purchased the property at auction with plans to create a tourist attraction by charging folks to drive up to the top.

- [Jeff] So he would charge people 50 cent a car to travel up to the top of his mountain.

He called it Morrow's Mountain with a possessive S, and it became a local landmark.

- [Narrator] The early construction of Morrow Mountain State Park benefited from two Depression era work programs.

- Under FDR's new deal process, they were able to create the Civilian Conservation Core, the CCC, and the WPA, the Works Progress Administration, to try to pull people out of the Depression.

- [Narrator] You'll find examples of the CCC and WPA's work throughout the park.

- [Jeff] A lot of this infrastructure that we find in the state parks is commonly referred to as parkitecture.

They use a lot of the natural stone that's found locally.

They use a lot of the wood from the park areas and surrounding areas to build structures that blend in well to the natural environment.

WPA built the park swimming pool, they built the lodge and the office.

It was called the Uwharrie Lodge at the time.

- [Narrator] The park proudly highlights the connection to the Depression era work programs.

- That's what makes Morrow Mountain special.

When you ride around and you see the stone walls and you see the buildings built of stone, these buildings that blend in, that is a reflection of the CCC and WPA under FDR's new deal.

- [Narrator] There's about 500 million years of geologic history in the Uwharrie Mountain Range.

- Some geologists argue that the Uwharrie Range could be the oldest mountains in the world.

- [Narrator] The unique geology attracted Native Americans to Morrow Mountain for thousands of years.

- The top of Morrow Mountain is an old Native American quarry and considered by many archeologists to be one of the most significant quarry sites for Native Americans in North America.

They would chip off chunks of rock, they would work it down to rough pieces and then take it down later and work it into tools or what we now know as arrow heads or spear points or scrapers.

- [Narrator] Arrowheads like these and other significant artifacts have been discovered near Morrow Mountain at what's known as the Hardaway Site.

But the site is currently off limits to the public.

- [Jeff] They worked it down by soil level.

So when they would find a projectile point in a certain soil level, they were able to put an age to it.

The artifacts that they actually excavated and removed were sent to Chapel Hill to be further studied and they're still studied to this day.

- [Narrator] The natural resources that attracted Native Americans to the region were documented by 18th century European Explorer, John Lawson.

- When John Lawson came through in the 1700s, he described bison being in the area, elk being in the area, black bears, tundra swans, passenger pigeons, which are extinct today.

This area looked a lot different than it does now.

- [Narrator] Lawson's account of the area's abundant resources attracted European settlers to the area.

Welcome to the historic Kron Family Homestead.

- The Kron family moved to this region in the early 1800s.

They moved here because Dr. Francis Kron from Prussia, who had met his wife in Paris, moved here because his wife, Mary, had a rich relative, Henry Delamothe, who lived here who was into the gold business.

Dr. Kron was not a doctor at the time.

He was an expert of languages.

He taught at UNC Chapel Hill, he taught in Newburn, he taught in Salisbury.

As he continued to teach, he realized there wasn't a whole lot of money in teaching so he decided to try to become a physician.

He was considered to be one of the first doctors in the Southern Piedmont of North Carolina.

He made his own concoction of medicines.

Dr. Kron was also a very well known horticulturalist.

He grew things such as oranges and pineapples and people around here never seen asparagus or broccoli.

What he also did was he documented the challenges he had.

His documentation is still used today by many horticulturalists.

- [Narrator] In the mid-20th century, the park recreated the buildings which the family lived and worked.

- Walk up and it's a reflection of what life may have looked like in the 1800s.

You have an old cabin-style house, there's a few old trees, there's an old magnolia tree that Dr. Kron planted in the 1800s.

There's a Japanese chestnut tree that sits behind the Kron house that was planted by Dr. Kron that still stands.

It's a state champion tree.

Just to imagine that area in the 1800s and how people lived is just something to fathom.

- [Narrator] From the Native American sites, the Kron Family Homestead, classic Depression era park buildings, vast natural and cultural history, paired with camping, hiking, and boating, there's a little bit of everything through the gate at Morrow Mountain State Park.

(upbeat music) Planes, trains, and automobiles, oh my.

Around Metro Charlotte, the rat race of life might sometimes seem hard to escape.

But just north, Lake Norman State Park.

(camera snaps) - [Dana] Whenever I get a new camera or if I just need some time away, 'cause I just come out here and relax, take some photos.

- [Narrator] Photographer Dana White, knows just where to go when seeking inspiration.

