Podcast

Jones Lake is a state park in North Carolina that offers many amenities and activities for visitors. It is a popular destination for picnics, swimming, and camping. The park has beautiful trails that showcase wildlife such as bears, deer, and foxes. It also has a rich history as the first state park for African Americans and was once used for farming and turpentine production. The park has a recreation center with a museum and is a great place to learn about the area's history. Visitors should be cautious of snakes during warmer months. Overall, Jones Lake is a beautiful and educational destination for anyone visiting the area. Hello everyone, my name is Merritt Martin and I'm a sophomore at North Carolina State University studying tourism management. As much as I love learning about tourism and all the amazing things it does for our world, I also love learning about state parks, which brings a whole lot of tourism to the world. And today we're going to be talking about one of my favorites located right here in North Carolina. If you're ever in my hometown, Elizabethtown, whether that's getting a hot dog at Melvin's, getting a coffee at Barefoot Brew, or probably even shopping at Fisher's or Lime One's, you should head across the Cape Verde River Bridge two miles and that will bring you to the amazing Jones Lake. Growing up, I would always go to Jones Lake for family picnics after church on Sunday or even when I was younger, my dad would take us there during his lunch break just to reconnect with nature and feel the sunshine on our skin and it was always super fun. And you can also swim at Jones Lake, which Jones Lake is located ten miles from White Lake, which is a bigger lake and they have, that's like a more established lake. They have like houses all around the lake and it's called White Lake because it's clear. So people are a little skittish of Jones Lake tea colored water, but it's definitely nice, way more relaxing environment, a lot smaller than White Lake that most of the locals are used to, but I still enjoy it. And Jones Lake has great amenities, like of course the lake, and then in the summer you can rent paddle boats, it has fire pits, grills, huge wooden sheds with picnic tables underneath, which does come in handy because a lot of families will host like family reunions under the shed with the picnic tables, or even I've been to a few birthday parties there, which they're always super nice. And then of course schools host like Envirothon there, which that's for middle schoolers, and then they even have like a few FFA events that I've been to at Jones Lake. And then in high school, I was in a club called Kietz and we would host like spring flings at Jones Lake and we would just have like different booths set up underneath the shed on the picnic tables, and it would be like face painting, like playing different games. So it was always a big part of the education system to let those kids know about Jones Lake and just to experience all the great things Blading County has to offer. Now it also has full like RV hookups, sewage and power, which is super nice. And then of course you can tent camp. And then you can also walk at Jones Lake. They have great trails. They have like a three-mile trail just around the lake, which that one's super nice. But they also have a six-mile trail, which of course my dad, who is the health king, he loves to work out. We always wind up doing the six-mile one, which is super nice. It's a three miles to Saunders Lake and then three miles back. The trails at Jones Lake are very sandy, so you can only see like wildlife prints. We've seen bears, deer of course, fox, coyote. It's always super cool and a little scary, but the wildlife has never been a threat to humans, which that's nice. So it has great amenities. And of course, before all of this, Jones Lake is the first state park for African Americans. Mr. DeWitt Powell was the park's first black superintendent in the early 1950s. Jones Lake hosted family reunions, church picnics, and they even planned a Negro bathing beauty contest back in 1944 for the black community. And also back then during the summer, most black churches around the area didn't have a baptism pool, so they would baptize people in Jones Lake, and it would be anywhere from like one to ten people getting baptized on a Sunday morning, which that's always nice. And before all of this, in the 18th century, Jones Lake was known as Woodward's Lake after Samuel Woodward, who was a justice of the peace. Isaac Jones, a landowner who gave a parcel of land in Elizabethtown, was honored by having the lake renamed in his honor to obviously Jones Lake. And then landowners farmed along the river bottoms and creek bottoms for around a century after the area was settled. The area's abundant longleaf pines were used to produce navel socks, which mostly consisted of pitch, lumber, and turpentine. And this is kind of a fun fact, but Jones Lake has beautiful pine trees located like literally a ten mile radius of the lake all around. They're so pretty and big, but there was a turpentine mill located like a mile from Jones Lake, and the way the North Carolina Tar Heels got their mascot as the Tar Heels was the guys that worked at the turpentine mill would walk around with tar on their foot. So they got the name the Tar Heels, which I think is super cool. Also, the federal government created public parks and employed people during the Great Depression in order to raise millions of dollars for conservation. Federal farm resettlement programs from the Depression area, which took over farmers abandoned and wasted land and relocated farming families to other areas, gave rise to certain parks such as Jones Lake. The marginal farm holdings in the Jones Lake area was acquired by the federal government for an average of $4.51 per acre, and the area was administrated by the Resettlement Administration from 1936 to 1939. A land conservation and usage program was started to help the struggling economy. The Resettlement Administration built a recreation center at Jones Lake using resources and labor from the area. This is a wide beach, picnic area, refreshment stand, and bathhouse built, which obviously most of the stuff is still there, just of course revamped like the bathhouse. And then the recreation center is also there. It's where the park rangers have their office and they go there every day. And then there's also like a little museum type thing in there, and you can walk around. It's free to the public. And I think they have like a few animals, like snakes, and like geckos, stuff like that, like in there, and you can just walk around and see. It's super cool. We also went there on field trips, but that's when you're like in kindergarten, so I don't remember exactly. And then on July 1, 1939, the property was given to the state of North Carolina to be used under a lease. The site was permanently deeded to the state in October of 1954 as the first state park exclusively for African Americans. Jones Lake opened for business in the summer of 1939 and quickly gained popularity. North Carolina discredited its state parks between 1961 and 1964, and then only fishing and picnicking were permitted at Jones Lake during World War II as the anti-aircraft school from Camp Davis utilized the region for unique training exercises. The region gained notary in the spring of 1970 when astronomers fought there to witness a total solar eclipse. So, I think all of this is super cool. If you're ever in the mood to go swimming, go on a hike, definitely head down to Jones Lake. It's super fun and there's tons of stuff to do there. And then other wildlife that has also been seen at Jones Lake State Park is red-cockaday woodpeckers, pine barrens, tree frogs, yellow-throated warblers, Carolina anoles, Carolina wren, white-eyed furree, white-tailed deer, chickadees, and fox. So, there's definitely a ton of wildlife at Jones Lake State Park. And another threatening species to Jones Lake is snakes. Whenever it is snake season in the warmer days, you definitely have to watch out for them because they will be hidden in the trails and will pop out. So, you definitely have to worry about those a little bit more than the other wildlife. So, if you are ever in the area of Alisatown grabbing a hot dog at Melvin's or doing a little shopping at Line 1's or getting a morning treat at Barefoot's, come on down past the Cape Fear River Bridge, two miles out, and come to the wonderful Jones Lake. If you come in summer, bring your bathing suit, and if you come in winter, bring your tennis shoes because you will be up for a hike. And just enjoy all that the beautiful Jones Lake has to offer, whether that's a picnic or either coming for educational purposes, visit the museum that it has as soon as you pull into the park and get to know all of the beautiful history Jones Lake offers and everything. Thank you. Bye.