🌲🌊 Jones Lake State Park – Hiking Around a Mysterious Carolina Bay

Simba and I hiked through Jones Lake State Park near Elizabethtown, North Carolina, exploring forest trails surrounding a shallow, tea-colored lake formed within one of the strange geological features known as a Carolina bay. At first glance, Jones Lake might look like an ordinary lake surrounded by forest, but its unusual shape, shallow water, distinctive ecosystem, and fascinating history make this state park considerably more interesting than I expected.

Our hike took us through a landscape that continually changed as we traveled around the lake. Sandy stretches and longleaf pine forest transitioned into dense vegetation, wetlands, boggy ground, and boardwalks, while short openings through the trees occasionally revealed the dark water of Jones Lake. Pond cypress draped in Spanish moss grew along the shoreline and directly within the shallow lake, creating some of the most beautiful scenery we encountered during the hike.

The park also has a particularly important place in North Carolina history. Jones Lake opened on July 1, 1939, as the state's first state-operated outdoor recreation area for Black Americans, providing a public destination for recreation at a time when racial segregation excluded Black visitors from other North Carolina state parks. That combination of unusual geology, natural beauty, wildlife, and social history makes Jones Lake much more than simply another place to hike around a lake.

🌀 What Is a Carolina Bay?

Jones Lake occupies one of the thousands of unusual elliptical depressions known as Carolina bays, which are concentrated across portions of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Despite their name, these aren't ocean bays. They're inland depressions that often appear oval or elliptical when viewed from above, and many share similar orientations across the landscape.

Scientists have studied Carolina bays for decades, but questions remain about the precise processes responsible for their original formation and subsequent development. Various ideas have been proposed over the years, including some highly speculative explanations, but modern scientific interpretations generally focus on natural geological and environmental processes involving wind, water, sediments, and changing climatic conditions over long periods.

Whatever their exact origin, Carolina bays are among the most distinctive landforms of the southeastern Coastal Plain. Many are difficult to recognize while standing at ground level, but their unusual shapes become much more obvious when viewed from the air.

🌎 Thousands of Mysterious Depressions

Carolina bays aren't limited to one isolated area. Thousands of these depressions occur across the Coastal Plain, with particularly notable concentrations in North and South Carolina. Their sizes vary dramatically, ranging from relatively small wet depressions to large features covering hundreds or even thousands of acres.

Many Carolina bays no longer contain permanent open water. Over long periods, vegetation and organic material accumulated within the depressions, gradually transforming some into wetlands, bogs, pocosins, or forested environments. Human activity has also altered many through agriculture, drainage, development, and other changes to the landscape.

Jones Lake is therefore particularly interesting because it remains one of the relatively few Carolina bays containing a substantial open lake. Standing beside the shoreline provides an opportunity to see a surviving example of a landscape feature that has disappeared or changed dramatically elsewhere.

🌊 Jones Lake and Salters Lake

Jones Lake isn't the only Carolina bay protected within the state park. Neighboring Salters Lake occupies another bay nearby, allowing the park to preserve multiple examples of these unusual geological features within the same protected landscape.

The two lakes are surrounded by forests, wetlands, and other Coastal Plain habitats that developed in response to differences in water levels, soils, drainage, and elevation. Those environmental variations create noticeably different plant communities even across relatively short distances.

Today, Jones Lake State Park protects more than 2,000 acres surrounding the two lakes. That allows visitors to experience not only the open water but also the larger ecosystem associated with Carolina bays.

📏 A 224-Acre Lake Only About Eight Feet Deep

One of the most surprising things about Jones Lake is how shallow it is. The lake covers approximately 224 acres, yet its maximum depth is only around eight feet. That broad, shallow profile is very different from deep lakes occupying mountain valleys or former river channels.

Because the lake sits within a shallow depression, small changes in rainfall, evaporation, groundwater, and surrounding wetland conditions can influence its environment. The lake's shallow depth also affects water temperature, vegetation, aquatic habitat, and the interaction between the shoreline and open water.

