Sandhills Horse Country Drive

The Sandhills Horse Country Drive is not a single numbered highway but a network of quiet paved country roads threading through eastern Moore County, roughly between Southern Pines and the protected open land to its northeast. Most travelers build the drive around Youngs Road and the lanes near the Walthour-Moss Foundation, then loop it together with the historic downtowns of Southern Pines and Pinehurst a few minutes away. A comfortable loop runs somewhere around fifteen to twenty miles, though there is no wrong way to wander it.

The landscape gives this region its name. The Sandhills are exactly that, a band of low, ancient sand dunes left behind long ago when the ocean reached farther inland, now covered in open longleaf pine and wiregrass. The soil drains fast and stays firm, which is a large part of why horses thrive here. The same sandy ground that grows the pines gives riders miles of soft, forgiving footing. As you drive, the country rolls in easy swells, dark green pine woods opening again and again onto pastures ringed in white board fence.

The pleasure of this drive is in going slow. There are no grand overlooks or hairpin turns, just a steady unspooling of farm country: a mare and foal in the shade of a live oak, a string of horses working a training track, a rider crossing a sandy lane in the pines. Because this is real working horse country and much of it is private land and residential, the whole point is to ease off the accelerator, take it in, and let the horses have the right of way.

The Sandhills sit in the center of North Carolina, and the easiest anchor for the drive is the town of Southern Pines. Coming from the Raleigh area, take US Highway 1 south for roughly an hour and a half to Southern Pines, then head east on Midland Road or Connecticut Avenue toward the horse farms. From Southern Pines the horse country opens up quickly along Youngs Road and out toward Fort Bragg Road, where the sandy riding lanes and the Walthour-Moss Foundation begin.

Coming from the Charlotte or Fayetteville direction, US Highway 15/501 and US Highway 1 both feed into the Southern Pines and Pinehurst area from the south and west. Pinehurst and Southern Pines sit only a few minutes apart, so many travelers start in one village, drive the horse country in between, and finish in the other. Weymouth Woods, the old longleaf forest preserve, lies just southeast of downtown Southern Pines off Fort Bragg Road and makes a natural first or last stop.

There is no single trailhead or entrance to the drive, since it is a loop of public roads rather than a marked route. The simplest approach is to reach Southern Pines, point yourself toward Youngs Road and the Walthour-Moss Foundation, and let the white fences and pine woods guide you from there.

For most of its early history the Sandhills were poor farming country. The same sandy soil that now gives horses their footing was hard on crops, and the region's first fortunes came instead from the longleaf pine forest, which was tapped for turpentine and pitch and later cut for timber. By the late 1800s much of the great forest had been logged, and the exhausted, sandy land was cheap and open.

That very emptiness became the region's second act. In 1895 a Boston soda-fountain magnate named James Walker Tufts bought thousands of acres of cutover Sandhills land and built the village of Pinehurst as a winter health resort, laying out its curving streets to a plan influenced by the famous landscape firm of Frederick Law Olmsted. Golf soon followed, and the Scottish architect Donald Ross arrived to design the courses that made Pinehurst world famous, especially the celebrated No. 2 course. Neighboring Southern Pines grew up alongside it as a genteel winter town on the railroad.

The horses came with the winter people. Wealthy visitors from the North brought their hunters and hounds, drawn by the mild climate, the open pine country, and that fast-draining sandy ground that let riders work year-round. Fox hunting, steeplechase racing, and training stables took root in the early 1900s, and the region grew into one of the premier equestrian centers in the East, a reputation it still holds today. The heart of that open riding country was protected in 1974, when Pauline Walthour Moss gave the land that became the Walthour-Moss Foundation, safeguarding thousands of acres of pine woods and sandy bridle trails from development so the horse country would endure.

The Sandhills Horse Country Drive itself carries no official designation. It is not a National Scenic Byway or a state-marked scenic road but simply a beloved local country drive, a way that residents and visitors have long taken to enjoy the farms, the forest, and the horses at an easy pace. Its story is the story of the land: poor cotton country turned pine forest turned, at last, into one of America's great horse landscapes.

