By RAY WYCHE
Staff Writer

Given the recent history of development on lands adjoining Lake Waccamaw, there’s no doubt that if the N. C. Division of State Parks had not acted when it did, a treasure on the shore of the lake would exist only in a few photos and memories.
The first land acquisition step that led to the formation of the Lake Waccamaw State Park was a propitious event; had this relatively small tract of pine woodland not been purchased by the state, conceivably the public would have lost a rare part of nature that is now preserved forever.

For waterfront land, particularly that adjoining the waters of Lake Waccamaw, is already priced out of the financial reach of most people. And it’s a given that there would have been droves of anxious buyers had the 1,756 acres that now comprise Lake Waccamaw State Park been put on the block.

The crescent-shaped parcel of sand and swamp on the eastern and southeastern shores of the lake is now secure for present and future generations to enjoy.

It is difficult to imagine a more suitable site for a state park. Its flora and fauna, in as natural a setting as anywhere on earth, live as they have for centuries. Some of these natural treasures exist nowhere else in the world.

The lake itself is unique; one of hundreds of bays and bay lakes in southeastern North Carolina and northeastern South Carolina, its origin remains a subject of debate. Eons ago, some monumental force of nature — ice-age glaciers scooping out shallow depressions as they slowly moved, or prevailing winds shifting around the sandy topsoil, or a shower of meteorites crashing into the earth in a southeast-northwest orientation — left countless egg-shaped depressions in the area.

Some of these scooped-out places filled with water, replenished by inflowing streams and by natural springs (as is Lake Waccamaw), and some became homes to densely growing trees and shrubs.

The name bay lakes comes from the many bay trees — sweet, red, and loblolly — that grow prolifically in the soils that surround these oval shaped bodies of water.

All true bays, be they water-filled to form lakes or covered with thick growths of a variety of plant life, are ovals with the longer dimensions running northwest-southeast.

Bays are readily discernable in aerial photographs of the area; some are obvious, bodies of water such as Lake Waccamaw, White Lake, Bay Tree Lake, Singletary Lake, Jones Lake, and others. Others are filled with vegetation but remain easily identifiable in photographs by the oval shaped changes in plant colors.

Establishing a park along the shores of 8,938-acre Lake Waccamaw was not an overnight deal. As far back as the 1920s, a few farsighted citizens of the lake community saw into the future: a burgeoning increase in the number of people who some day would want to live on the shores of the lake. These earlier farsighted individuals saw the need to preserve some of this untouched wilderness for future generations.

The late K. Clyde Council, a visionary businessman (Council Tool Co. and one of the founders and an early president of the original Waccamaw Bank and Trust Co.) whose home was on the lake shore, was elected to the N.C. Legislature and worked to interest the state in buying undeveloped land along the banks of the lake as the site of a park. In those conservative and pre-ecologically minded days, he was unsuccessful.

But he didn’t give up, and others kept up the pressure. The state attempted in 1964 to buy some shorefront property on Lake Waccamaw but was unable to complete an acquisition. But in 1976, the state obtained title to 273 acres on the east and southeast shores that were the beginning of Lake Waccamaw State Park. The spot where the first boundary stake was driven into the ground is now part of the park’s picnic-camping area.

From this small beginning, the park grew with new land acquisitions until its holdings expanded to its present 1,756 acres. All of the park’s land borders on the lake itself. The two most recent purchases consist of lands surrounding the mouth of the Waccamaw River on the southwest shore and land around Big Creek on the northeast side. The acquisition of the 22 acres around the mouth of Big Creek in December 2005 was the last purchase of park land, and was particularly desirable for the park in that it adjoins the Fryer Swamp Game Lands on the north, thereby giving the state control of the main inlet into the lake and its surrounding lands.

Much of the woodlands in the park once was owned by large timber companies and two owners of the biggest tracts — Georgia Pacific Corporation and Federal Paperboard Corporation (now International Paper) — graciously deeded some their holdings to the park.

With practically all land on the lakeshore now developed — save that in the state park — the park’s existence becomes even more appreciated and valuable. As times goes on, more and more people are recognizing the value of the park, particularly for education. Park officials say attendance has shown an increase during the past few months.

The park shows Lake Waccamaw at its finest — much the same as the Creator and nature formed it eons ago.