New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee

History of New Hope Creek Preservation Efforts

New Hope Creek begins in western Orange County, flows through parts of Duke Forest as a primary feature of what is called the “rural buffer” between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, and then passes through portions of Durham County before emptying into Jordan Lake.

In 1989, four Triangle-area jurisdictions—Durham and Orange Counties, the City of Durham and the Town of Chapel Hill—passed a resolution recognizing the importance of preserving New Hope Creek, its tributaries, and a corridor along their banks. The resolution established the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee and appointed a consultant—Coulter Associates—to develop a master plan for preserving the New Hope corridor. The New Hope Corridor Open Space Master Plan was published in April 1991 and adopted by the four jurisdictions in 1991/92.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the New Hope Creek corridor as an "Important Regional Wetland" in its Regional Wetlands Concept Plan in August 1992 (see page 194 of pdf at above link).

The 20-year Master Plan calls for acquiring and otherwise preserving land along the corridor, and for constructing trails and access areas so that the land can be used by the public for recreational purposes.

PDF of April 1991 New Hope Corridor Open Space Master Plan
Technical Appendices
(large PDF files; may take a while to open)

In May 2000, the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee published a 10-year progress report entitled The New Hope Creek Corridor Master Plan and the New Hope Creek Advisory Committee: Ten Years Later. PDF of 10-year progress report

If you are unable to view the files, you may need to download a free copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader.

From 2005 to 2008, nearly 75 acres of land near the site of the old Hollow Rock Store on Erwin Road were saved from development and will be part of the planned Hollow Rock Access Area.

Durham County's Open Space Program commissioned two reports on the New Hope Creek corridor from the North Carolina Biodiversity Project: A Biodiversity Survey of the New Hope Creek Floodplain and Hollow Rock Nature Park in Durham County, North Carolina, by Stephen Hall, et al., December 31, 2022, and A Survey of the Big Shellbark Hickory, White-nymph, and Other Species Associated with Rich Alluvial Forest Habitats in the New Hope Floodplain of Durham County by Stephen Hall and Carol Tingley, October 1, 2023.

Members of the New Hope Creek Corridor Advisory Committee

current members

former members

Minutes of NHCCAC Meetings