North Carolina Coastal Land Trust and Camp Albemarle signed an agreement in August 2023 that will expand children’s access to nature on property owned by the Coastal Land Trust along Gales Creek near the Town of Newport. Camp Albemarle will be allowed to use the Coastal Land Trust’s neighboring Gales Creek Preserve for its camper and nature study programs, and the Coastal Land Trust will be able to use Camp Albemarle’s bathhouse, dining hall, and pavilions on the Camp Property during occasional group nature hikes and environmental education tours the Coastal Land Trust conducts on the Preserve. Overall, children will reap the benefits from this new partnership between the Coastal Land Trust and Camp Albemarle.
Coastal Land Trust purchased more than 254 acres of land from the East Carolina Council of the Boy Scouts of America located adjacent to Camp Sam Hatcher in two separate transactions in 2013 and 2015. In 2018, Coastal Land Trust acquired an adjoining 112-acre property to create the Coastal Land Trust’s 367+acre Gales Creek Preserve. The Preserve properties, which were purchased to conserve their natural resource and water quality values, feature open, park-like stands of longleaf pine and mature mixed pine hardwood forest along more than a mile of frontage on Gales Creek, a tidal creek that flows to Bogue Sound. The Preserve’s passive recreational amenities include a primitive camping area, rustic chapel, hiking trails, and a creek access constructed by Eckerd’s Youth Foundation that once leased the property from the Boy Scouts. In March 2023, Camp Albemarle purchased the 35+ acre former Boy Scout Camp to expand its existing camp facility on N.C. Highway 24. As new neighbors, the Coastal Land Trust and Camp Albemarle are partnering through this mutually beneficial agreement to provide greater recreation and environmental education opportunities for kids.
“Our campers will now be able to canoe or kayak from the main camp site on Bogue Sound up Gales Creek to the Gales Creek Preserve to camp and/or hike the forest trails. Future nature programs at our new site will utilize amenities of the neighboring Coastal Land Trust Preserve. Overall, this agreement will allow Camp Albemarle to provide more opportunities for kids to learn, explore, and appreciate nature,” stated Tom Hussmann, Director of Camp Albemarle.
“We always love getting more kids out on the lands we conserve. With this agreement, Camp Albemarle also will help us with general maintenance and upkeep of the soil roads, trails, and creek access on the Gales Creek Preserve which is significant to us,” said Harrison Marks, Executive Director of the Coastal Land Trust.
Learn about Gales Creek Preserve here.
About Camp Albemarle
Camp Albemarle provides summer camps, day camps, overnight camps, nature schools, and year-round programming for children in and around the Crystal Coast region of North Carolina with goals of allowing children to try new outdoor activities, connect children to nature and the outdoors, make new friends, and grow in their Christian faith. www.campalbemarle.org.
