The Friends of Johnston County Parks and local partners invite residents and visitors alike to lace up their boots and hit the trail for the JoCo Fall Hiking Challenge, running from October 1 through December 31, 2026.

The Challenge is simple: complete a hike on any of the designated trails across Johnston County and submit your hike through the official Google Form for a chance to win door prizes.

Each trail counts as one entry—and the more hikes you complete, the more chances you have to win! Participation is free, and no registration is required.

We’ll see you on the trail!

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.

Trail maintenance days at sites across the county typically occur the third Saturday of every month! If interested please fill out a trail work form.

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.

Event 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.

Spring 2027 Walk & Talk Event Date TBA!

In honor of National River Clean Up Day, the Friends hosted our first annual Neuse River Clean Up Day in Clayton in 2026! We met at East Clayton Elementary School and participants were transported to a private boat launch, hosted by one of our partners, Neuse Adventures.

We then floated down the river as a group picking up trash; exiting the river at the original parking spot. Our 2026 clean up event was a huge success with over 200 lbs. of trash collected from the Neuse.

Stay tuned for 2027 river clean up dates!