A green ribbon sits in front of the Mountains-to-Sea NC State Trail. The moment it was cut, the trail opened, with the Sampson County community that showed up for the grand opening moving toward its gates.
The trail, located on 20 Straw Den Lane outside Roseboro, is 5.1 miles long and officially opened Friday morning. The trail came together with the collaborative help of multiple groups: Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the Coharie Tribe, Sampson County Parks and Recreation, Friends of Plant Conservation, NC Plant Conservation, NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the town of Roseboro and the community volunteers that contributed to the project.
Ben Jones, the trail planner and landscape architect for Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail has been involved with the non-profit organization for six and a half years.
“This project took many years,” Jones said. “I’ve been personally working on it for about seven and a half to eight years. From the time I was a graduate student until now. It required finding a way to build a partnership between the landowners and managers, the Plant Conservation program, the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and their job here, to protect the endangered and sensitive native plant communities. The partnership is all framed around making sure that a trail could align with that.”
Jones mentioned that Sampson County Parks and Recreation is a partner that helped managed the access oversight.
The project used funding from the Sampson County Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Complete the Trails programs from the North Carolina State Parks. Two and a half acres of land was donated by Sampson County Disposal to the MST Trail.
“The importance of all of this is the perseverance that has taken place to keep this happening, and the partnerships,” Roseboro Mayor Alice Butler said at the ribbon cutting event. “We couldn’t do it without both of those.”
Mayor Butler would go on to thank everyone and every organization involved in the development of the trail.
“The people are going to come into Roseboro, have a bite to eat, come over here, take the trail and maybe come back to get some ice cream, or possibly play golf at the Lakewood Country Club,” she said. “Not just perseverance, but communication is important. It takes years for things to happen in government, in anything, but if we keep working together and keep your eye on that goal, you can get it done.”
The organizations involved attested that their main goal, in addition to giving the community a reserve trail, was keeping the natural habitats safe.
“We own and manage 26 preserves all across the state that are specifically intended to protect NC’s rare threatened and endangered plants in their natural habitats,” informed Julian Wilson, NC Department of Agriculture’s conservation program manager. “It’s not the same conservation that you would see at a botanical garden, where these type of plants grow in the wild and the ecosystem that they support. That’s kind of our focus. We own 14,500 acres around the state, 2,000 of that is here at the Primary Bay reserve. “
An example of this is the Lindera melissifolia, commonly known as the pondberry. It’s one of the endangered plants that grow in only two places in the entire state. Sampson County is one of those locations. While it’s not a part of the trail, Wilson said taking things like that into consideration was a part of the work that everyone put into planning this trail, highlighting the importance of the shrub.
Many in attendance shared their thoughts on the opening of the trail.
“This is a great day. It’s been a long time coming,” stated Allen McLamb, chairman of the Sampson County Board of Commissioners. “As we move forward, I just think it’s a great day for everyone. I’m encouraging all of you to walk, it’s beautiful, it’s relaxing and it’s very refreshing.”
“This has really been a long time coming,” agreed Sampson County Parks and Recreation Director Dana Hall. “When I say it’s been a long time coming, I have been in Parks and Rec for over 20 years. When I was doing my internship, they were talking about getting this up. It made me think ‘Wow, we’re going to get people in Sampson County to walk and get out in nature.’ It was a foreign concept 20 years ago, but we’ve really started to see the importance for our kids, our grandkids, to be able to use the public land, to be able to get outside and walk the trail.”
Coharie Tribe members Kullen Bell and Carol Brewington were also on hand for the opening. Bell is a watershed coordinator for Coharie River tours and Brewington is a lead river guide.
“It’s been an incredible journey with a lot of hard work put in over the last few year,.” Bell said. “Our role in this is, our ancestors stewarded this land and hunted on it. On the side of the kiosk up at the entrance of the trail, we’ll have literature representing and recognizing the Coharie Tribe, highlighting our ecotourism tours to get more people out in nature. Because nature’s a good thing. I heard Ben (Jones) mention self discovery and self reflection, and it’s important to have more people to engage and get out in nature to educate the youth on our beautiful natural resource.”
The trail also has the opportunity to help everyone in the community in a multitude of ways, he continued. “It works hand and hand because both of our goals are to get more people out and educate them on our ecosystems. The trees and the birds, the plants, native versus invasive. These are things that people don’t do everyday. As far as the tribes role, I think it’s an opportunity to make us more visible.”
“It’s an opportunity to connect us more on the Mountains-To-Sea trail,” Brewington added.
“We offer a paddle trip on the Mountains-To-Sea Trail,” Bell pointed out. “In fact, we actually had our first visitor two weeks ago and she was a through hiker. It was really neat and our opportunity to offer a paddle trail and visibility and our connection.”
The publicly accessible trail is a first for Sampson County. And because of that, Jones said, it’s even more important to preserve it.
“If we don’t learn to love places like this, the future generations aren’t going to know how to care or protect them,” he attested. “Our organization is based out of Raleigh, and we can do a lot, but the day-to-day responsibility of caring for and keeping an eye on this place is going to fall on the people who live here. I think that’s a really wonderful responsibility and I’m excited to see all the people who are going to come to love this place, and I’m sure that will lead to new volunteers and new members for our organization.”