This refuge as well as surrounding public and private lands in eastern North Carolina are a major wintering site for waterfowl including ducks like northern pintail and green-wing teal, geese like Canada geese and tundra swans.

New Holland[1] is a community in Hyde County, North Carolina, located along the southern shore of Lake Mattamuskeet.

Between 1911 and 1934, three private investment companies partnered with the public Mattamuskeet Drainage District to build the world's largest capacity pumping plant and dredge 130 miles (210 km) of large navigable canals to drain 50,000-acre (200 km2) Lake Mattamuskeet for residential, commercial, and agricultural development.

The investors created a community within the reclaimed lakebed and named it "New Holland," after similar land reclamation projects in the Netherlands.

The drainage project ended when the third private owner sold the lake property to the United States government in 1934 to allow the creation of a migratory bird refuge.