Legend has it that long ago Indians camped around "Bouncing Log Spring" on their annual trek to the Atlantic Ocean to harvest fish, oysters and game. They held council meetings at the site and always drank from the spring, believing this would guarantee their return. In 1961 the developers of Boiling Spring Lakes happened upon a gushing spring concealed in a wooded ravine. Wishing to beautify the area, they built a 4-foot high wall to encompass this natural phenomenon. Almost before the masons had completed their work, the spring suddenly stopped running. Within a few hours, it burst out in a free full flow some 15 feet outside the wall. Eventually the wall broke and the spring returned to its original location where it boils today, discharging approximately 43 million gallons of water each day.

The 150-acre Big Lake, the city's centerpiece and one of more than 50 natural and man-made lakes in the city, is fed by five springs and Allen Creek. It is 2.5 miles long with 10 miles of shoreline. Around the shores of these lakes and scattered throughout the pines, oaks and sweet gums of the 16,000 acre area are the homes of the more than 4,500 residents that make up the City of Boiling Spring Lakes. Though rural by the very nature of the landscape, the City of Boiling Spring Lakes provides the services expected from any city, including its own police department, community center with scheduled activities and a fitness room. A new city hall was completed in 2008. There is a golf club as well, which is open to the public. The proximity of the community to Southport and the Oak Island beaches provides opportunities to participate in a resort lifestyle while living close to nature.

Located within the incorporated limits of the town that is its namesake, the Boiling Spring Lakes Preserve encompasses half of the incorporated area of the town. The establishment of the Boiling Spring Lakes Preserve is the result of a collaborative partnership between the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services' Plant Conservation Program, The Nature Conservancy, the City of Boiling Spring Lakes and the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program. The land is owned by the Plant Conservation Program and is managed by The Nature Conservancy. This preserve contains a fascinating cross section of the Cape Fear region's natural communities. Though the area's dense vegetation may look foreboding, this preserve offers a rare glimpse of a vanishing landscape. This natural area contains a mosaic of unusual geologic features. A series of parallel ridges and swales are the remnants of an ancient dune system. A large concentration of Carolina bays (elliptical wetland depressions) studs the landscape. Fire-dependent natural communities, including high and low pocosins (evergreen shrub bogs) and longleaf pine savannas and flatwoods on the ridges and bay rims, form an intricate mosaic of habitats. Conservancy land stewards are actively working to restore the Boiling Spring Lakes Preserve to its natural condition by conducting prescribed burns in longleaf and pocosin communities and replanting longleaf pines.

In an average natural area, there are 8 to 10 species of plants growing in one square meter, but in the wetlands of Boiling Spring Lakes there are several times that number! A bounty of rare flora and fauna is found in this landscape, including the federally endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, a variety of carnivorous plants, rough-leaf loosestrife and a variety of orchids. The preserve contains more than 400 vascular plant species, including carnivorous plants such as the rare Venus flytrap. Completed in 2004, the Boiling Spring Lakes Nature Trail allows visitors to walk through a portion of the more than 6,000 fragile acres that make up the preserve.

Another unique feature of the City of Boiling Spring Lakes is that its residents share their living spaces with the red cockaded woodpecker, an endangered species. At this writing, a committee formed to steer the development of a citywide habitat conservation plan (HCP) is working in concert with a consulting firm to come up with a final draft to be presented to the city board of commissioners. If the city accepts the responsibility for coordinating development within the woodpecker habitat, it will become the only city in North Carolina to have done so. The only other states that contain cities that have developed an HCP are California, Florida and Texas.