Looking across Jones Lake from shore, it's difficult to judge just how shallow the water actually is. Its broad surface gives the impression of a much deeper body of water, making that eight-foot maximum depth especially surprising.

🍵 Why Is Jones Lake Tea-Colored?

Jones Lake has distinctive tea-colored water, another characteristic associated with many wetland environments of the southeastern Coastal Plain. The coloration is influenced by organic material and naturally occurring tannins released as leaves, branches, and other vegetation decompose in the surrounding environment.

Tannins can stain water shades of amber, brown, or reddish-brown, much like tea leaves change the color of water. The dark appearance doesn't necessarily indicate that the water is dirty or polluted. Instead, it reflects natural chemical and biological processes occurring throughout the surrounding forest and wetlands.

The coloration gives Jones Lake a completely different appearance from the clear blue or green water people often associate with recreational lakes. Combined with cypress trees and Spanish moss, the tea-colored water helps create the distinctive atmosphere of the park.

🥾 Hiking the Bay Trail

The park's primary hiking route around Jones Lake is the Bay Trail, an approximately four-mile loop that circles the lake. The trail provides one of the best ways to experience the different habitats surrounding the Carolina bay because it moves through forest, sandy areas, wetlands, and wetter sections close to the shoreline.

Although the terrain is mostly flat, the natural trail surface changes considerably. Simba and I encountered combinations of sand, gravel, roots, forest floor, and boggy ground, while wooden boardwalks help hikers cross some of the wetter portions of the route. Those changing surfaces make the hike more interesting than simply walking four miles on a level paved path.

The trail doesn't follow the water's edge continuously. Dense vegetation separates hikers from the lake along many portions of the route, but occasional openings and short side paths provide views across the water.

🪵 Boardwalks Through the Wetlands

Wooden boardwalks are especially useful in the wetter portions of the Carolina bay environment. Rather than forcing hikers directly through saturated ground, the elevated walkways allow visitors to cross sensitive areas while reducing damage to vegetation and soils.

These boardwalk sections also provide a closer look at how quickly the environment changes around Jones Lake. A relatively dry forest trail can transition into wet ground and moisture-loving vegetation within a surprisingly short distance, reflecting subtle differences in elevation and drainage.

For Simba and me, the boardwalks added another type of scenery to the hike. Instead of simply walking through forest for four miles, we continually moved between different surfaces and habitats surrounding the lake.

🌲 Sandy Ridges Around the Bay

Not every section surrounding Jones Lake is wet. Portions of the trail cross sandy ridges and relatively dry forest, creating an interesting contrast with the boggy areas encountered elsewhere along the loop.

These slightly higher areas drain differently from the depressions around them, allowing different trees and understory plants to become established. Even modest changes in elevation can have a significant ecological impact within the extremely flat Coastal Plain.

The sandy soil also serves as a reminder that this part of North Carolina developed within a landscape strongly influenced by ancient coastal processes. The modern Atlantic shoreline is far away, but sand remains an important component of the environment throughout much of southeastern North Carolina.

🌳 Pond Cypress Along Jones Lake

Some of the most beautiful scenery around Jones Lake comes from the pond cypress trees growing beside and directly within the shallow water. Cypress trees are well adapted to wet environments, allowing them to thrive in places where prolonged saturation would create serious problems for many other tree species.

Their trunks and branches create striking silhouettes against the dark lake, particularly where the surrounding forest opens enough to provide unobstructed views across the water. Some trees appear to emerge directly from the lake, emphasizing just how closely the forest and aquatic environments are connected.

Cypress is such an iconic part of southeastern wetland scenery that these sections immediately give Jones Lake a swamp-like appearance. Combined with tea-colored water and Spanish moss, they were among my favorite parts of the hike.

