The Outer Banks are known for vast, uncrowded beaches, towering lighthouses, and unique cottages, and while these features beckon millions of visitors, some Outer Banks communities are not as well-known.

Rather than towns, most communities here are unincorporated villages, each home to residential homes and unobtrusive tourist accommodations, a few businesses, and a post office. Hatteras may be one of the best known of these villages.

While it is much smaller than incorporated coastal towns like Beaufort or Edenton, Hatteras is home to centuries of history and a number of notable sites, particularly on the southwest tip of its namesake island.

Hatteras Island was populated in the 16th century by the Croatoan Native Americans. They hunted, fished and ate oysters, depositing the shells in massive middens that are one of the few remaining visible indicators of where they lived. They were one of the many Native peoples that the Roanoke Colony interacted with in the 1580s.

The Croatans allied with the Europeans and counted among their numbers Manteo, the first Native American christened by the English in the New World. They factor into the story of the Lost Colony, since Hatteras Island was one of the many areas where the colonists were rumored to have gone after leaving Roanoke. Due to the shifting sands of Hatteras and the lack of definitive records, the fate of the colonists remains a mystery to this day.

Europeans returned to the area in the middle of the 17th century. Historian David Stick notes in his book, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” that the first documented English settlers on Hatteras Banks, Patrick Mackuen and William Reed, likely arrived there by 1711. People on Hatteras lived by fishing, farming, and piloting boats. They also took cargo from the many shipwrecks that regularly washed ashore from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Despite a growing number of families living on Hatteras, the area was slow to develop as a proper town. Isolated and accessible only by water, Hatteras did not abut one of the major inlets that was open during the colonial period. As a result, it was ignored by the same legislative assemblies that facilitated town construction at nearby Portsmouth and Ocracoke islands. Although numerous people resided on the southwestern portion of the island by the late 18th century, colonial maps often showed just the empty banks and the cape. The area known today as Hatteras Village finally gained its first post office in 1858.

Hatteras remained mostly isolated through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But while it did not have obvious economic importance, it did have military significance to any group wanting to approach or protect North Carolina by water. This led to the construction of Confederate forts Hatteras and Clark on Hatteras Inlet in 1861.

The forts were surrendered to Union in the first combined action of the Army and Navy during the Civil War. This success, the first by Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside, helped the Union gain control of the North Carolina coast and allowed for future invasions of Roanoke Island and the eastern part of the state.

The post-Civil War period saw the emergence of coastal life-saving stations. These buildings housed crews organized to rescue victims from shipwrecks using the latest technology, such as the Lyle gun used to shoot rescue lines.

Three U.S. Life-saving Service stations lined Hatteras Island by 1905, from Durants near the village to Cape Hatteras at the eastern end of the island. Along with greater lifesaving capabilities came a new effort at political organization. Dare County, one of the last counties formed in North Carolina, was created in 1870 from what had been parts of Currituck, Hyde and Tyrrell counties to help administer the far-flung islands of the Outer Banks. Its southern boundary was the western tip of Hatteras Island.

The modern village of Hatteras began to develop in the early 20th century. Locals built a string of houses such as the Ellsworth and Lovie Ballance House, circa 1915, one of the oldest structures in the village and a survivor of numerous hurricanes over the past century, according to state historic preservation records. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Growth came mainly from tourism. Greater rail and automobile transportation helped more and more visitors reach the beach from such areas as Raleigh, Charlotte and northern cities. More tourists meant an increase in ferry traffic and the growth of roads that made those ferries accessible, such as the highway that became U.S. 264 connecting Belhaven, Swan Quarter and U.S. Highway 64 near Manns Harbor.

In the 1930s, the conservation movement also brought nature tourism to the island through the authorization of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1937, one of the first seashore-protection programs in the country. Conservation protected a unique ecosystem that continues to bring thousands of birding, fishing, and native plant enthusiasts each year. 

With these dynamics in place, Hatteras became a popular vacation destination. Thousands flocked to the coast every summer and engaged in new recreational activities such as surfing and kiteboarding. Demand led to new transportation outlets. The state began to pave roads on Hatteras Island in the 1950s, but it was the completion of the Herbert S. Bonner Bridge in 1963 that provided a direct land connection between Hatteras and the rest of the country.

Soon, the island became home to shops, restaurants and hotels, as well as the familiar fishing shacks and isolated tourist cottages. A 1990 New York Times travel article that praised Hatteras Island’s beach as “one of the loveliest on the East Coast,” also singled out the village for offering “the color of a commercial fishing hub.”

Hatteras has become one of the most popular tourist destinations on the East Coast, growth that has fundamentally altered life in the sleepy fishing village. About 500 residents now live in Hatteras Village fulltime. There are about a dozen restaurants, several seafood markets, general stores, visitor centers, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. A number of these businesses operate year-round and cater to both locals and the summer influx of tourists.

Despite these changes, residents largely are thankful that Hatteras retains much of its village charm.

Patricia Peele, a lifelong resident of the island, told Coastal Review that as recently as 15 years ago, it was like “they used to roll the streets up at 9 p.m. on Labor Day.”

Now, there are always tourists, filling a plethora of mini-hotels across the island. But Peele said that despite the changes, she knows that Hatteras is still secluded compared to the rest of the Outer Banks. It is “not built up like a lot of other places are,” and with the protections provided by the National Park Service, growth will likely remain limited.

Still, Hatteras Village faces many of the same challenges as the rest of the Outer Banks, including those related to rising sea levels, limited resources and strong coastal storms.

The Basnight Bridge, which replaced the Bonner Bridge when the 2.8-mile, $254 million project was completed in 2019, keeps Hatteras Island connected to the mainland, and no matter the challenges, people of Hatteras will likely continue to adapt to life on their ocean sandbar — just as they always have.

While boaters, beachgoers and coastal North Carolinians alike are familiar with the state’s well-trafficked waterways at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, there’s a less famous inlet with a unique name and the history to match.