- I love the fact that there is a beach here.

(camera snaps) You can see so many different people here so I always have a different scene to shoot, different people to interact with.

I love to see the nature and I love to see the seasons change, and so every opportunity I have for that.

- [Narrator] Each year, more than 3/4 of a million people make their way to Lake Norman State Park for many different reasons.

- [Scott] You feel like you're 100 miles from stuff when you're really not.

- Meet Park Superintendent, Scott Avis.

- I've gotten a real sense of community from the people that come and use this park because I see people every day come out here, they start their day here or they'll end their day here with either a hike or walking their dogs or with biking the trails, or with even fishing.

I've become on a first name basis with a number of visitors because they're here so regularly.

(water splashes) - [Narrator] When Duke Power built the Cowans Ford Dam on the Catawba River in the late 1950s, it created Lake Norman and planning of recreational opportunities behind it.

- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, when Duke wanted to build the lake, they indicated well that, yes you can, but you have to put so much of it back as recreational facilities.

- [Scott] The park originally started out at a little over 1,300 acres when it was donated by Duke Energy.

It is now, I just checked, right around 1,962 acres.

- [Narrator] Opened in 1965, it was originally called Duke Power State Park.

- Facilities were very primitive and there was an old bathhouse sat right up here on top of the hill.

And the swim beach was on Park Lake, this little 33 acre lake that we have down below us.

And then there was another picnic area down, picnic area number two, and then a boat ramp on the Lake Norman at the time.

But very few facilities.

They opened a quarry in the park and they quarried the stone here locally in the park.

My understanding is much of the timber framing in the facilities was also sawn from the park.

So it makes sense.

You have an established forest that you can take some of that as materials and bring them into the park.

And it's of course, using things like local stone, it just blends immediately with the environment.

- [Narrator] Retired Park Superintendent, Greg Schneider, knows the park better than most.

- My family moved from South Florida to North Carolina in 1970.

I was six years old and we moved up here and didn't have a place to stay, so we stayed in our camper for two or three weeks.

- [Narrator] Then as a teen, a friend told him about a job opening at the park.

- That first year I pushed a lawn mower.

But I loved it.

I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

- [Narrator] Greg earned a business degree in college and spent several years working in banking.

But when he had a chance to work for the State Park System, he jumped at it, taking a job as a Community Service Coordinator.

- We took folks that had been charged and convicted with crimes and were given community service as part of their punishment.

We took those folks and put them to work in the park.

- [Narrator] He eventually moved into a ranger position and up the chain of command.

- [Greg] I started my ranger career at Jordan Lake State Recreation area and was there for six or seven years.

- [Narrator] He worked in several different state parks around North Carolina until returning to Lake Norman.

- And ultimately be the Superintendent of the park.

Yes, sir.

And this is where I got my first taste of North Carolina state parks.

I love the mission.

I love the duties.

And I am so glad that Tim Johnson talked me into that first job of cleaning toilets and pushing lawn mowers here at the park, 'cause it changed my life.

(cheerful music) - [Narrator] Operating a large state park comes with a host of challenges for the limited staff and rangers.

To help run the campground at Lake Norman, they rely on volunteers like Wilma Wood.

- We are camp hosts here.

We are here for a month and our basic duties are to get the campsites ready for the guests that are coming in.

We clean the fire pits, we pick up any trash, tidy things up a little bit.

Then after the visitor center is closed, we check the campers in.

- [Narrator] Camp hosting fits perfectly with Wilma and her husband Jim's nomadic life.

- We have been full-time for five years.

Don't think that we're gonna go back to a house again.

- [Narrator] Camp hosting does come with some perks.

- You get your free site in a beautiful park.

I enjoy helping the other campers.

- [Narrator] Campers like the Lawhon family.

- We're from West Virginia and we like to go different places, as many places as we can with the new camper here.

- [Narrator] He says, "Camping offers an escape, "an ability to disconnect."

- Busy lives, everybody works, kids going to school and just nonstop busy, so it's good to just get out and get out in the woods and teach kids new things and meet new people.

- [Narrator] If camping though isn't your thing, Lake Norman State Park offers boating, kayaking, fishing, hiking, cookout space, paddle boats, mountain biking, and of course swimming.

Welcome to the swim beach at Lake Norman State Park.

- It's just a nice place, a nice quiet place, family place that we can go to and enjoy that's not far from home.