🌿 Spanish Moss Draped Across the Trees

Many of the trees around Jones Lake are draped with Spanish moss, adding even more character to the shoreline. Despite its name, Spanish moss isn't actually a moss. It's a flowering plant in the bromeliad family that grows on trees without taking nutrients directly from them like a true parasite.

The long gray strands absorb moisture and nutrients from the air and surrounding environment while using tree branches primarily for support. In humid southeastern forests, large accumulations can hang from limbs and sway with even a light breeze.

Around Jones Lake, Spanish moss combined with cypress, dark water, and dense forest creates exactly the kind of atmospheric scenery many people associate with the swamps and wetlands of the American South.

🌿 Swamp Cyrilla Along the Shoreline

Another plant associated with the lake's wet environment is swamp cyrilla, also commonly called titi. This shrub or small tree grows in wet acidic soils and is well suited to the margins of Carolina bays, swamps, and other Coastal Plain wetlands.

Dense vegetation like cyrilla can make portions of the Jones Lake shoreline difficult to see directly from the main trail. Rather than providing constant open views, the forest often surrounds hikers completely until a side path or clearing reveals the lake again.

That actually made each view across the water more interesting during our hike. After walking beneath trees for a while, suddenly emerging at the shoreline provided a completely different perspective on the landscape.

🌲 Longleaf Pine Forest

Jones Lake State Park also protects important longleaf pine habitat, representing another ecosystem once far more widespread across the southeastern United States. Longleaf pine forests historically covered enormous portions of the Coastal Plain, but logging, agriculture, development, and changes in natural fire patterns dramatically reduced their extent.

These forests depend heavily on periodic fire to maintain their characteristic open structure and ecological diversity. Fire helps control competing vegetation, recycle nutrients, and create conditions needed by plants and animals adapted to longleaf pine ecosystems.

The presence of longleaf pine habitat adds yet another environment to Jones Lake State Park. Within one hike, visitors can encounter open lake, wetland vegetation, cypress, sandy forest, and pine habitat.

🐦 The Red-Cockaded Woodpecker

One of the most important animals associated with mature longleaf pine forest is the red-cockaded woodpecker, a federally protected species whose survival is closely connected to these increasingly uncommon ecosystems. Unlike most woodpeckers, which typically excavate cavities in dead or decaying wood, red-cockaded woodpeckers create nesting cavities in living pine trees.

That unusual behavior makes mature pine forests particularly important because suitable cavity trees can take many years to develop. Protecting those trees and maintaining the surrounding habitat are essential parts of conserving the species.

Trees containing woodpecker cavities are marked within Jones Lake State Park, allowing observant visitors to identify them while hiking portions of the Bay and Salters Lake trails. Even if you don't see one of the birds, finding a marked cavity tree provides a reminder that the forest is actively managed as wildlife habitat.

🔥 Fire and the Longleaf Pine Ecosystem

Fire may sound destructive, but controlled burning is an important management tool in longleaf pine ecosystems. Historically, lightning and Indigenous land-management practices helped produce frequent low-intensity fires across portions of the southeastern Coastal Plain.

Many native species evolved under those conditions. Longleaf pine is particularly well adapted to fire, while regular burning can reduce dense competing vegetation that would otherwise alter the character of the forest.

Modern prescribed burns attempt to reproduce some of those natural processes under controlled conditions. Maintaining suitable longleaf habitat ultimately benefits species such as the red-cockaded woodpecker along with many other plants and animals that depend on open pine forests.

🐢 Wildlife Around the Carolina Bay

The combination of open water, wetlands, forest, and sandy uplands supports a wide variety of wildlife around Jones Lake. Birds are particularly noticeable, but reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish, insects, and other organisms occupy different portions of the park.

Frogs and other amphibians benefit from wet environments, while turtles and snakes may be encountered around aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Birds use the forest canopy, shoreline vegetation, open water, and longleaf pine areas depending on the species.

