South Mountains State Park

One of the state's most rugged parks, South Mountains State Park offers a number of activities. Rangers are available to teach students about the mountain watershed and the importance of water stewardship.

Preview your trip on the web: South Mountains State Park

Learn more

• Surf Your Watershed Find about the watershed near your hometown, get answers to watershed questions, and read watershed news.
• Educational in Nature A series of environmental education curriculum supplements designed to foster understanding and environmental awareness in the classroom. These activities, games, lesson plans, and information cover such topics as forests, animals, recycling, and energy.
• Hydrogeology 101 Contains information on the hydrologic cycle and ways to protect your groundwater. Find descriptions of North Carolina's three physiographic provinces: the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge as well as beginner, intermediate, and advanced groundwater definitions.
• Lesson plan: StreamWatch This lesson is intended as a long term project to determine the overall health of a stream or wetland. Students identify seasonal changes that occur within the ecosystem, ideally with a minimum of bimonthly or monthly monitoring.

Related pages

• Camp Don Lee: Check out the programs available to classroom students at this beautiful camp located near Arapahoe, North Carolina.
• Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area: Originally settled by the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, the Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area has a diversity of natural communities including undisturbed forest and a wide variety of wildlife species.
• Lake James State Park: Located in both Burke and McDowell counties, Lake James State Park is a place where students can learn about the animals and plants that inhabit the area.

Related topics

• Learn more about Burke County, North Carolina, amphibians, aquatic life, biology, biotic index, birds, environmental science, habitats, indicator species, mammals, natural history, reptiles, science, state parks, stream and watershed ecology, water quality, watershed and stewardship, and wildlife.

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This park is the perfect place to enjoy nature. Here you can see a majestic mountain range peeking out from the gently rolling landscape of the Piedmont. The park includes elevations up to 3,000 feet, a waterfall dropping 80 feet and more than 40 miles of trails. Rangers hold regularly scheduled educational and interpretive programs about South Mountains State Park. Educational materials have been developed for grades 4-7 and are correlated to North Carolina’s competency-based curriculum in science, social studies, mathematics and English/language arts. South Mountains’ program introduces students to stream and watershed ecology, focusing on the aquatic life, water quality, indicator species, biotic index, watershed and stewardship of Jacob’s Fork River. Accompanying the program is a teacher’s booklet and workshop, free of charge to educators.

Each state park and recreation area has an EELE (environmental education learning experience) curriculum guide that includes on-site activities, pre- and post-visit activities, student information pages, worksheets, fact sheets, vocabulary, and references. You can receive a free copy of an EELE by attending its corresponding workshop at a park, or you can borrow these guides through interlibrary loan at any public library in North Carolina. The EELE for South Mountains State Park is “Wild, Wonderful Water” for grades 4, 5, 6, and 7.

The North Carolina State Parks website offers a search feature for finding the plants and animals that can be found at each state park. Using the drop-down menus, you can choose a park and either an amphibian, bird, reptile, mammal, fungus, insect, or vascular plant. You can search within each group by family, scientific name, or common name. There are photographs from the state parks and fun facts for some of the species.

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