San-Lee Park — Attraction in Sanford

Beautiful island of Nature, and headwaters of Lick Creek, amid a rapidly developing area that's connected to remnant natural areas stretching to the Cape Fear River. The lakes were long time reservoirs for Sanford, up to the early '70's. Possible gold mining in area prior to the reservoir era. Now an important patch of Nature for mixed-aged bottomland hardwood and pine forest flora and fauna. My family began visiting this park in the early '70's, back when walking and peaceful hiking was the priority over mountain biking. Before the original 15 or so miles of mountain biking trails in a small 177 acre or so park emerged in the 2010's it was a common thing to observe lizards, snakes, eastern box turtles and other ecologically important small, medium-sized, and large wildlife species. I was an avid mountain biker for 20 years, yet never here. The county website for San-Lee Park lists 12 miles of mountain biking trails and 4 miles of hiking trails. Considering the ecological significance of this park, San-Lee suffers from the "too many trails syndrome" (biking/hiking) of the eastern US and it's maxed out here, in every drainage on every ridge, and everything in between, leaving no where for large and medium-sized wildlife to feel safe and unseen. The amount of total trail miles is extremely high for such a small park, and the mountain biking:hiking ratio is also heavily skewed towards mountain biking. On a positive side the new Nature Center is a plus, with displays of wildlife, although wish the wildlife had larger habitats. Picnic areas/tables in scenic places are a plus, and good parking at upper and lower parts of park and at the Nature Center. Best time to visit is mid-morning and late afternoon if avoiding most bikers and crowds. Over the years I've seen an array of wildlife species here (in addition to the often observed aquatic turtles), especially eastern box turtle's, those wildlife observations diminished with the onslaught of mountain biking trails. What's the management priority here? Nature should be a part of it.. to be benefit all involved.....

Unfortunately, we didn't check the website for the park hours, so we headed down to ride the MTB park after work, blindly expecting to ride some sweet jumps. We pulled up after the 1.5 hour drive to find the parking full of mountain bike shredders, much to our delight. However, before we could even get out of the van, a park ranger (possibly volunteer) wheeled up on us in his white Dodge pickup truck and told us not to even bother getting the bikes out as the park closed at 5 pm. It was roughly 4:40 at that time. The ranger gruffly told us the park's winter hours close 'er down at 5 pm, and that we should have gotten there at 8 am when they opened. We told him we had to work at 8, to which he replied "me too". Gotta love a guy who loves his job. We didn't get out to walk around and survey the place for the next visit as the hostility from that ranger was overwhelming. A few terse words were exchanged and we left, wondering how we could poach the trails. No luck, as it turned out, the park is patrolled with ATVs. The jumps do look...

Pretty decent mountain bike trail system.Came here once before moving to the Raleigh area.After moving I heard about the 2 mountain bike Facebook pages run by Donn,who is also the park trail volunteer.

Well it seems Donn is quite the racist and also puts riders down,calling them names and even given them the title of "squirrels" ,which is basically an idiot!!

He has posted nasty racist things about "Mexicans" and how they need to back to Mexico.He posts are quite demeaning and after MANY FAILED ATTEMPTS with emails to the State they just DO NOT CARE as this person is still able to volunteer,do and say as he pleases which is downright disgusting.

I guess San Lee Park management is not doing anything because this person does a lot of work there,his personal get out of jail free card and the park would lose out on trail repairs??...so with this I highly recommend you do not support a racist park.

There are plenty of Parks that do not promote racism,let's do our part to put and end to this kind of petty nonsense...