Because so many habitats occur within a relatively compact area, hiking the Bay Trail provides an opportunity to pass through multiple wildlife communities during a single four-mile loop.

🌀 A Landscape That Slowly Changes

Carolina bays aren't static environments. Over extremely long periods, vegetation and organic material can accumulate within the depressions, gradually changing open water into marsh, bog, shrubland, or forest.

That process helps explain why many Carolina bays that once contained water no longer resemble lakes today. What appears on a map as an elliptical depression may be completely covered with vegetation when viewed from ground level.

Jones Lake provides a valuable example of a Carolina bay where substantial open water remains. Its preservation allows visitors to see a stage of this landscape that has disappeared from many similar depressions across the Coastal Plain.

🏞️ More Than 2,000 Acres Protected

Today, Jones Lake State Park protects more than 2,000 acres, encompassing Jones Lake, nearby Salters Lake, forests, wetlands, and other associated habitats. That larger protected area is important because the ecological value of the lakes depends heavily on the landscapes surrounding them.

Water quality, wildlife habitat, vegetation, and hydrology don't stop at the shoreline. Protecting forests and wetlands around the lakes helps maintain the broader Carolina bay ecosystem and provides space for wildlife to move between habitats.

For visitors, the size of the park also means there is much more to explore than simply the main swimming and picnic areas. Hiking provides one of the best ways to see how varied the protected landscape actually is.

🏕️ More Than Just Hiking

Although Simba and I came primarily to hike, Jones Lake State Park offers camping, paddling, fishing, picnicking, and swimming in addition to its trail system. Those recreational opportunities have been an important part of the park's identity since its earliest years.

Paddling provides a particularly interesting way to experience Jones Lake because its shallow water allows visitors to see the Carolina bay from a completely different perspective. From the center of the lake, the surrounding forest forms a nearly continuous wall of vegetation around the shoreline.

Hiking and paddling therefore reveal different sides of the same environment. On foot, visitors experience the changing forest and wetlands, while being on the water emphasizes the unusual shape and shallow character of the lake itself.

📅 Jones Lake Opens in 1939

The history of Jones Lake State Park extends beyond conservation and geology. On July 1, 1939, Jones Lake opened as North Carolina's first state-operated outdoor recreation area established for Black Americans during the era of legally enforced racial segregation.

At the time, Black visitors were excluded from other facilities within North Carolina's state park system. Jones Lake provided a public destination where Black families, churches, community groups, and organizations could gather for outdoor recreation that was otherwise restricted or unavailable within the state's segregated park system.

That history is essential to understanding Jones Lake. The same lake and forest enjoyed by visitors today once served a particularly important role for people denied equal access elsewhere.

✊ Recreation During Segregation

Public recreation in the Jim Crow South was shaped by racial segregation just like schools, transportation, restaurants, and many other parts of everyday life. Black Americans could be excluded from public parks or provided separate facilities under a system that was fundamentally unequal.

Within that environment, Jones Lake became an important gathering place. Visitors came to swim, boat, picnic, attend church outings and baptisms, spend time with family, and enjoy the outdoors in a public setting available to them.

The park's popularity demonstrates how strong the demand for such spaces was. Jones Lake wasn't simply a natural attraction; it became part of the social and recreational life of Black communities throughout the region.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 An Immediate Success

Jones Lake quickly attracted large numbers of visitors after opening. An estimated 22,000 people visited between July 1, 1939, and the end of that first summer season, an impressive turnout for a newly opened recreation area in a largely rural part of southeastern North Carolina.

Visitors traveled from communities across North Carolina, and some came from outside the state. Families gathered along the lake, church groups organized outings, swimmers entered the tea-colored water, and the park became a destination for people who had been denied access to other state recreational facilities.

Those early visitor numbers reveal how significant Jones Lake became almost immediately. The recreation area was filling a need that segregation had created by restricting access elsewhere.