- [Narrator] Daniel Coleman remembers coming to Lake Norman State Park as a teen.

- I mean, we just hung out.

We swam all day and we grilled and we had a good time.

- [Narrator] A good time he's now sharing with his family.

- Oh, that's every dad's dream, you know?

You get to be in a nice quiet area where your kids can have fun, nice scenery in the background, beautiful day, not so hot.

- [Narrator] If you're looking for a bit more adrenaline, you're in luck thanks to the Tarheel Trailblazers.

The mountain biking group made their mark on Lake Norman State Park by building over 30 miles of trails.

For many who hit these trails on two wheels, it's often referred to as: - We call it Dirt Church.

It's peaceful.

You can come out with music and ride with your music, or you can just have silence and listen to nature.

So it's whatever your soul needs for the moment.

- Being out on the trails, it allows me to escape reality.

It clears the mind, it gets you out in nature, and it also offers that thrill of speed and agility on the bike and doing what you can't do on two feet on two wheels.

- [Sandi] Yeah, when the trails are open, they're magnificent.

- [Narrator] It's not just the visitors who find time in the park rewarding.

- As a North Carolina State Ranger you get to wear a number of different hats.

I like being in service to all these people in all these different ways to help keep them safe in the environment so they can have those good experiences and add to their enjoyment of the natural space.

(relaxing bluegrass music) - [Narrator] Sometimes rubber doesn't meet the road.

Sometimes the rubber meets the trail.

With over 600 miles of hiking trails to explore North Carolina state parks, it's easy to rack up the miles.

One foot in front of the other, until you reach your goal.

- Well, we're at Crowders Mountain.

I love being here.

It's one of my favorite mountains to hike.

The trees, the shade that you get on the walks and just the coming up here to see the serene view.

I love it.

- [Narrator] This time, Jumoke Abdus-Samad brought visiting family.

- [Jumoke] It's a special moment that I'm able to bring them out here.

- [Narrator] But this special moment almost didn't happen if not for a chance encounter in 1971, prior to the creation of the state park.

- We found out that there were plans to strip mine Crowders Mountain.

It was first discovered, I think by David Cohen, who was hiking up the backside trail and found some men with surveying equipment and they told him that there were plans to strip mine the mountain.

Well, David knew that wasn't good so he sort of became an environmental Paul Revere.

- [Narrator] Bob Bigger says the revelation sparked a movement.

Protesters staged the Earth's Last Stand March in October of 1971.

Judy Davis was there.

- We decided to march.

The only way to get to people at that time was with a sign or with a loud voice because we didn't have cell phones or any other way to communicate.

- It was a very exciting moment in my life and it was, as I said, just a beautiful experience that we all needed to be environmentally conscious.

- [Judy] When I look back, I think we did it.

We made the public aware.

We did what we set out to do.

- [Narrator] They had stopped the strip mining of Crowders Mountain, and along the way, caught the attention of the State Legislature who started the process to permanently protect the mountain.

Crowders Mountain State Park opened to the public in 1974.

- [Bob] I became aware that right makes might, and that if you get even a small enough group of people with enough seriousness of purpose, David could slay Goliath.

(relaxing upbeat bluegrass music) - [Narrator] Like Morrow Mountain, Crowders Mountain comes with its own geological history.

- If you went back far enough, you would actually be standing somewhere around the line where North America and Northern Africa and actually part of North and South America, we have recently found out, came together in the big continental car crash, so to speak, which is what created a lot of the geology.

Not only here, but in the entire Eastern Coast of the United States.

- [Narrator] Up until the last century or so, the mountain and surrounding area looked a lot different, says Ranger Kelly Cooke.

- It would've been very grassy, spotty patches of trees and things like that.

There would've been Native Americans in this area.

This area in particular was kind of constantly being contested between the Catawba and the Cherokee.

There were elk here, there were buffalo this far east.

You would've had large predators like mountain lions and things of that nature, probably wolves.

- [Narrator] The park today is drastically different because of years of fire suppression, all since World War II.

That lack of fire permitted a thick forest to replace the natural prairie land.

One little known fact about the land that the park sits on, during World War I, the U.S. Army used the area for artillery training.

- Basically simulated a trench warfare site in this area.

So they had trenches dug in different places, different encampments and things like that, and then they would actually fire on those locations.

In many ways, they were using the pinnacle as a backstop.

- [Narrator] Occasionally reminders of the artillery range are found within the park.