Lockwood Folly Inlet separates present-day Oak Island and Holden Beach. It is the endpoint of Lockwood Folly River, a 25-mile-long waterway that flows through central and southern Brunswick County before emptying into the inlet.

In addition to being a productive outlet for boaters and fishermen, Lockwood Folly Inlet is a historical curiosity. Its location and name shed light on a period of North Carolina history overshadowed by the Lost Colony when 117 English settlers disappeared from Roanoke Island in the late 1580s, or the Albemarle settlements.

The name of Lockwood Folly Inlet dates back to the 17th century to a mostly forgotten episode during the settlement of North Carolina. That episode, if successful, would have directly changed the fate of the colony and cured it of the “general economic backwardness,” according to historian Hugh Lefler, that defined its colonial reputation.

Though Lockwood Folly Inlet is one of the more stable — its size and surrounding sandbars shift regularly — at only around 100 feet wide and sometimes only a few feet deep, the inlet doesn’t allow for sizable ships.

As a result, it has not been the site of significant development over the past four centuries. The inlet was never a proposed site for a major dredging project or a new town like Beaufort or Roanoke.

This limited development has likely been a reason why the inlet has kept its unique name for centuries. Much of the speculation about the inlet’s name has focused on the titular “folly” involved.

One early theory was that the “folly” was a boat built so large that it could not sail out of the river. Louis T. Moore argued in a 1948 article for The State magazine, now known as Our State, that the name instead came from an attempted settlement or house by a man named Lockwood in the 18th century.

Moore said that the homestead was destroyed by Native Americans he mistreated. As the author described, the “folly” resulted when “a man unable to control his temper or passions later was punished by being driven from the place he intended as his home.”

While writers have worked hard to explain the second half of the inlet’s name, they have done much less to figure out the first half. Few people have researched who Lockwood actually was. Who was the man who built the ship that could not sail, or who made the failed settlement?

In order to solve that mystery, one must go back to the earliest attempts to settle North Carolina, several of which have been almost lost to history.

Moore posited that Lockwood Folly received its name in the early to mid-18th century, with Lockwood likely being a settler during that time.

That period would have been after the 1720s when James Moore and his family first settled the Cape Fear River.

The 1720s was the traditional start of European settlement in that area, the time when North Carolinians discovered the Cape Fear as a productive outlet to the ocean and began establishing some of their largest towns on it.

Seeming to confirm this theory is the presence of Lockwood Folly on maps as early as the Edward Moseley map of 1733. Moseley held political appointments between 1715 and 1749. But Lockwood Folly is not just on the Moseley map, it is also on the Herman Moll map of 1708 and William Fisher’s “New Mapp of Carolina” dated to 1698. Both Moll and Fisher were London, England, mapmakers.

The earliest map that contains a place named Lockwood Folly is the Ogilby map from around 1671. Taken from an influential book on the Americas published by British author John Ogilby, the map, “A new discription of Carolina by the order of the Lords Proprietors,” was drawn decades before North Carolina’s first incorporated town and less than 10 years after the Lords Proprietor first received their Carolinas grant in 1663. It was one of the first maps drawn that focused primarily on North Carolina after the Lost Colony.

Given many of the other details on this map, the most likely explanation for Lockwood Folly is that it was named after a man who was part of one of two lost British colonies of the Cape Fear area.

The first, founded by explorer and Hilton Head’s namesake William Hilton, was settled by Puritans from New England in 1663. After the Puritans quickly abandoned the area, a somewhat more successful colony was formed by Barbadians led by the Yeamans and Vassall families.

This Cape Fear colony, identified by historian Lindley Butler as “the first English town in the Carolina propriety,” included enslaved people from Africa and committed to producing food and goods to support Barbados. The colony lasted only three years before Native American attacks, a lack of supplies, and disasters in England led to its abandonment.

Lockwood was not a known member of either the colonies or the initial William Hilton expedition. But of the dozen or so Cape Fear area names on the Ogilby map, several were from the Hilton and Yeamans expeditions.

One of these was a region labeled Long’s Delight, likely named after Capt. Anthony Long, a leader of the Hilton expedition. Another was Turkey Quarters, an area noted by the Barbadians for its large number of turkeys.

The Barbadian connection with Lockwood is bolstered by a story from James Sprunt’s influential 1914 book, “Chronicles of the Cape Fear River,” which combined historical narrative with local legends and stories.

In one section, Sprunt, inspired by a 1734 travelogue, wrote of the inlet’s name, “One Lockwood, from Barbados, however, made a settlement farther to the south [of another proposed settlement up the Cape Fear], which the Indians destroyed, and hence the name to this day of ‘Lockwood’s Folly.’”

While we may never know exactly who Lockwood was, the Barbadian lineage in Sprunt’s tale would appear to corroborate the theory that he may have been part of the Barbadian colony.

The early settlement of the Cape Fear River is a fascinating what-if in North Carolina history. Cape Fear is a more stable and hospitable inlet to shipping than those by the Albemarle Sound.

It might have quickly fostered towns like Beaufort in South Carolina or Norfolk in Virginia.

Instead of existing for 50 years as an almost-forgotten backwater, North Carolina might have grown faster and with a more refined air had it been originally settled at Cape Fear.

Along with Rocky Point, Lockwood Folly Inlet is one of the two last remnants on a North Carolina map of the Hilton and Yeamans colonies. Other names like Long’s Delight have disappeared from use and have no modern equivalent, illustrating the forgotten nature of the 1660s Cape Fear expeditions.

With its international connections, centuries of history and unique attractions, Ocracoke has earned its reputation as a star of the Outer Banks.

Accessible only by ferry or light aircraft, Ocracoke is one of the few inhabited island destinations in the state without a highway connection to the mainland. But those who take the state-run ferry from Cedar Island, Hatteras or Swan Quarter to the isolated village are in for a delight.

Ocracoke is one of North Carolina’s more stable barrier islands. Ocracoke Inlet, at its western end, is the only inlet in the state that has existed since the 16th century. This stability has made Ocracoke a center of marine transportation since the centuries before European arrival. Native Americans used the island as a base for fishing, hunting and navigation.

