With spring in full bloom, many are taking advantage of the warm temperatures and clear skies to decompress and reconnect with nature after a frigid winter. 

It’s undeniable that Raleigh and even NC State have some great spots to explore. Pullen Park is just across from Central Campus, offering various recreational activities. Centennial Campus has Lake Raleigh, which features professionally built hiking and biking trails, along with the lake itself for fishing and boating. The Capital Area Greenway (CAG) connects both of these parks to even more green spaces and parks across Raleigh and Wake County. 

While both Pullen and Lake Raleigh have existed for at least a few decades, a relative newcomer may have the most compelling story of all: Dorothea Dix Park.

Dorothea Dix Park, or Dix Park, was opened in 2018 and serves as Raleigh’s Central Park-style park, featuring local favorites such as the sunflower fields that draw crowds eager to get the perfect Instagram shot, the Gipson Play Plaza, which offers a large playground and splash pad and one of the most beloved of all: The trolls, five reclaimed-wooden sculptures all in the form of an endearing troll family with their own backstories. 

 While the park today serves as a hub for family fun, weekend excursions and community get-togethers, the land it’s on has a more complicated history. A history that only someone with a deep understanding and appreciation for Raleigh could know. 

One expert is Heather Leah, a local historian who runs a blog chronicling the lesser-known history of the greater Raleigh area, and whose family has lived in the area for five generations.

“A lot of people just aren’t aware. They go there on a Saturday, they go hunting for trolls or they go see the sunflowers and they have no idea that they’re walking over just centuries of history,”  Leah said.

These “centuries of history” date back to precolonial times, when the land that Raleigh and now Dix Park sits on was the territory of many Native American Tribes such as the Tuscarora and Siouans. However, as settlers came into the area, which subsequently pushed many tribes off their historic lands, many set up plantations that would become the origins of Raleigh itself.

“Everything that we think of today as Raleigh started really first as plantations,” Leah said. “There was the Joel Lane Plantation. Joel Lane, who today is known as the father of Raleigh, because it was his land that got divided up and turned into the first square mile that is Raleigh.”

While the Joel Lane Plantation became part of what is now downtown Raleigh today, just a few miles southwest, lay Spring Hill Plantation. Ran by Theophilus Hunter, the plantation occupied the land that Dorothea Dix Hospital and Centennial Campus would eventually be built upon. 

However, given the land’s history as a plantation, Leah recognizes the immense mortality of the area and the oldest marked grave in Wake County lies behind the Spring Hill House that still stands today. 

“Spring Hill Plantation has his grave, but also several other graves of people that we’re not sure if they were family members, but if so, why wouldn’t he mark their graves? Maybe they were people who were enslaved on the land, but there also would have been a cemetery somewhere out there for the enslaved families, so there are a lot of graves out there around the Dix Park area,” Leah said.

As Raleigh continued to grow in the 1800s, Hunter’s land started to grow in value due to being so close to the capital. 

Meanwhile, mental health activist and pioneer Dorothea Dix visited North Carolina to advocate for better treatment for individuals with mental illnesses. 

“She authentically believed in creating a system of care where people with mental health illnesses could be taken care of by doctors, by medical professionals, she was one of the first people pushing for the idea that if you have something that is messing with your mental health, that’s not a failing on the individual, that’s a valid medical concern,” Leah said.

Thus, after purchasing a portion of the Spring Hill land, the State of North Carolina would build its first mental hospital, the North Carolina Hospital for the Mentally Ill, though many would call it the Insane Asylum, and later Dorothea Dix Hospital in 1959.   

While Dix had great aspirations for what she wanted mental healthcare to look like, in practice, the stigma surrounding mental illness and gradual defunding worsened conditions at the hospital. A movement to deinstitutionalize healthcare in the 2000s and deterioration of the hospital’s facilities would put it out of commission for good in 2012.

With newly vacant land in the center of Raleigh, and the city continuing to grow rapidly, the new issue became: How could the city incorporate the former grounds of the hospital?

In 2015, after the city purchased the land back from the state, plans were laid out to create a state-of-the-art park that could serve as a central hub for recreation in the city. These plans would lay the groundwork for Dix Park to eventually open to the public, and since then, the park has gradually built up into what it is today. 

In fact, the park itself has recently implemented an extensive 10-year plan on what directions it wants to take in the years to come. Central to this plan is the Dix Park Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that works closely with the city to help plan, fund and educate on matters related to the park.

In conversation with Anna Golden-Torres, senior marketing and communications manager for the Conservancy, she said how the park is hoping to grow to be a third space that the residents of Raleigh can enjoy and be proud of. 

Golden-Torres also stressed the importance of honoring the history of the land through careful consideration of the people the land has historically impacted. The Conservancy works with a community committee that represents a diverse group of stakeholders, such as representatives from local Native American Tribes, descendants of the plantation owners and the enslaved individuals who used to work the land and the families of former patients who were treated at the hospital. The diversity of this board ensures that every decision made for the park honors the history of the land that has affected so many people in different ways.

So, the next time you find yourself in Dorothea Dix Park, go out and enjoy the wide expanse of the Big Field or go hunt for the trolls. However, also take the time to understand the vivid history that lies right under your feet.

This is something that Leah hopes patrons will take away from their time at the park.

“I think as long as we can honor that history and tell those stories, and do not let those stories be forgotten, then I think it’s great if people know it, and go to the park and enjoy it for what it is today,” Leah said.

While the land has long represented a much darker history for those who have been marginalized or forgotten by society, in creating a space for unity, exploration and education, it aims to recognize the stories, good and bad, that built Raleigh.

In Dorothea Dix Park is not your average “stroll in the park”, Technician misspelled Gipson Play Plaza as Gibson Play Plaza. The spelling has now been corrected. Technician regrets the error