Morrow Mountain State Park in the Uwharrie Mountains preserves a landscape shaped by an ancient, eroded range, with broad views from Morrow Mountain and access to Lake Tillery. The area was significant long before the park’s creation: Native Americans were present at least 12,000 years before European settlement, and the mountain supplied widely traded rhyodacite stone used for tools found across the eastern United States. Settlement along the Pee Dee River followed in the 1700s, and a public ferry linked the area to regional travel in 1780. The park emerged in the 1930s through local donations and New Deal construction, opening in 1939.