All that separates the public from the 911-acre Brunswick County Nature Park is a concrete apron that will connect internal gravel roads with N.C. 133.

Within weeks, county officials say, the apron will be complete and signage will be installed to direct traffic from the highway to a picnic area, new kayak launch and a small parking lot that sits atop a rare bluff above Town Creek. When development phases are finished, the park will include separate hiking, biking and horseback riding trails and an environmental education center.

The park's existence "means there's always going to be some land around like there was when I was a kid," said Bill Sue, Brunswick County commissioners chairman.

He hopes it will also be a reminder to future generations to do likewise when it is their turn to preserve, he said.

The park is a public link in a chain of private land bordering Town Creek that has been placed under conservation easements by the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, which bought the property from International Paper Co. in 2003 and donated it to the county in 2004.

Camilla Herlevich, land trust executive director, said Town Creek is a nationally significant aquatic system that owes its pristine nature to the fact that the land bordering it has not seen much disturbance. It begins its meandering path to the Cape Fear River in the Green Swamp and is a tidal creek, sometimes salty, sometimes fresh, that rises and falls 5 to 7 feet a day when it flows past the handicapped-accessible kayak dock at the Nature Park.

The launch is located at an old dirt boat ramp, said Jim Pryor, Brunswick County's parks and recreation director.

His department will be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the few facilities within the park that will need it. The overall development is being guiided by a group working under the umbrella of the county's planning department. The public works department built the wide gravel roads, parking area and a picnic area that includes a large gazebo where green, metal picnic tables await families.

Brunswick County's Nature Park is the jeweled pendant at the end of a growing string of much smaller nature parks in N.C. coastal counties on land also donated by the Land Trust, Herlevich said. The next largest is a little more than 200 acres.

Other than signs directing traffic, Pryor said the only others in the park will be to alert visitors to the wildlife that lives there.

Deer, turkey, bear and coyote tracks have been spotted by those working within the park. Six rattlesnakes intermittently interrupted Phase 1 construction.

The park is valuable for its vegetation as well.

Venus flytraps grow in a remote edge of the park that cuts through land where trees and significant undergrowth have been cleared for power lines that run inland from the Brunswick Nuclear Plant. Native azaleas and honeysuckle, which has red blooms, decorate the land near the parking lot bluff, said Jesica Blake, stewardship director for the Land Trust. Longleaf pine restoration is possible on the land now dominated by loblolly pines that were planted and harvested commercially.

Kayakers and canoeists who use the new dock can glide upriver toward U.S. 17 or downstream through an old rice plantation to the Cape Fear River.

Development within the park is stictly limited because the Land Trust purchased the land with a $2 million grant from the state's Clean Water Management Trust Fund, whose purpose is to shield water from landborne pollutiants. To that end. the county recently amended its agreement with the Land Trust to place all picnic areas at least 300 feet from the creek. Prior to the amendment, the agreement required just a 35-foot buffer between the creek and picnic sites.

Sue, who recently visited the park for the first time, said the Nature Park land would be prime for development if it wasn't t protected, and could have been a source of revenue from property and other taxes. But it is valuable as a park as well, he said, as an amenity to draw new residents elsewhere in the county.

"When we set something like this aside," Sue said, "it says something."