Merchants Millpond State Park
A two-hundred-year-old millpond of enormous cypress and tupelo in the far northeast corner of the state.
- Gates County, NC
- Nearest town: Gatesville
- 36 ft
Coordinates
- Lat
- 36.43303
- Lng
- -76.68660
Van camping
You can drive in and sleep in your van here.
At a glance
The basics
What to expect
State park
Reservable sites, paved or well-graded roads, bathhouses in season.
- County
- Gates County
- State
- North Carolina
- Nearest town
- Gatesville
- Elevation
- 36 ft
- Max vehicle length
- Not verified
The place
About Merchants Millpond State Park
Merchants Millpond is one of the most distinctive landscapes in North Carolina — a shallow pond flooded for a mill two centuries ago, now grown into a drowned forest of massive bald cypress and tupelo gum draped in Spanish moss, with a dense mat of duckweed across the surface in summer. Paddling it is the point: a canoe or kayak lets you move between the trunks in water only a few feet deep, past beaver lodges and cottonmouths sunning on logs, into Lassiter Swamp where the trees get older and stranger. The park is remote enough to be genuinely quiet.
For van drivers
Getting a van in and out
Paved access off US 158 and a developed family campground with drive-in sites; the park also has canoe-in and backpack sites, so make sure you book the right kind. Gatesville is small — Elizabeth City, about half an hour away, is the realistic resupply. Bring insect protection that you actually trust, because this is a swamp and summer evenings are serious. Cell coverage is thin.
Written for a high-roof van, not a pickup. Surfaces and clearances change with the weather and with the season’s roadwork — the official page below is the last word.
On the ground
Facilities & fees
Not verified means nobody has confirmed it — treat it as unknown, never as a no. 8 of the 8 below are still unconfirmed.
- Restrooms
- Not verified
- Drinking water
- Not verified
- Showers
- Not verified
- Dump station
- Not verified
- Hookups
- Not verified
- Campfires
- Not verified
- Dogs allowed
- Not verified
- Reservations
- Not verified
- Max vehicle length
- Not verified — check with the park
- Season
- Not verified — check with the park
- Fees
- Not verified — check with the park
The last word on all of this is ncparks.gov(opens in a new tab).
Where it is
Coordinates & directions
Decimal degrees
- Latitude
- 36.433031
- Longitude
- -76.686603
36.4330° N · 76.6866° W
No map tiles here on purpose. Half of these places have no signal at the gate, so coordinates you can save offline beat a map that needs one. Drop them into your phone before you turn off the pavement.
Nearest gas and groceries: Gatesville
Before you go
Official sources
Fees, site counts, length limits and closures change season to season. Everything we have not confirmed ourselves is marked Not verified above rather than guessed at — and where we do have a number, the operator’s own page still wins.
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