Beginning in the 17th century, English ship pilots made their home there. One of the earliest settlements on the Outer Banks, Pilot Town was first settled around 1715, and was located where Ocracoke Village is now, according to “The Outer Banks of North Carolina, 1584-1958” by David Stick. Those pilots were predominately white in early years, but by the 19th century there were a considerable number of African Americans, both free and enslaved, piloting ships from Ocracoke.

Ocracoke remained sparsely populated throughout the colonial and early republic period. But its navigational status gave it outsized importance relative to its small population. To that end, the island is the home of one of North Carolina’s oldest lighthouses. Built in 1823, the Ocracoke Lighthouse still stands on the western section of the island.

Ocracoke’s isolation makes it special. It led to the development of islanders’ distinctive brogue, often called “High Tider,” or “Hoi Toider,” that linguists have studied extensively for decades. But isolation also exposed the island to enemy naval attack.

The most notable invasion occurred during the War of 1812, when Ocracoke and Portsmouth were taken over by the forces of British Admiral Sir George Cockburn. The invasion was embarrassing for North Carolina, whose militia took several days to reach the island. After the war, the temporary loss of Ocracoke prompted the state’s government to invest in internal improvements.

The island was once again vulnerable to invasion during the Civil War. It was the site of Fort Ocracoke, the home of hundreds of Confederate forces in the early months of the war. The fort was taken by the Union army without a struggle following the fall of nearby Hatteras Island.

The capture was the beginning of a shift in the island’s focus. It still hosted pilots, but in the late 19th century, the island also became a center for tourism and the location of a village which remains to this day.

The island never lost its connection to naval endeavors, however. During World War II, it was the site of a naval base and close to shipping lanes where many German U-boats hunted British and American ships.

One of these ships, the British HMT Bedfordshire, sank off the coast after a torpedo attack. Four bodies washed up on the shore at Ocracoke. The cemetery where these men are buried is still leased by the British government, one of the few of its kind in the United States.

Over the past 50 years, Ocracoke has experienced both growth and resilience in the face of harsh coastal conditions and historic storms. Hurricane Dorian in 2019 slammed the island with a more-than 7-foot surging wall of water. All aspects of life here were affected. Scars still linger.

Now Ocracoke’s tourist village, shops, motels are thriving again, and there are services including a dog kennel.

The island has more than a dozen restaurants within the mile or so between the ferry terminal and the Ocracoke Airport. In addition to the three vehicular ferries that visit the island, the North Carolina Department of Transportation launched the Ocracoke Express passenger ferry in 2019.

Though there is significant development on the western side of Ocracoke, the eastern side is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and is home to horses, nesting sea turtles, and hundreds of species of birds.

Ocracoke has received numerous plaudits over the past two decades, as well.

In 2020, it was named by HGTV as one of the 22 best islands to visit in the United States, with the network describing it as “a peaceful escape to travelers willing to make the trip.”

Ocracoke’s quiet allure brings visitors of varied interests. Andrea Tolson, administrator of the Ocracoke Preservation Society, said she believes that beaches, fishing and history are the main draws for tourists.

Many of the businesses and sources of employment on the island have connections to the historic sites here, from the lighthouse and the museum to a coffee shop located in a historic house, she explained.

The island has successfully kept out chain stores and large-scale commercial businesses, Tolson said. Those wouldn’t be in keeping with the way of life here.

“Things are very self-sustained out here,” Tolson added, “and that’s the way we like it.”

While facing increased threats from climate change and hurricanes, the island has found balance in its unique ecosystem amid the demands of a tourist economy. The snowball’s chance of N.C. Highway 12 ever connecting the island to the mainland with a bridge would likely overwhelm the village and the island’s natural areas with tourists.

“I don’t think most of the community here would like that. It would change the whole face of this island,” Tolson said of a bridge.

Hotels have been a staple of the North Carolina coastal vacation for over a century. There are hundreds along the coast today stretching from the Corolla Village Inn near Virginia to the Continental Motel at Sunset Beach, over 200 miles to the south.

The first famous North Carolina hotels, all open by the early 1900s, included the Lumina Pavilion in Wrightsville Beach, the Atlantic Hotel in Morehead City, and the First Colony Inn in Nags Head. These hotels drew thousands of tourists each year and shaped the landscape around them, with the Lumina giving its name to one of Wrightsville Beach’s main thoroughfares.

But one of the more popular hotels of the early 20th century is almost forgotten. No old ruins survive of the Bayview Hotel in the tiny unincorporated Beaufort County community of Bayview, and there are no historic markers other than an illustration on a small wooden sign.

The Bayview was a unique hotel, a river-based beacon that helped build a tourist center in an area mainly known today for agriculture and fishing.

The tourist hotel boom began in the late 19th and early 20th century. People had visited North Carolina beaches since the early years of the colony, but it took until the late 1800s for railroad construction and growing industrial prosperity to create a steady stream of tourists. Once they had the money and the ability to reach the state’s beaches, North Carolinians and out-of-staters came in droves.

In 1921, a travel writer for the New York Tribune noted, “there is one of the finest white sand beaches at Wrightsville that I know anything about,” and spent the rest of a long article praising the town’s Lumina Pavilion.

Eastern North Carolina tourism during this period was centered on beach travel, as it is today, but there were plenty of other scenic areas near the coast that could become tourist destinations. This thought animated the Bayview Hotel founders, a group that included businessmen from Washington, Wilson and other eastern towns. These men had connections in several different industries, most notably coastal businesses such as seafood processing.

They spent about half of a million dollars to establish their hotel on the Pamlico River 19 miles down from Washington and 3 miles south of Bath. The area had been mostly untouched prior to that point and was known more for hunting than any other pursuit. But it had beautiful views of the water and was a perfect spot for sunbathing, swimming, and lounging away from crowds and cities.

