At the time of the 1776 Battle of Moones Creek, this area was a very different forest dominated by towering longleaf pines. Tapped for resin and pungent with tar rendering, longleaf forests supported the Carolinas' shipbuilding economy. Evidence of that era remains in some longleaf pines and the remnants of a historic tar kiln, recalling both the naval stores industry and a battlefield landscape. The term "tarheel," a nickname for North Carolinians, may come from the area's pine tapping and naval stores industry that produced tar for waterproofing ships' rigging.