Thank you to the hundreds of volunteers across 11 sites in Johnston County for making our communities beautiful at the 6th Annual Earth Day County Wide Clean Up in 2026! Our goal is to always work with local parks and recreation departments, towns, nonprofits, and individual residents to coordinate litter cleanup in public spaces.

Each year we’ve grown our impact and we look forward to continuing to be the leading force behind keeping Johnston County beautiful. This event is already set for April 2027, with exact date tba!

Thank you to everyone who attended our 2025 Walk & Talk About Trails event! We had over 50 community members show up to Deep River Brewing, with 30 people participating in the 2-mile walk through Downtown Clayton to kick-off the evening!

This important annual event provides the Friends, and our partners, a platform to share updates on current and upcoming recreation projects in JoCo. Attendees engaged in conversations about trail connectivity, park development, boat ramp access, and funding efforts. This year we’re combining our Walk & Talk event with our Fall Hiking Challenge Kick-off at Clemmons State Educational Forest on Oct. 10th, 2026! Details tba!

In honor of National River Clean Up Day, the Friends aimed to host our first annual Neuse River Clean Up Day in Clayton!

We planned to meet at East Clayton Elementary School and participants would be transported to a private boat launch, hosted by one of our partners, Neuse Adventures. We would then float down the river as a group picking up trash; exiting the river at the original parking spot.

Event will take place, weather and river level depending, on July 18th, 2026!

The Friends of Johnston County Parks was designated as the Mountain-to-Sea Trail's (MST) Task Force Leader for Johnston County back in September 2023 by the Friends of the MST. This designation puts the Friends group in charge of maintaining the MST alignment throughout Johnston County, which is about 50 miles.

The first project area that the Friends group started to work with is the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site. The historic site has 7 miles of trails that are part of the MST. Keep an eye out for upcoming “pop-up” trail maintenance days at sites across the county; the next date is August 15th, 2026!