• The Sandhills are literally old beach. This band of low, sandy hills marks an ancient shoreline from a time when the Atlantic Ocean reached far inland, and the fast-draining sand is a big reason horses do so well here.
• Weymouth Woods protects one of the finest surviving stands of old-growth longleaf pine in the Southeast, including a tree thought to be more than 460 years old, one of the oldest known living longleaf pines anywhere.
• The open longleaf forest depends on fire. Regular low fires clear the brush and let wiregrass and wildflowers flourish, and without them the rare ecosystem would slowly disappear.
• The endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, which nests only in living old-growth pines, lives in the Sandhills forest here, one of the reasons the land is so carefully protected.
• The village of Pinehurst was founded in 1895 by James Walker Tufts and laid out with curving streets influenced by the landscape firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park.
• The Walthour-Moss Foundation, given to protect the region's open riding country in 1974, safeguards thousands of acres of pine woods and sandy bridle trails, a rare privately protected landscape kept forever open for horses.
• The Sandhills have been a fox-hunting and steeplechase center since the early 1900s, and spring steeplechase season still draws crowds to watch horses race and jump.
• The same sandy soil that once made this poor cotton country is exactly what makes it excellent horse country, giving riders miles of soft, firm, well-draining footing to train on year-round.

No. Unlike a National Scenic Byway or a state-designated scenic road, the Sandhills Horse Country Drive carries no official designation. It is a beloved local country drive, a loose loop of quiet public roads around Southern Pines and the Walthour-Moss Foundation that travelers have long used to enjoy the horse farms, the pine forest, and the historic villages at an easy pace.

There is no single fixed route, but a comfortable loop linking the horse farms along Youngs Road, the Walthour-Moss Foundation, and the villages of Southern Pines and Pinehurst runs roughly fifteen to twenty miles. Driven straight through it takes well under an hour, but the whole point is to go slowly and stop often, so most travelers give it a half day or more, especially with a walk at Weymouth Woods added in.

Start with the old-growth longleaf forest at Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, then take in the protected riding country of the Walthour-Moss Foundation and the white-fenced horse farms along Youngs Road. Finish in the historic downtowns of Southern Pines and Pinehurst, the graceful 1895 golf village whose Tufts Archives holds Donald Ross's original course plans.

Yes. The drive follows public roads, so touring the horse country by car costs nothing. Weymouth Woods and the Walthour-Moss Foundation are free to walk as well. There are no tolls, gates, or passes required to enjoy the route, though the private farms along the way are working homes and businesses, not attractions to enter.

Spring and fall are loveliest. In spring the dogwoods bloom, foals appear in the pastures, and steeplechase season brings horses and crowds, while fall offers crisp, comfortable weather and long golden light. Morning and late afternoon are the prettiest times of day, when the light is soft and horses are often out grazing. The Sandhills climate is mild, so any clear day is a fine day to go.

Yes. The roads through the Sandhills horse country are ordinary paved public roads and stay open all year. The region has a mild climate with warm summers and gentle winters, so there is no seasonal closure. Spring and fall simply offer the most pleasant weather and the most activity in the pastures.

No. The drive follows paved local roads, and any ordinary passenger car handles it with ease. Four-wheel drive and high clearance are not needed anywhere on the route. The only unpaved surfaces are the sandy riding trails within Weymouth Woods and the Walthour-Moss Foundation, which are meant for horses and walkers on foot, not for cars.

Yes, and this is important. This is real working horse country where riders regularly cross and travel along the sandy lanes, so drive slowly, stay alert, and give horses and riders plenty of room. A startled horse can be dangerous, so ease off well in advance, avoid sudden noise, and let riders pass. Remember too that the farms are private homes and businesses, so view them from the road and do not enter or block driveways.

Yes. Unlike a remote wilderness byway, this drive runs through populated country, and the towns of Southern Pines and Pinehurst sit at either end with plenty of fuel, restaurants, and shops. You are never far from services, so there is no need to stock up or worry about long empty stretches. Simply fill up and grab a meal in one of the villages as you go.

It comes down to the sand. The Sandhills sit on ancient sandy soil left by a long-vanished shoreline, and that fast-draining ground gives horses firm, forgiving footing that stays rideable year-round, even after rain. Add a mild climate and open longleaf pine woods, and wealthy winter visitors in the early 1900s made the area a center for fox hunting, steeplechase racing, and training, a reputation the region has held ever since.