The planners went through every effort to make the Bayview Hotel an attractive destination. They laid out a large boardwalk with concessions and a golf course. Steamships made regular excursions between Washington and Bayview. Once they arrived, guests enjoyed modern plumbing, electric lights, and regular dances held on an expansive pavilion. A 1927 newspaper advertisement showcased Bayview as a center for “bathing, boating, dancing, fishing, and many other amusements.”

The Bayview Hotel thrived for nearly two decades. It hosted a number of dignitaries including longtime Congressman Lindsay Warren, Senate Leader Furnifold Simmons, and the then-former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, the noted newspaperman and white supremacist.

But the Bayview was subject to the same threats that other hotels of the time had faced, notably fire. Despite the extensive brickwork used in the hotel’s construction, it burned down in 1943, just as the famed Atlantic Hotel had in Morehead City in 1933. The loss hit the area as the country was in the midst of fighting World War II and lacking the resources to rebuild a hotel as large as Bayview.

Following the war, the tourism industry forgot Bayview and other river towns in favor of the beach. Bayview was passed over for interstate highway construction and could only be reached by the two-lane N.C. Highway 92, which is entirely contained within Beaufort County.

The one notable connection that Bayview has today, the ferry across the Pamlico River to Aurora, was built not for tourism but for employees of the Aurora phosphate mine Texas Gulf Sulfur that opened in the 1960s. The hotel was never rebuilt. In subsequent decades, the land where it was became the home of a community, Bayview Townes, which features a painting of the original hotel on its sign.

The Bayview Hotel is a symbol of an earlier time, before the era of highways, roadside motels, and the state’s mountain-beach dichotomy. It was a time when new business ventures could create tourist centers out of swamp and woods. Fueled by railroads and early car travel, the Bayview Hotel was able to carve out a role in the history of state tourism, one that should be remembered by today’s fans of North Carolina waterways.

The Inner Banks region of North Carolina is home to numerous of the state’s most historic small towns.

Settled early in the 18th century, these communities host famous restaurants, architecturally significant homes, and a wide variety of civic institutions. Some of these places have a reputation that reflects their importance and beauty, with towns such as Edenton and Washington being regionally or even nationally known. On the other hand, there are a number of unsung towns that have not been featured in the New York Times. One of these is Murfreesboro.

This gem on the Meherrin River has attracted civic and educational leaders for the past three centuries and is just as poised for growth today as it was in the colonial period.

Murfreesboro was one of the first areas of North Carolina settled by the British. Its establishment was part of a wave of migration that extended out from the Albemarle Sound region in the early 18th century.

Following the earliest settlements and displacement of Native Americans like the Chowanoac, British settlers continued to seek more land for tobacco. As in Virginia and South Carolina, they moved west, marching across the colony until they reached the falls line in the mid-18th century. In North Carolina, the region closest to the Virginia border was also one of the most prosperous, as its inhabitants could trade with the wealthier Virginians and use their navigable rivers.

One of the rivers that crossed state boundaries was the Meherrin River. Passing through the home of the Meherrin Native Americans, this river provided an outlet to the Chowan River and the Albemarle Sound. Its miles of surrounding fertile farmland gained numerous tobacco plantations throughout the 18th century. By 1707, a small community had formed at a bend on the river.

Murfreesboro was incorporated as a town in 1787 and named for William Murfree, a local landowner and Revolutionary-era politician. The town’s heyday occurred during its first few decades. Architectural historian Catherine Bishir notes that in the early 1800s, the town “enjoyed trade that crowded the streets with wagons bearing produce from as far as the Blue Ridge and brought so many ships to its wharves that ‘one could cross the river on the decks of vessels lying in the stream.’”

The tobacco economy of the Murfreesboro area relied entirely on slavery. The town was a center for plantation agriculture, and enslaved workers constructed its buildings. The proximity of the Virginia border also made Murfreesboro a destination for free African Americans, many of whom were formerly enslaved and had escaped harsher conditions in Virginia. Hertford County, where Murfreesboro is located, had one of the largest populations of free African Americans in the entire state in 1860, according to historian John Hope Franklin.

Murfreesboro still retains a number of buildings from its earliest period as a town. These include nearly a dozen homes built before 1820, as well as at least three homes — Melrose, the Myrick House and the John Wheeler House — built in or around 1805. There is also the William Rea Store, which was built in 1790 and is one of the oldest commercial buildings in the state.

The antebellum period was also the beginning of Murfreesboro’s best-known site. North Carolinians’ zeal for education during the Revolutionary period led to the formation of a number of academies, along with the state university in Chapel Hill.

One of these institutions, Hertford Academy, was established in 1811 in a Murfreesboro home. It was eventually bought by local Baptists and became Chowan Baptist Female Institute, later, in 1910, Chowan College, and in 2006, Chowan University. The institution moved to its present flagship building in 1851. This structure, known as the Columns, is considered an excellent example of Greek Revival architecture and is one of the largest antebellum college buildings in the state.

The Civil War inflicted some damage to Murfreesboro. The town was attacked and looted by Union troops, but it was not burned like Winton, its neighbor to the east. As throughout the South, the war devastated the town’s economy. Tobacco declined in importance for decades. Most importantly, the abolition of slavery erased the forced-labor system upon which the entire region had relied entirely.

Like other towns of the time, Murfreesboro took a middle path as it recovered from the war. It did not embrace — or was not embraced by — industry to the extent that nearby towns such as Ahoskie or Elizabeth City had. Ahoskie, which was formed a century after Murfreesboro, passed the older town in population by the 1910 census. Still, Murfreesboro was eventually able to relax its reliance on cash crops, especially the traditional crop of tobacco. Murfreesboro had become a center for peanut cultivation as well as the home of an iron foundry and manufacturing plant by 1916.

The 20th century in Murfreesboro was defined by the growing importance of both industry and Chowan University. Murfreesboro became the home of Riverside Manufacturing Co., believed to be the world’s largest basket company, in 1927. The plant employed thousands of Murfreesboro residents for the next seven decades.