⛪ Church Outings and Baptisms

Jones Lake also became associated with church gatherings and baptisms, adding another layer to its role within surrounding Black communities. Outdoor recreation areas have long served as gathering places for religious and community organizations, particularly when they provide space for large groups to meet together.

The lake offered opportunities for swimming and boating while picnic areas provided space for meals and social gatherings. Baptisms connected the water itself with religious traditions, giving Jones Lake meaning extending beyond ordinary recreation.

These activities helped transform the park into a community destination rather than simply a place people visited individually. Generations of families created memories here during a period when equal access to many other public spaces remained unavailable.

⚖️ Integration of North Carolina State Parks

Jones Lake remained an important recreation destination for Black visitors until North Carolina's state park system was integrated during the Civil Rights era. As legal segregation was dismantled, restrictions that had determined which parks people could visit based on race were gradually eliminated.

The integration of public parks represented one small part of the much larger struggle over equal access to public accommodations and government services. Jones Lake's earlier role remains historically significant because it documents how segregation affected something as ordinary as spending a summer day swimming, picnicking, or hiking at a state park.

Today, visitors of all backgrounds share the same trails, lake, campground, picnic areas, and recreational facilities. Understanding the park's history adds an important dimension to experiencing the landscape.

🌲 Nature and History in the Same Landscape

One of the things I found most interesting about Jones Lake State Park is how its natural and human histories overlap. The Carolina bay tells a geological and ecological story extending far beyond human history, while the park's establishment in 1939 connects the same landscape with a very different chapter of North Carolina's past.

The forest contains pond cypress, longleaf pine, wildlife, and rare habitats, while the lake provided generations of visitors with opportunities for recreation and community gatherings. Neither story needs to overshadow the other because together they explain why the park matters.

A hike around Jones Lake can therefore be several experiences at once. It's a nature hike, an exploration of unusual geology, a wildlife habitat, and a walk through a place with an important social history.

🥾 Four Miles of Constantly Changing Scenery

The four-mile Bay Trail turned out to be a good distance for experiencing those different aspects of the park. The mostly flat terrain made the hike relatively easy, but changing trail surfaces and occasional wet sections kept the route interesting.

Sandy stretches transitioned into forest floor, roots, wetter ground, and boardwalks. Dense vegetation occasionally opened to reveal Jones Lake, while different tree communities reflected changes in soil and moisture.

Instead of one spectacular viewpoint serving as the destination, the entire loop gradually revealed the character of the Carolina bay. For Simba and me, that made the journey itself more important than reaching any particular spot.

🐕 Hiking Jones Lake State Park With Simba

And, of course, Simba joined me throughout the hike. Dogs are permitted on the park's trails as long as they remain on an attended leash no longer than six feet, allowing us to explore the Bay Trail and surrounding forest together.

The mostly flat terrain made the hike manageable, although natural surfaces, roots, sand, and wetter areas added some variety. Simba naturally found plenty to investigate along the way, especially wherever wildlife had crossed the trail or vegetation became particularly dense.

For me, the best parts were the sections where the forest opened toward the lake. Seeing dark water surrounded by cypress and Spanish moss created some of the most memorable scenery from our visit.

📸 Photographing Jones Lake

Jones Lake offers some beautiful opportunities for photography and video because the scenery can change dramatically depending on where you are along the trail. Cypress trees rising beside the tea-colored water create atmospheric shoreline scenes, while Spanish moss adds texture to the surrounding forest.

Boardwalks provide interesting lines through wetter areas, and sandy trails beneath the trees create a completely different appearance. When openings reveal the lake, the dark water reflects the sky and surrounding vegetation, producing scenes unlike those found around clearer recreational lakes.

Capturing that variety was important for my video because Jones Lake isn't defined by one landmark. Its character comes from the combination of lake, forest, wetlands, unusual plants, wildlife habitat, and history.

