Basics
- Length:
- 25 miles (40 km)
- Time:
- 30 minutes
- Fees:
- none
Description
Travelers wishing to veer off the beaten trail will be delighted with Pottery Road. Full of its own unique heritage and entertaining little quirks, the sights and detours around Pottery Road allow for both a history lesson and a chance to revel in the arts that are distinctive to this region of North Carolina.
Pottery Road is as good as its name — along this twenty-five mile stretch of country road, you will have more than one chance to marvel at the imagination and talent of pottery artisans that carry on a tradition that has been alive for more than two hundred years. Several families skilled in the art of pottery settled this area of North Carolina in the eighteenth century and transformed this region into a repository of pottery talent. There are eighty potteries clustered in this small county, with fourteen located along Pottery Road. Such a high concentration of a longstanding industry will give you ample opportunity to watch the creation of these works of art using time-honored practices. Any town along the Pottery Road will present a chance to purchase a vivid example of this pottery heritage to take home as a memento of your leisurely drive through this celebrated region. For a complete history of the pottery industry, visit the North Carolina Pottery Center. Here, in this beautiful new facility, you will see a collection of the finest examples that pottery artisans have created over the past two centuries and the illustrious history that accompanies each distinctive technique.
History is also recorded in the rings of the trees along Pottery Road. A shady stretch of Route 705, nicknamed "Cedar Lane," is canopied by the stretching limbs of these ancient trees. Cedar trees once flourished in these valleys, and the surviving members of this venerable grove now provide lazy shade for the appreciative driver. Another repository of natural history is found at the Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve near Southern Pines. The last remaining stand of longleaf pines grow within this hardwood swamp, which is the nesting area of many endangered species of plants, animals, and birds. Another chance to observe the wonders of nature is provided in the sprawling expanses of the North Carolina Zoological Park, located just a few miles north of Pottery Road near Seagrove.
