Thank you to the hundreds of volunteers across 11 sites in Johnston County for making our communities beautiful at the 5th Annual Earth Day Countywide Cleanup! 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.

Thank you to everyone who attended our recent 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.

The Friends remains committed to working with community leaders and members to support and promote trails, parks, open spaces, blueways, and the arts in JoCo!

In honor of National River Clean Up Day, we are pleased to announce our first annual Neuse River Clean Up Day in Clayton! We will be meeting at East Clayton Elementary School and participants will be transported to a private boat launch, hosted by one of our partners, Neuse Adventures. While the event was postponed due to weather, we look forward to hosting the event in Fall 2025!

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 in total. The first project area that the Friends group started to work with is the Bentonville Battlefield State Historic Site. The historic site has 6 miles of trails that are part of the MST, part of the Coastal Crescent Loop segment of the MST.

Keep an eye out for upcoming “pop-up” trail maintenance days!