🌅 A Quiet Lake With a Complicated Story

Standing beside Jones Lake today, it's easy to focus entirely on how peaceful the landscape feels. The water is shallow and dark, cypress trees line portions of the shore, Spanish moss hangs from branches, and forest surrounds much of the lake.

Yet the story of this place is far more complicated than the scenery initially suggests. Its geological origins connect it with the mystery of Carolina bays, while its ecological importance includes wetland habitat and longleaf pine forest. Its human history includes both the injustice of segregation and the generations of Black families who transformed Jones Lake into an important recreational and community destination despite those restrictions.

Knowing those stories made the hike considerably more meaningful. What initially appeared to be a quiet lake in the woods turned out to contain multiple layers of North Carolina history.

🐾 Another North Carolina Adventure With Simba

For Simba and me, Jones Lake State Park provided a completely different hiking experience from the mountain, river, and coastal parks we've explored elsewhere. We followed sandy forest trails, crossed wetter areas on boardwalks, walked beneath longleaf pine, encountered pond cypress draped in Spanish moss, and repeatedly caught glimpses of the lake's unusual tea-colored water.

The Carolina bay landscape alone makes Jones Lake interesting, but the park's history adds another important reason to visit. Knowing that this peaceful recreation area once provided Black families with a rare state-operated outdoor destination during segregation changes the way you experience the place.

Jones Lake State Park proves once again that some of the most interesting destinations aren't necessarily the most dramatic. Sometimes a shallow lake surrounded by forest can contain far more history, science, and natural beauty than first meets the eye.

🎥 Watch the Video

Join Simba and me as we hike through Jones Lake State Park near Elizabethtown, North Carolina, exploring the forests and wetlands surrounding a mysterious Carolina bay. We'll follow portions of the Bay Trail through sandy forest, wetter areas, and boardwalks while discovering pond cypress, Spanish moss, longleaf pine habitat, and beautiful views across the lake's naturally tea-colored water.

We'll also explore the remarkable story behind Jones Lake itself, from the mystery surrounding Carolina bays to the park's important role beginning in 1939 as North Carolina's first state-operated outdoor recreation area for Black Americans. It's a place where natural history and human history come together within one surprisingly diverse landscape.

👀 In This Video You'll See

- Our hike through Jones Lake State Park
- The mysterious tea-colored waters of Jones Lake
- Forest trails surrounding this unusual Carolina bay
- Pond cypress trees covered in Spanish moss
- Sandy, wooded, and wetland sections of the trail
- Boardwalks crossing the Carolina bay environment
- Views across the shallow 224-acre lake
- Simba exploring another North Carolina state park with me

⭐ Why Jones Lake State Park Is Worth Visiting

Jones Lake State Park combines unusual geology, diverse Coastal Plain ecosystems, wildlife, outdoor recreation, and an important chapter of North Carolina history. The approximately four-mile Bay Trail provides an excellent introduction, circling a shallow 224-acre Carolina bay lake while passing through sandy forest, wetlands, cypress habitat, longleaf pine, and sections of boardwalk.

The lake itself is fascinating because it represents one of the relatively few Carolina bays that still contains substantial open water. Pond cypress and Spanish moss create beautiful scenery around its tea-colored shoreline, while longleaf pine habitat supports wildlife that includes the federally protected red-cockaded woodpecker.

Just as important is the park's human history. Jones Lake's opening on July 1, 1939, as North Carolina's first state-operated outdoor recreation area for Black Americans made it an important destination for families and communities excluded from other state parks under segregation. That history remains an essential part of understanding the place today.

For Simba and me, the combination made Jones Lake much more interesting than a simple hike around a lake. From mysterious Carolina bays and tea-colored water to cypress forests, longleaf pines, wildlife, and its role as a recreation destination for Black Americans during segregation, there is far more hidden within this quiet state park than first meets the eye.

👍 If you enjoy hiking state parks, exploring unusual ecosystems, and discovering fascinating places with Simba, please LIKE, COMMENT, and SUBSCRIBE for more of our travels.