Sandhills (Carolina)

The Sandhills is a region in the interior of the U.S. states of North Carolina and South Carolina. It is a strip of ancient beach dunes which generally divides the Piedmont from the coastal plain, and is the evidence of a former coastline when the ocean level was higher, or the land lower. The beach deposits were formed principally during the Miocene Epoch, about 20 million years ago. Typical beach fossils are found along the front edges. The coastal plain is terraced from other ocean levels, but none appear to have been so long-lasting, so as to build up dunes of this size.