Overview: On November 9, 2008, my husband and I made a delightful stop at Carolina Beach State Park, a 761-acre park located in Carolina Beach on Pleasure Island in New Hanover County, North Carolina. The park offers a number of recreational opportunities, including boating, fishing, camping, and hiking. If you’re looking to learn more about coastal ecology, stop by the visitor center and then hike along one of the six trails available, ranging from 0.25 to 3 miles in length. Here, I describe our hike along the 3-mile Sugarloaf Trail that begins at the marina parking lot.
Directions: To arrive at Carolina Beach State Park from the Triangle, take I-40 east nearly 140 miles until merging with US-117. Continue on US-117 S for approximately 9 miles until bearing left onto NC-132. Continue on Carolina Beach Road (US-421) for 6 miles until making a slight right at N. Dow Road. Then make a right into the park, on Carolina Beach State Park Road. Voila.
History, Ecology, and Personal Observations: Carolina Beach State Park was first established in 1969 to preserve its unique carnivorous plant communities and historic Sugarloaf Dune. This area was originally home to the Cape Fear Indians, who left in 1725 as European settlers gained a stronger foothold in the region. By the mid-1700s, the Cape Fear River became a major economic stronghold for the new English colony, providing a shipping route for agricultural products and naval stores. Walking through the quiet park, it was difficult to imagine that this area has been continually abuzz with people and shipping traffic for the past 300+ years.
We started the Sugarloaf Trail counter-clockwise, stepping into a scene that felt almost too saturated to be real: mature longleaf pines (Pinus palustris)—some towering, some still young and bright—held up a cloudless cerulean sky like green chandeliers. The understory offered its own shock of color. Turkey oaks (Quercus laevis) flashed red leaves like small fires, and nearby, live oaks (Quercus virginiana) leaned over the trail with dark, chestnut-hued acorns tucked among their leaves. The whole grove was stitched together with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides), draped in silvery strands that made even a sunny morning feel a little haunted.
Further along, we reached the aptly named Grassy Pond—an ephemeral basin cupping sedges (Carex spp.) in its shallow bowl. This is the kind of place where, at the right season and with the right luck, you can find the park’s botanical celebrities: Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, sundews, bladderworts, and butterworts. But November had other plans. After another spell of dry weather, we scanned the pond’s edges and found only the suggestion of them—the habitat, the promise, the absence—rather than the plants themselves. Grassy Pond was still beautiful, but in that spare, off-season way: more structure than spectacle.
If the carnivores kept their secrets, the animals left signatures anyway. White-tailed deer tracks pressed crisp into the pale sand, and raccoon prints wandered in and out of the trail margins as if the woods had been busy while we weren’t looking. At one sunny stretch, a long black racer (Coluber constrictor) lay out on the trail, gathering warmth, until it slid away into the open woods with that fluid, unbothered confidence only a snake can manage. What we didn’t see was as telling as what we did: no skinks, no crabs, and very little bird chatter—summer’s engine had shut down, and the park felt hushed, as if it were holding its breath.
Toward the end of the loop, we arrived at the historic Sugarloaf Dune. Now fenced and barricaded to prevent further erosion, the dune once served as an important landmark for ship navigators as far back as the late 1600s, and later as a camp for nearly 5,000 Confederate soldiers during the 1865 Union siege of Fort Fisher. Standing there, with Spanish moss nearby and the sand held back by barriers, it was easy to feel how fragile and how storied a “landmark” can be.
We ended our visit with a shoreline stroll that felt like a quiet coda: spongy patches of powder puff lichen (Cladonia evansii) underfoot, short twisted oaks bent by wind and time, and then the open view of the Cape Fear River. We stopped and watched boats pass—modern hulls sliding along an old corridor—and for a moment it was easy to imagine the river layered with other eras, other cargo, other voices, moving through the same wide mouth of water.
Sense of Place 