AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
Nearly 20 years ago, the Triangle Land Conservancy made it a priority to protect one of the region’s last big wilderness areas — the swampy forests of cypress and lowland hardwoods along the Neuse River in Johnston County.
Read more These 20 NC counties failed to agree on an early voting plan. What drove the splits
Years of planning, negotiating and fundraising have paid off. Last week, the conservancy bought another 602 acres east of Interstate 95 that includes about two miles of river shoreline and parts of two oxbow lakes.
“This property has been a TLC conservation priority for many years,” executive director Sandy Sweitzer said in a statement. “We are delighted to finally complete this purchase and are grateful for our funding partners and a generous landowner donation that made it possible.”
The nonprofit conservancy paid $960,000 for the property, using money from the state’s Land and Water Conservation Fund. Johnston County, which has invested in parks and natural areas as its population has doubled in the last 20 years, kicked in $28,500 for an appraisal, surveys and other transaction costs.
The conservancy says the Massengill family, which owned the property for decades, also contributed by selling it for half the appraised value.
For their part, the Massengills are happy to see the land preserved, the family said in a statement.
“So many family members have enjoyed fishing, hunting, and hiking on the banks of the Neuse River while making memories that will last a lifetime,” it said. “We know that our parents and grandparents would be very pleased to know that this very special place is forever protected.”
Read more President Donald Trump sympathizes with insurrectionists in Senate standoff
The conservancy calls the property the “Gar Gut Mashes,” after the stream that flows through it. Mashes is a local colloquialism for a marshy area, and the Massengill property includes stands of bald cypress along the oxbows and more than 400 acres of wetlands.
Most of the land falls within the Neuse River Lowgrounds Natural Heritage Area, designated by the state because it supports a rich variety of plants and animals.
The Triangle Land Conservancy has now protected over 2,800 acres of forest and wetlands in the wider area known as the Neuse Lowgrounds or “Let’Lones” because of its inhospitable swampy terrain. In June, it bought the 800-acre Neuse Islands Wilderness for $4.6 million. A month earlier, it transferred 308 acres of the former Rose Dairy Farm along the Neuse River to the county, which plans to open it to the public as a nature preserve in the fall.
The conservancy’s largest purchase in the region came in 2019, when it bought the 1,127-acre Brogden Bottomlands near the Howell Woods Environmental Learning Center. The group sold that property to the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation in 2022.
The land conservancy has no immediate plans to open the Gar Gut Mashes property to the public, though that will eventually change. The Mountains-to-Sea Trail will pass through the property, while the Mountains-to-Sea Trail blueway paddle route passes by on the Neuse River.
Read more Garner man, 19, charged with murder after stepson dies in bathtub
This story was originally published August 3, 2026 at 12:02 PM.