Outside of baskets, the university is a considerable draw. Chowan College closed for six years in the 1940s, but has prospered since reopening, and it became a four-year institution again in 1992. Chowan graduated a number of its best-known alumni in the late 20th century, including NBA coach Nate McMillan. Chowan counted 1,500 students in 2017, a notable achievement for a town with only about 2,800 full-time residents.

In recent decades, Murfreesboro has remembered its three centuries of history and embraced historic preservation and tourism. The Murfreesboro Historical Association incorporated in 1963 and now owns more than a dozen properties and hosts numerous events and tours each year, most notably a candlelight tour in December.

Murfreesboro is also home to the Brady C. Jefcoat Museum, a nationally known museum dedicated to the sprawling collection of everyday objects, antiques and historic artifacts owned by one man — who happened to have helped build the Memorial Belltower at North Carolina State University and dozens of other Raleigh structures — and displayed in the former high school.

While many small towns in North Carolina have at most one or two historic homes open to the public, Murfreesboro Historical Association James Moore credits the town’s commitment to sharing its history and preserving and promoting the college and the town since 2000. It has become a bedroom community to much larger, more bustling areas nearby. As Moore noted, “You can be in downtown Norfolk in an hour.” And as people continue to move to Murfreesboro, the community bolsters the historical association and provides it with the donations and interest needed to continue its work.

Today, Murfreesboro has carved its niche as a center of both education and tourism in the Inner Banks. It remains the second-largest town in Hertford County and continues to welcome new businesses such as restaurants, tattoo parlors, and recently a “barcade,” Insert Coin Arcade and Bar.

More people visit the town’s museums every year, and the Historical Association says it has the potential to expand its offerings and tours even further. Murfreesboro may not be the size of New Bern or have the prominence of Edenton, but it shows that the past — and historic preservation — can still be the future for North Carolina’s smaller coastal towns.

This post has been updated.

While the Outer Banks with its famed shipwrecks, pristine sand and historic sites, are, in many ways, the prototypical beaches of North Carolina, not all beaches were settled in the same way as those in Currituck, Dare and Carteret counties.

Sunset Beach, which is on the South Carolina border, is one of those. Though it’s located in a historic region of North Carolina, the Brunswick County town’s history as a tourist attraction is recent.

The town has gone from an ignored stretch of sand to a destination for retirees and weekend visitors alike in the last 70 years.

Ann Bokelman, moved to the town in 2007 from Richmond, Virginia. She said they looked at several other beaches when considering where to buy a lot, but “when we found Sunset Beach, we never looked back.”

Bokelman said Sunset Beach is a “sweet spot” almost perfectly in between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington. Its location has kept out the long stretches of apartment complexes and other indications of a bedroom community. 

Sunset Beach is one of the Brunswick County beaches, a set of barrier islands that stretch from Bald Head Island to the east and the South Carolina border to the west.

West of Oak Island, these islands were mostly uninhabited before the 20th century. Unlike some of the Outer Banks, these islands were durable. Many of them appear, albeit unnamed, as early as the 1737 Moseley’s map. The island that became Sunset Beach was originally known as Bald Beach.

Despite their status as coastal islands with long beaches, Bald Beach and its neighbors were practically ignored by North Carolina residents. Located on the other side of large swamps, Brunswick County settlers instead focused on the major rivers and creeks of the county.

They started large cotton plantations and even grew rice in isolated areas. This focus on cash crops dominated the attention of Brunswick County settlers much more than sand-covered barrier islands.

The closest sizable town until the 1880s was Smithville, now Southport, more than 30 miles to the east, although unincorporated Shallotte, Supply and Calabash were somewhat closer.

Bald Beach was virtually ignored throughout the 19th century.

It was bypassed during the Civil War as Federal troops occupied the Sea Islands of South Carolina, and took Fort Caswell on nearby Oak Island.

One exception was in 1864, when the blockade runner Vestaran aground off Bald Beach on its way back to Wilmington. But in general, the region that is now Sunset Beach remained swampland and a plot of sand.

In his 1952 book, “Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast,” historian David Stick referred to the area by the name of a nearby inlet  — Tubbs Inlet — not the beach.

As late as 1958, “A New Geography of North Carolina” lumped Bald Beach together with neighboring Bird Island as the last two “undeveloped” barrier islands of North Carolina before reaching the southern border.

Settlement of the area did not begin in earnest until years after the establishment of the Intracoastal Waterway in the 1930s. This extensive passage stretches from Massachusetts to Texas and was mostly constructed by expanding and joining existent bodies of water. 

The construction of the waterway brought more attention to the beach areas of the Atlantic coast and the Gulf. While the waterway provided easy water access, the state of North Carolina provided a close highway connection with the completion of U.S. Highway 17 in the 1920s.

More car and boat traffic made travel to Brunswick County beaches feasible. One by one, the state and local developers pushed highways through Brunswick County to bridges that would make the islands habitable.

The private developer who made Sunset Beach possible was Mannon C. Gore. Gore, a local farmer and World War II veteran, purchased the island in 1955 for $55,000 and built a drawbridge in 1958 connecting the island and mainland.

He then built a pier, began to sell off lots, and renamed the area Sunset Beach in 1958. In 1963, the town was incorporated with a section on both the mainland and the barrier island.

Ever since its establishment, Sunset Beach has exploded in popularity as a travel destination. It has benefitted from the growth of the Myrtle Beach area to its south and the continued migration of retirees to the Sun Belt from the northeast.

The town’s population has increased nearly tenfold in the past 30 years. Its pristine views and somewhat light development have given the beach a national reputation. In 2017, it was voted one of the 21 best beaches in the world by National Geographic.

Throughout this process, locals like have remained surprisingly insulated from the concerns of other beachgoers. But change is coming, albeit slowly.

Bokelman, a founder of the Old Bridge Preservation Society, believes that the completion of the new bridge to Sunset Beach in 2010 was a demarcating line. Cars no longer had to wait 15 minutes or longer for the drawbridge to cross the waterway.

The new bridge was a sign that Sunset Beach was open to development like never before. If Sunset Beach is to grow substantially, however, that change will not happen overnight. Bokelman said that there are still undeveloped lots on the island and large stretches of protected wetlands.

