Earl Patterson Hall - everyone called him Pat - announced the park on October 10, 1969. His original plan was bigger than what eventually opened: a full resort with hotels, a shopping center, a golf course, and an NFL stadium. The name Carowinds joined Carolina and winds in a portmanteau that nobody quite agrees how to pronounce. Ground broke on May 1, 1970, with construction aimed at an April 1972 opening. Weather delays pushed it to 1973. The first season brought 1.2 million visitors. Then the 1973 oil crisis hit, gas lines stretched around the Carolinas, and the proposed resort vanished. Hall's consortium ran out of runway. By 1975, sagging attendance and mounting debt forced a merger with Taft Broadcasting, and Hall's name receded into park lore.

Taft Broadcasting brought Hanna-Barbera characters - Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, the whole roster - and the children's-park infrastructure that 1970s regional parks demanded. The first wooden coaster, Scooby-Doo, opened in 1975. In 1976, Thunder Road arrived - a $1.6 million racing wooden coaster designed by Curtis D. Summers and themed to the 1958 Robert Mitchum moonshine film of the same name. Through the late 1970s and 1980s, Carowinds added rides at the pace of regional competitors: Carolina Cyclone in 1980 became the first roller coaster in the world with four inversions. The water park, Ocean Island, opened separately in 1982 and was eventually absorbed. By the time Paramount Communications bought Taft's parks division in 1992, Carowinds had become one of the larger tourist attractions in the Carolinas.

From 1993 to 2006, the park carried the name Paramount's Carowinds and threaded movie and television properties through its themed lands. Wayne's World opened in 1994 with the Hurler roller coaster at its center. Top Gun: The Jet Coaster (now Afterburn) became the single largest investment in park history in 1999 at $10.5 million. Nickelodeon Central followed in 2003. In 2004, Borg Assimilator - the first Star Trek themed roller coaster in the world - opened on the former Smurf Island, the children's play area that had occupied a small lake-bound island since 1984. CBS Corporation, which had inherited Paramount Parks, decided amusement parks no longer fit corporate strategy. On June 30, 2006, Cedar Fair completed the acquisition. The Paramount theming came off almost overnight.

Cedar Fair invested heavily. Intimidator opened in 2010 - a 232-foot Bolliger and Mabillard hyper coaster, later renamed Thunder Striker. Fury 325 followed in 2015, standing 325 feet tall and at the time the world's tallest giga coaster and fourth-tallest roller coaster overall. The water park expanded into Carolina Harbor. Camp Snoopy replaced Planet Snoopy in 2018. Copperhead Strike, a double-launched Mack Rides coaster, opened in 2019 in the new Blue Ridge Junction area. A SpringHill Suites hotel opened the same year. Then, on July 1, 2024, Cedar Fair and Six Flags completed a merger of equals. The new Six Flags Entertainment Corporation moved its headquarters to Charlotte - to the same building, five miles from the park, that had once housed Paramount Parks.

Today Carowinds operates roughly fifteen roller coasters depending on season - Fury 325 dominates the skyline at the entrance plaza, Thunder Striker rises behind it, and Afterburn, Copperhead Strike, The Flying Cobras, Carolina Cyclone, Vortex, Hurler, Ricochet, and the smaller children's coasters fill the spaces between. Aeronautica Landing, opened in April 2023 for the 50th anniversary, pays tribute to the Carolinas' aviation history with a cluster of family rides. SCarowinds runs every fall as one of the South's largest Halloween events. WinterFest covers the park in lights from November through December. The state-line midway is still marked. Visitors still stand with one foot in each state, smile, and let someone take the picture.