Merchants Millpond is the reason a lot of people find this county at all. It is also the clearest possible illustration of what buying land here involves: the same hydrology that makes the place extraordinary is the hydrology sitting under a good many of the tracts you will look at.
This chapter does both halves. The park first, because it deserves it. Then the wet ground, because that is the part that decides whether a parcel is worth what someone is asking.
The millpond
Merchants Millpond State Park sits ten miles south of the Virginia line, at 176 Millpond Road in Gatesville. Its centre is a 760-acre millpond, impounded in 1811 as Norfleets Millpond — gristmills, a sawmill and a farm supply store made it the county's centre of trade, which is where the "Merchants" name comes from.1
NC State Parks describes old-growth cypress hung with Spanish moss creating an "enchanted forest," particularly at Lassiter Swamp, and notes American alligators at the northernmost point of their range. The park was established in 1973, from a donation of 919 acres by A.B. Coleman including the millpond, plus 925 acres of woodland from The Nature Conservancy.1
| Trail | Length | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Lassiter Trail | 7-mile loop, white-blazed — the long one | Hiking |
| Bennetts Creek Trail | 2.25 miles one way | Hiking |
| Coleman / K.I.P. Track Trail | 2-mile loop | Hiking |
| Cypress Point Trail | 0.3-mile loop | Hiking |
| Bicycle Trail | 5-mile loop | Biking and hiking |
Camping is genuinely primitive: canoe-in sites, backpack sites and group sites, all non-electric — no hookups anywhere in the park. As of this writing the tent and trailer campground is closed for construction. Boat rentals and a launch exist; call ahead for season and pricing, which the park does not publish.1
Three things this site will not tell you about the park, and why
- Total park acreage. Three different figures circulate — 3,200, 3,447 and 3,520 — and NC State Parks does not publish one anywhere. Call the visitor center at (252) 357-1191 if you need it.
- The age of the trees. No source documents an age for the old-growth bald cypress or tupelo. "Ancient" is a description, not a number.
- A "northern range limit" for the Spanish moss. You will read that claim. It does not hold — Spanish moss is documented well north of here, up toward the Virginia coast. The alligator range claim is NC State Parks' own and is repeated above; the moss claim is not, and is not repeated.
One more: NC State Parks' own page still says the millpond is "more than 190 years old." Built in 1811, it is over 215. That is stale copy on their site, not a different pond.
The rest of the water
The Chowan River forms the county's western boundary. Hertford County is on the far bank for most of its length, with Chowan County at the southern tip and Southampton County, Virginia at the northern end. Bennetts Creek is entirely a Gates County stream and drains to the Chowan.2
Public access is real and it is state-owned. The Wildlife Resources Commission operates three boating access areas in the county, all open:
| Access area | Address | Facilities |
|---|---|---|
| Shoups Landing | 120 Shoups Landing Rd, Gatesville | 2 launch lanes, 3 fixed docks, fishing pier |
| Gatesville | 700 New River Rd, Gatesville | 2 launch lanes, 1 fixed dock, 10 trailer spaces |
| Gatlington Landing | 1070 Sandbanks Rd, Gates | 1 launch lane, 1 floating dock, 22 trailer spaces |
And the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, about 113,000 acres and the largest intact remnant of a swamp that once covered more than a million, does extend into this county. The Fish and Wildlife Service's own comprehensive conservation plan states it: "The Refuge occupies portions of two cities in Virginia, Suffolk and Chesapeake, and three counties in North Carolina, Gates, Camden, and Pasquotank."3
Dismal Swamp State Park is not in Gates County
The federal refuge and the North Carolina state park are two different things with confusingly similar names. Dismal Swamp State Park is in Camden County. If a listing or a search result implies the state park is nearby in Gates County, it is conflating the two.
Now the part that costs money: wetlands
Northeastern North Carolina has a great deal of ground that holds water. Some of it is regulated. As of 2026, materially less of it is regulated than was true five years ago — and that shift is the single most consequential legal change for anyone buying raw land here.
What Sackett changed
In Sackett v. EPA, decided May 25, 2023, the Supreme Court held that the Clean Water Act reaches only relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters, plus wetlands with a continuous surface connection to such waters — making it difficult to determine where the water ends and the wetland begins. The Court rejected the older "significant nexus" test.4
The practical effect on Coastal Plain land is large. Isolated depressional wetlands and Carolina bays — features that are genuinely wet, genuinely functional, and genuinely common around here — frequently lack a continuous surface connection to a navigable water. After Sackett, many of them fall outside federal Section 404 jurisdiction.
And North Carolina did not backstop it
Some states responded by protecting orphaned wetlands under state law. North Carolina did the opposite. Session Law 2023-63 — the 2023 Farm Act, which became law over the Governor's veto on June 27, 2023 — says in Section 15(c): "Wetlands classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by 33 C.F.R. § 328.3 and 40 C.F.R. § 230.3."5
The Environmental Management Commission adopted the conforming permanent rule in September 2025, and NC DEQ's surface water standards now carry an effective date of June 1, 2026. So the answer for a buyer is clean: in North Carolina, a wetland that is not federally jurisdictional is not state-jurisdictional either.
Do not read that as "wetlands are no longer a problem"
Three reasons it still matters, and matters a lot:
- Jurisdiction is not the same as buildability. Unregulated wet ground is still wet ground. It still fails a soil evaluation, still floods, still costs money to build on, and still will not hold a septic drainfield.
- The determination is a process, not an opinion. Whether a particular feature has a continuous surface connection is a fact question answered by the Corps, not by a seller, an agent, or a website.
- There is a proposed federal rule pending. EPA published an updated "waters of the United States" proposal in November 2025; the comment period closed in January 2026 and no final rule had issued when this chapter was written. This is a moving target. Do not treat any of the above as settled for a purchase five years out.