Despite concerns with rapid growth, Sunset Beach remains a popular outpost.

The town has a museum located in the former bridge tender’s house, as well as Ingram Planetarium.

Sunset Beach has new roundabouts and housing developments that anticipate a greater influx of visitors and new residents alike. Myrtle Beach and Wilmington will likely grow to reach Sunset Beach’s boundaries if they continue on their present trajectories.

Until then, Sunset Beach is still a unique coastal town, one that is large enough to have amenities without high-rise development or cramped houses on the sand.

The Albemarle Sound region, one of the oldest areas in the state to be continuously settled by Europeans, has dozens of small towns with centuries of history.

One of these is Hertford, the county seat of Perquimans County.

Though the town, which has never had more than 2,500 residents, has seen some growth in recent years, it is still rural and quiet.

Wonder Lewis, a Perquimans County native who has worked for the library for three decades, said that when it comes to town expansion, “we’ve added a few things, but not enough.” She believes that Hertford’s charm is its “rural nature,” which makes it a haven for retirees from up north.

The town incorporated in 1758 has played an important role in the political, social and sports history of North Carolina.

In the mid-17th century, settlers in Virginia began to trickle across a yet-to-be drawn border with what would become North Carolina. They bought land from Native Americans and established corn and tobacco plantations along the Albemarle Sound.

Slowly, the increasing population coalesced into new communities. One of these, which later became Hertford, was located in Perquimans Precinct on the Perquimans River.

This community became known early on for its attachment to Quakerism. The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, traveled throughout the region as a popular preacher in 1672.

According to his journal, the people of Perquimans “much desired after (Quaker) meetings,” mainly because there were no other churches.

While all Albemarle Sound counties were influenced by the visiting Quakers in some way, Perquimans was more readily converted than its peers.

The county became home to the first Quaker meeting in the Colony a few years later and remained the center of Quakerism in North Carolina for more than a century.

Apart from the dominance of Quakerism, Hertford resembled other small towns of the Albemarle region such as Windsor in Bertie County. It was a center for the tobacco trade located on a large navigable river that wound its way through the region’s tobacco plantations.

This location brought a modest amount of wealth to the small settlement. One group of prosperous residents near the Perquimans River helped contribute to the construction of the oldest surviving brick house in North Carolina.

The Newbold-White House, likely built in the early 1730s, remains an outstanding example of 18th-century Quaker plan architecture.

Hertford played an ancillary role in events of the late 18th and 19th centuries. It was too small to be a notable target for either the British in the 1770s or the Union in the 1860s. But Hertford did build up a quaint historic downtown.

The current Perquimans County Courthouse completed in 1824 is one of the town’s more remarkable structures.

Hertford also contributed several important people to the state and nation in its early years. Perhaps the most influential was John Harvey, a leader of the North Carolina Provincial Congress and one of the leading Patriots before his untimely death in 1775.

The 20th century saw Hertford grow and gain some of its more notable attributes.

One was the “S bridge” connecting Hertford and neighboring Winfall, the oldest swing-span bridge in the state until it was replaced in 2021. Its replacement opens in the same way and looks much the same as its 1920s predecessor.

The town also gained a commercial district with the banks and department stores of typical eastern North Carolina towns, and became a minor tourist attraction in the 1980s when the Newbold-White House was opened as a historic site.

Besides John Harvey, the most notable native of the town lived during the 20th century.

Jim “Catfish” Hunter excelled at multiple sports at Perquimans County High School before making his way to Major League Baseball. He won over 220 games and five World Series in his 15-season career, according to ESPN.

There is some uncertainty as to how the construction of Interstate 87 will affect the area. The road, which will connect Interstate 40 in Raleigh to Interstate 64 in Norfolk, Virginia, is projected to increase traffic and potentially expand the suburban sprawl of Norfolk, located less than 60 miles to the northeast.

Hertford has remained small despite centuries of growth in nearby Elizabeth City and Edenton, and there is a high chance that it will retain the small-town character that has defined it for centuries.

Though the downtown is now a collection of mostly 20th century buildings, Elizabeth City, the center of Pasquotank County government and trade, has roots going back to the earliest years of the Colony.

The area around Elizabeth City, originally home to the Chowan and Weapemeoc, was one of the first settled by the English in North Carolina.

Its recorded past can be traced back to one of the founding acts of the Colony in 1665, when a group met at Halls Creek and established North Carolina’s original legislative assembly.

This group acted prior to the 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, the founding government document of the Carolinas that is now attributed to philosopher John Locke.

Though many of the Colony’s 1665 laws changed drastically in the decades that followed, today’s state government can be linked to this meeting on a knoll just 6 miles from today’s downtown Elizabeth City.

In 1910, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker at what they believed to be the site.

The area that would become Elizabeth City remained small and rural throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Nixonton, one of the first towns in North Carolina located on the Little River, was a commercial meeting place nearby.

Pasquotank County, founded in 1668, had a courthouse located at different points in the county before settling at Nixonton in the late 18th century.

Elizabeth City’s importance to the region can be traced to 1795 when a hurricane hit Albemarle Sound and silted up Edenton’s access to the Albemarle. Edenton depended on the Albemarle, but Elizabeth City took advantage of the newly constructed Dismal Swamp Canal and became a center for local and coastal trade.

Elizabeth City began to thrive as the town’s population grew in the years after its 1793 incorporation.

This population included a number of free African Americans who moved to the area to escape harsher legal treatment in Virginia.

The city hosted a number of artisanal shops, cabinet makers, and other features of a growing Southern town, making the city an early target during the Civil War.

It was vulnerable to Ambrose Burnside’s force from Roanoke Island. Citizens set the town on fire prior to the Union Army’s advance and fled on foot, leaving it a “dead town … dead as a graveyard,” as a Union Army officer described it.

Elizabeth City’s burning in 1862 contributed to its current cityscape.

