The site preserves 22 of the original 150 acres owned by Samuel Polk, where Samuel and his wife Jane's oldest son James was born in 1795 and where the family lived until 1806. James K. Polk left the state as a boy, and his North Carolina birth and upbringing later seemed forgotten; by 1900 his birthplace had disappeared and its precise location had been lost to memory. In 1904 the daughters of the American Revolution honored him here, and after years of local campaigning the property became a state historic site in 1968. The grounds now include three reconstructed log buildings, a picnic area, a natural trail beside Little Sugar Creek, and a visitor's center with exhibits on Polk's life, his presidency, and early Mecklenburg County, along with special events and demonstrations throughout the year. The surrounding Little Sugar Creek area also carries a longer history: the Sugaree Indians lived here in 1605 and gave their name to Little Sugar Creek and Sugar Creek, and, to protect themselves from the Cherokee Nation on the other side of the Catawba River, they joined forces with early white settlers. Those settlers arrived by way of the Great Wagon Road and depended on Little Sugar Creek for water and for the fertile soil along its banks. Today the Pineville area of the creek contains native plants along with dense Japanese stilt grass, including shrubs and a canopy of black walnut, rock chestnut oak, Virginia pine, and giant cane, while the surrounding forests support frogs, toads, salamanders, birds, and many mammals.