And because of that, anytime crews in the park need to dig for any reason, they have to call in experts to survey for unexploded shells.

(upbeat music) The mountain that once faced strip mining now attracts nearly a million visitors each year.

- Crowders Mountain State Park is a little over 5,200 acres, it's located in Gaston and Cleveland Counties, it serves a fairly urban area.

Our primary activity at Crowders Mountain is hiking.

Everybody wants to come and see the beautiful views from King's Pinnacle and the top of Crowders Mountain.

Some of the trails are easy.

For instance, our lake trail.

It's great for young kids to get started hiking.

There's some more strenuous trails.

- [Narrator] There's also camping and, of course, fishing.

And it's also only one of five state parks that permits rock climbing.

- It takes a significant amount of money to run a state park.

The facilities require quite a bit of upkeep, the staffing involved to maintain these facilities.

Crowders Mountain, for instance, we have three access areas.

It's a lot of grass mowing and just a lot of maintenance.

When you're such a popular park, one of our greatest challenges is erosion caused from people, natural resource damage.

Every foot that goes on one of these trails, every footprint, causes a slight bit of erosion.

And when you're talking about thousands of people every weekend on the same trail, it's quite a bit of erosion.

- [Narrator] Even with the daily challenges, both Park Superintendent Glen George, and Ranger Kelly Cooke say working at Crowders Mountain still comes with its rewards.

- There's something different every day.

You get to help a lot of people.

We are in the business of the forever business, we like to say.

We're part of preserving a significant area for future generations.

And I like the opportunity to teach people about the natural environment.

- I still realize that when I retire, which is in the very near future, I'm still going to miss this job.

I will always be a Ranger.

(cheerful music) - [Narrator] Across the North Carolina State Park system, parks rely primarily on money from the General Assembly.

The funding covers the day-to-day operation of each park, but the need is often greater.

Fortunately, many parks have friends groups.

Vicki Taylor is with Friends of Lake Norman.

- What friends groups are is volunteers who really just love their park and they wanna support their park, and they do that through volunteering.

We do it through fundraising.

We've even gotten a couple of grants to help the park do things that they may not have the staff to do or the money to do.

- [Narrator] The projects vary from park to park and from friends group to friends group.

With aging infrastructure and limited state funds, the Friends of Morrow Mountain State Park have tackled several large projects.

- One of our first big projects is we rebuilt the entrance wall that was stacked rock.

It was done by the CCC and it had fallen in disarray and we rebuilt it using the same rock that we took down.

And we rebuilt that and dressed up the entrance to the park.

We also did the overlook deck a few years ago with a generous donation.

We're here to promote and support the park.

- We help bring volunteers together to take people on wildflower hikes in the spring.

Anything we can do to just enhance the experience that people will have in this park.

- [Narrator] Since 2018, Vicki Taylor says the group has logged more than 1,500 volunteer hours.

- We got volunteers together to take out invasive species, had a number of volunteer days to just rip out privet and kudzu, and then we planted natives.

The REI money went to help refurbish the group campgrounds.

We had aging rusting grills.

We rebuilt those with funds from that.

And we've got a little thing called the Storm Troopers.

So after the big storm events, volunteers come out and they walk the trails and they find out where the trees are down.

If they can clear it, they clear it.

If they can't, they call Scott and he gets his crew out to clear it.

Those of us who have been using this park for a while, we have an affinity for it, you know?

And it is a jewel and it needs to be taken care of, it needs to be used and appreciated.

So we do it just because we love being here.

We wanna make it as good as it can be for everybody else.

I think that getting outdoors, breathing fresh air, having sunshine on you, seeing green, moving your body, it helps keep us well emotionally, physically, psychologically.

- Just to ride through the park, to watch the deer, just to hear the quiet and peace, it just gives me peace inside.

I think we need that today.

- [Narrator] And when you feel the need to escape for a little bit, you are likely not far from a North Carolina state park.

- When you think about North Carolina, you're thinking about places like Grandfather Mountain and Chimney Rock and Fort Fish are with nine miles of protected ocean beach.

And these places are all preserved and protected and are going to be kept in as natural a state as the professionals that have been in charge with them can keep them.

(cheerful upbeat music) - [Narrator] As of January 2021, the North Carolina Division of Parks protects more than 250,000 acres of land and water, coming a long way since the dedication of Mount Mitchell State Park over a century ago.

These protected natural areas will be around for future generations to enjoy for centuries to come.

We thank you for watching this episode of "Trail of History."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.