Instead of having large surviving stretches of antebellum buildings like nearby Edenton or Hertford, Elizabeth City’s historical architecture is dominated by its late 19th century rebuilding.

The city is home to a considerable collection of Victorian dwellings. They line Main Street and can be found on Church and Road streets as well.

Author Catherine Bishir, curator of Architectural Records Special Collections at North Carolina State University Libraries, describes West Main Street as containing “a remarkably solid, varied, and intact grouping of closely placed late 19th- and early 20th-c. homes,” where at one point “a rhythmic row of multigabled Queen Anne dwellings nearly abuts the sidewalk.”

This rebuilding was powered by the city’s continued position as a center of trade and industry.

By 1896, Elizabeth City was home to 14 mills, three newspapers, 10 boarding houses and hotels, and a textile factory.

These businesses, along with the growth of peanut farming, helped push the city to become a center of economic and industrial prosperity in the region.

In the 20th century, Elizabeth City became a social and cultural center as well as an economic one.

Home to the Albemarle’s only historically Black university, Elizabeth City State University was founded in 1891 as a teacher’s college for Black men and women.

Elizabeth City State has since become an influential educational institution, training thousands of teachers and graduating distinguished alumni.

One of its earliest presidents, Harold Trigg, became the first Black member of the state Board of Education in 1949. In 1960, Elizabeth City also became the home of the College of the Albemarle, one of the state’s oldest community colleges. 

Like many other eastern towns, Elizabeth City was not immune to the economic forces of deindustrialization in the late 20th century. Its population stagnated between 1960 and 2000. Many of the town’s mills closed, and its downtown emptied.

Lori Meads, education coordinator at the Museum of the Albemarle, has lived in Elizabeth City her entire life. She remembers frequent visits in her childhood to the multiple department stores downtown, all of which have closed.

Despite these challenges, Elizabeth City’s embrace of education and tourism earlier in the 20th century have helped keep it vibrant and successful into the 21st. There is some debate over the future of this vibrancy, however, specifically whether or not Elizabeth City will become a suburb of the sprawling Hampton Roads region.

Residents can certainly see the allure of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and other major nearby cities.

“Of course, people go up to Hampton Roads,” Meads said. “They have Top Golf.”

But, Meads emphasized, Elizabeth City has done enough work to offer amenities, businesses, and attractions within the city limits to keep people in town and prevent it from becoming just another bedroom community.

Taken on its own, the city has a number of attractive features to both old and potential new residents. It is a college town, with its two institutions of higher learning with a combined population of around 7,000 students, and many of its old buildings are being renovated and filled with coffee shops and boutiques.

There are museums, breweries and events like the Potato Festival, which takes over the city every May.

While many know most historic towns in eastern North Carolina like Edenton, Beaufort or Wilmington because of their prominence during the Colonial period, there are a number of communities that gained importance during the era of the canal and the railroad.

Richlands is one of those towns.

While there are references to the “Rich Lands of the New River” that can be found as early as the Colonial period, the Onslow County community began to grow in the early 20th century from a rural, unincorporated crossroads — one of many in the region — to a center for education and railroad commerce.

Along the way, the town, which is about 20 miles from Jacksonville, eventually became central to the future of rural Onslow County while retaining its small-town atmosphere.

An official at the Richlands branch of the Onslow County Library said that the town “reminds me of a postcard. It’s a quaint little town without the hurry and bustle of Jacksonville.”

The community of Richlands was part of the decades-long migration of English settlers into eastern North Carolina throughout the mid-18th century.

Following the defeat of the Tuscarora by British Colonists in the 1710s, settlers began to move into their former territory, founding tobacco and corn plantations, tapping trees for naval stores, and building modest homes and communities as they went.

The fertile areas along major rivers were settled first, leading to towns such as New Bern, Brunswick and Tarboro. Areas further from navigable rivers and on smaller rivers received settlers next, including Richlands on the New River.

Richlands was a center for education as it was home to Richlands Academy, one of many preparatory schools founded in North Carolina before the Civil War.

These institutions survived in a time before compulsory public education and were less expensive than the tutors hired to provide instruction in wealthy families.

Founded in 1848 but with earlier roots, Richlands Academy remained small and limited in instruction, but it served as a preparatory school for the well-known Randolph Macon College in Virginia.

The school lasted for 60 years, much longer than many of the state’s antebellum academies. This legacy of education lives on both in the local high school and the Onslow County Museum located in town.

Incorporated March 29, 1880, Richlands did not begin to grow substantially until the early 20th century.

In 1905, the Dover and Southbound Railroad came into the area. This railroad offered a lifeline to larger towns on the former Wilmington and Weldon Railroad like New Bern and Jacksonville.

As noted in the town’s historic district National Register nomination, “Richlands quickly became the major collection and distribution point for farmers in the surrounding countryside.”

A business district popped up along the rail line around the corner of Hargett and Wilmington streets. This area became the home of numerous commercial buildings that comprise the town’s present historic district. 

Along with education and the railroad, the most important development for Richlands was the establishment of nearby Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in the early 1940s.

Camp LeJeune absorbed one community, the aptly named village called Marines on the New River, and affected social and economic patterns in the greater region.

A new base meant jobs, housing, and an influx of millions of dollars from contractors and the federal government. Richlands, which is about 20 miles northwest of Camp LeJeune, soon began to feel the effects of this growth. The population nearly doubled between 1940 and 1960.

Today, Richlands is facing the same predicament as other towns and communities around North Carolina’s military bases.

Like Sneads Ferry and Goldsboro, Richlands has centuries of heritage, a considerable historic district, and a host of small businesses.

But the lure of millions of dollars and thousands of new residents from Camp LeJeune is already threatening Richlands’ small-town setting. Traffic increases daily, and chain restaurants and stores have already begun marching up U.S. Highway 258 from Jacksonville toward the town.

It may be possible for Richlands to retain both its historic center and the suburban sprawl that typifies rapidly growing military-adjacent towns in the 21st century. But the possibility of being relegated to a bedroom community still looms for the town at the rich lands of the New River.

