Dear Reader,

We created the Sandhills Guide eight years ago to provide you with all the information you need to live in our Eden in the Pines. Over the years, we have tweaked our formula for presenting these important data to you and think we've designed an attractive and easy-to-read format. We hope you like the results.

Whether you were lucky enough to be born here or smart enough to move to this special place, your hard-working crew at The Pilot wants to provide you with all the information you need to make your life here as fulfilling as possible.

At the newspaper, we often receive telephone calls from folks asking every conceivable question about life here in Moore County. We happily answer as many of them as we can. If we can't, we track down the answer for you. That's because we consider ourselves the most reliable source of information about our community that we are so fortunate to call home.

You can find the answers to many of those frequently asked questions every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday in the pages of The Pilot -- your national award-winning newspaper -- and every day on our Web site, www.thepilot.com. We also provide similar information every month in the popular PineStraw magazine, as well as in our sought-after annual Moore County Telephone Directory.

In your hands you are holding our attempt to compile all of those bits and pieces into one handy reference book, a veritable compendium of local lore and data that you can use all year long.

Whether you want to know where to deposit items for recycling or which of our more than three dozen golf courses to play, you will find the answers within these pages. If you don't, give us a call and we'll find out for you -- and include the answer in next year's edition.

As always, thank you for choosing us as your information source.

Sincerely,

David Woronoff