Who to actually call
| Question | Agency | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Is there jurisdictional wetland on this tract, and where is the line? | U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District | Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 West Fifth Street, Washington, NC 27889. District regulatory line (704) 510-1441; NCPermit-Wetlands@usace.army.mil |
| Wetland determination for USDA farm program eligibility | USDA NRCS | Gatesville USDA Service Center, 104 New Road, Gatesville, NC 27938, (252) 357-0290. Form NRCS-CPA-026, requested via AD-1026 at FSA or NRCS-CPA-38. |
| Hydric soil ratings, before you spend anything | NRCS Web Soil Survey | websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov — Soil Data Explorer, Suitabilities and Limitations, Land Classifications, "Hydric Rating by Map Unit" |
| Shoreline development near the Chowan and its tributaries | NC Division of Coastal Management | Gates is one of the twenty counties named in the Coastal Area Management Act, N.C.G.S. § 113A-1036 |
All of North Carolina is Wilmington District. The boundary with the Norfolk District is the state line, not a watershed line — a genuine trap here, because Gates County's water drains north into Virginia and it is easy to assume the Norfolk office has it.
Approved versus preliminary jurisdictional determination
An approved JD is a definitive written statement of where jurisdiction lies. It is final agency action, appealable, and judicially reviewable, and the Wilmington District states that these are "good for five years from the date the Corps notifies you in writing that you have accurately delineated the jurisdictional features on your property." A preliminary JD is advisory and non-binding — it assumes jurisdiction without conceding it, to move a permit along faster. On a tract you are buying to build on, the approved JD is the one worth waiting for.
What hydric soils do and do not tell you
Web Soil Survey will give you a hydric rating for every map unit on a parcel, free, in about ten minutes. Do that before you drive out. But understand what it is: hydric soil is one of three wetland indicators — the others are hydrophytic vegetation and wetland hydrology. A hydric rating does not make land a wetland, and a non-hydric rating does not make it safe. It is a screen, and a very good one for deciding which tracts are worth a site visit.
The historical 1929 soil survey of Gates County named the poorly drained group as the Portsmouth series, peat and swamp. That is a century old and no modern published narrative survey for the county was located during research — so pull the current map units for the actual parcel rather than relying on a series list.
One line on the septic application people miss
Albemarle Regional Health Services' own on-site wastewater application puts the burden on you in capital letters: "THE APPLICANT SHALL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTIFYING THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT OF ANY DESIGNATED WETLANDS ON THE PROPERTY." Not the seller. Not the agent. You. That is the next chapter.
- NC State Parks, Merchants Millpond State Park, ncparks.gov: "a 760-acre millpond more than 190 years old"; "Old-growth cypress trees adorned with Spanish moss create an 'enchanted forest,' particularly at Lassiter Swamp"; hiking 10 miles, biking 5 miles; 176 Millpond Road, Gatesville, NC 27938, visitor center (252) 357-1191. Named trail mileages from the same site's trails page; note the itemized hiking trails sum to 11.55 miles against the summary figure of 10, an inconsistency in NC State Parks' own material. Campsite composition from ReserveAmerica, the official NC State Parks reservation system. The 1811 construction date, the Norfleets Millpond name, the 1973 establishment, and the Coleman and Nature Conservancy donations are from NCpedia; Wikipedia gives Coleman's figure as 925 rather than 919. ↩
- Boundary relationships confirmed by spatial comparison of OpenStreetMap river geometry against the Census Bureau's TIGER county boundary for Gates County, 2026-09-02. Boating access areas from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission's own Boating Access Areas GIS service, queried for County = Gates, all three sites returning status Open; NCWRC (919) 707-0150. The water body attributed to the Gatesville site is NCWRC's own; it was not independently confirmed. ↩
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, fws.gov ("At near 113,000 acres, the refuge is the largest intact remnant…"). The county list is quoted from the FWS Great Dismal Swamp and Nansemond NWR Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan, July 2006, chapter 3, page 35 — a 2006 document; FWS's current live pages do not restate the county list. Lake Drummond is 3,108 acres per the same plan. The refuge was established in 1974 under the Dismal Swamp Act, following Union Camp Corporation's 1973 donation of 49,097 acres to The Nature Conservancy. ↩
- Sackett v. EPA, 598 U.S. 651, No. 21-454, decided May 25, 2023. Slip opinion at supremecourt.gov. The conforming federal rule is "Revised Definition of 'Waters of the United States'; Conforming," 88 Fed. Reg. 61964 (September 8, 2023). Per EPA's own rule-status page, North Carolina operates under the amended January 2023 rule; Virginia is on the enjoined list and operates under the pre-2015 regime read consistent with Sackett. EPA's November 2025 proposed rule remained a proposal when this chapter was written. ↩
- North Carolina Session Law 2023-63 (Senate Bill 582), Section 15, "Clarify Definition of Wetlands"; ratified June 12, 2023, became law over the Governor's veto June 27, 2023. ncleg.gov. Section 15 did not amend N.C.G.S. § 143-212 or § 143-213 — it is a self-executing session-law command overriding administrative rule 15A NCAC 02B .0202. The Environmental Management Commission voted 10–5 on September 11, 2025 to adopt the permanent conforming rule; NC DEQ lists the current surface water standards rules with an effective date of June 1, 2026. ↩
- N.C.G.S. § 113A-103 names twenty counties as of July 1, 2012: Beaufort, Bertie, Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Hyde, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington. USACE district assignment and the Washington Regulatory Field Office address from the Corps' South Atlantic Division North Carolina regulatory page; the five-year approved-JD validity is the Wilmington District's own published language. ↩