Fayetteville Regional (Grannis Field)

Moored across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington, USS North Carolina (BB-55) was the first of the fast new battleships to join the fleet in World War II and, at her commissioning in 1941, considered the world's greatest sea weapon. She earned 15 battle stars across the Pacific — more than almost any other US battleship — screening carriers at Guadalcanal, the Philippine Sea, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, and was rumored sunk so often the Japanese nicknamed her the "Showboat." Slated for scrap in 1960, she was saved by a statewide campaign in which North Carolina schoolchildren donated their dimes to bring her home. She's now a memorial to the state's 11,000 WWII dead, open to walk her decks, turrets, and engine rooms.

Myrtle Beach Army Air Field was established in 1940 as a fighter training base. P-40 Warhawks and P-47 Thunderbolts trained here before deploying to Europe and the Pacific. German POWs were held in camps near the base. During the Cold War, it became a Strategic Air Command installation with F-100 Super Sabres. The base closed in 1993 and was converted to the current commercial airport. The old runway layout is still partially visible.

Congaree protects the largest intact tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States — a floodplain forest that escaped the logging that took almost all the rest. The trees are giants: this is one of the tallest deciduous forests on Earth, a "champion tree" forest with national-record bald cypress, loblolly pine, and sweetgum, the canopy averaging over 100 feet with individual trees topping 160. The Congaree River floods the forest about ten times a year, dropping the nutrients that grow the giants. A boardwalk loops through the cathedral of trunks; in late spring, synchronous fireflies flash in unison for a couple of weeks, one of only a few places in the world where that happens. It's an International Biosphere Reserve and a Dark Sky park.

Founded in 1676 on the Ashley River, Magnolia is the oldest plantation in the South still in the same family, and home to the oldest public gardens in America — opened to visitors in 1870 to save the family from ruin after the Civil War. Unlike the rigid formal gardens of Europe, Magnolia's are romantic and wild: winding paths through ancient live oaks dripping Spanish moss, reflecting ponds, the famous long white bridge, and a riot of azaleas and camellias that peak in spring. The grounds also preserve original cabins of the enslaved people who worked the rice fields, with an honest history program. The old rice impoundments along the Ashley are now a wildlife refuge full of alligators and wading birds.