Edenton is an unusual center of historical tourism in the state. It is much larger than the preserved museum pieces that make up historic sites such as Bath and Halifax. But it is also far from the beach and lacks any large companies like the ones home to New Bern, Wilmington and Beaufort.

Instead, Edenton is a town of 5,000 that is Chowan’s county seat and has one of the largest groups of historic buildings in the state. After years of neglect that were remarkable for a town once billed as a colonial capital, Edenton’s historic legacy has propelled it over the past five decades and continues to define it into the 21st century.

Locals here have long recognized the importance of history to life in Edenton. Charles Boyette is a historical interpreter in downtown Edenton whose family has lived in the Albemarle Sound region for hundreds of years. He has been going downtown for decades for various reasons. Boyette said that for Edenton residents, “history is an everyday part of your life.”

Boyette would drive downtown to go to eat at nice restaurants or buy appliances. He recalls seeing historic names on every house and spending much of his childhood wondering who exactly lived in those stately mansions. This interest ended up leading to a career in historical interpretation, a field he has been in for over a decade.

Edenton came out of the early settlement of northeastern North Carolina. In the 17th century, farmers began to move south from Virginia to the area north of Albemarle Sound looking for better tobacco lands. They settled along the sound and its most navigable rivers, such as the Pasquotank and Chowan. As the English population grew in the area, the ruling Lords Proprietor were compelled to establish forms of government and other entities to aid with trade and tax collecting.

Along with the first North Carolina counties, the Proprietors allowed for the establishment of early towns. Edenton, founded on the confluence of the sound and Queen Anne’s creek, was the third town founded in the colony after Bath and New Bern. It was named after Charles Eden, an early governor of the colony who later became well known for his alleged friendship with the notorious pirate, Blackbeard.

Edenton continued to grow in size and significance throughout the 18th century. It became the first capital of North Carolina in 1722. The town was a port for the entire Albemarle region. Northeastern planters could load their batteaux full of tobacco and other supplies and send them down the Roanoke or Chowan rivers, free of impediments, to Edenton.

Consequently, the town became a center for sophisticated governmental buildings and political leaders. It is the home of North Carolina’s oldest courthouse, the Chowan County Courthouse, built in 1767 on the town green. It was also the residence for numerous governors and later senators.

Famous North Carolinians like Supreme Court Justice James Iredell, signer of the Declaration of Independence Joseph Hewes, and Gov. Samuel Johnston, who all called the town home during the 18th century.

Both men and women played important roles in the town’s history at this time. The women of Edenton launched a famous boycott of British tea in 1774, one of the most notable protests by women during the colonial period.

As the 18th century continued, the focus of settlement in North Carolina shifted to the south and west. The colony became less dependent on overland and river travel from Virginia. North Carolina began to cultivate other early ports and utilize the Neuse and Cape Fear rivers. An assortment of Scots-Irish, German and Scottish settlers began to use overland routes to populate the backcountry, further reducing the significance of the Albemarle region. Finally, Edenton was further isolated by a 1795 hurricane that deposited silt into the Albemarle Sound’s ocean inlet.

But Edenton remained an important town in the early history of the state. It was surpassed in population by other towns, dropping to the eighth largest town in the state by the 1860 census. But its coastal position and proximity to Norfolk meant that the city still retained a level of importance in the coastal region. It remained a center of shipping and water transportation, both along the coast and internationally. This location contributed to Edenton’s role in the slave trade. International and coastal slave ships plied the waters of the Albemarle and docked at Edenton.

Numerous enslaved people would work as pilots and seamen. One of these ships helped bring Edenton-born Harriet Jacobs to freedom. As a girl, Jacobs was abused by her enslaver and resolved to escape. She spent seven years hidden in a small crawl space before reaching a ship and finding her way to freedom in New York City. Her memoir, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” ended up becoming a bestselling book and an important piece of Southern literature.

Unlike other early Albemarle towns, Edenton retained enough statewide importance to become a strategic target during the Civil War. One of Edenton’s Confederate units, named the Bell Battery because it fired a cannon melted down from the town’s brass bells, fought at the battles of Fredericksburg and Kinston. The town was vulnerable once Gen. Ambrose Burnside successfully captured nearby Roanoke Island. It was invaded by the Union shortly after and held until the end of the war.

Following the war, Edenton embraced the agriculture industry and the new crops that became dominant in the region. It was a center for peanut growing and processing. Edenton gained a cotton mill in the 1890s, one of the first in the Albemarle region, according to the mill’s National Register of Historic Places nomination form.

Much of the mill complex and its village is still standing and now contains a museum. Edenton’s position on the coast and embrace of industry allowed it to retain a considerable amount of wealth for a coastal North Carolina town. This wealth is evident by the dozens of stately Victorian homes that dot the historic district, including the circa 1851 Wessington House at 120 W. King St. and a notable brick mansion at 205 E. King St.

The 20th century saw Edenton embrace its rich historic legacy in a way that few other towns of its size in the southeast had before. In many ways, the historic preservation movement in North Carolina began with a project in the town. The 1758 Cupola House, one of Edenton’s oldest houses and a site of state history, was slated to be torn down in 1918.

A local group, the Cupola House Association, purchased the property at 408 S. Broad St. and turned it into a local museum. Authors Mary Ann Coffey and Murphy Moss described the purchase as “the earliest community preservation effort in NC to save a historic structure.” The precedent of the Cupola House would be repeated numerous times throughout the state and helped pave the way for the creation of the historic preservation movement.

Historic tourism has emerged to become a significant part of Edenton’s economy. The downtown area is dominated by the Edenton Historic District and the numerous historic buildings that are open for tours by public and private groups. Edenton also has several downtown gift shops, restaurants and three historic bed and breakfasts, including the award-winning Inner Banks Inn.

The town was part of writer Joseph Cosco’s 1993 scenic tour of the Albemarle, of which he wrote, “Scattered here and there, almost always near the water, are the history-soaked mansions, merchant-class homes and county courthouses that served as a stage for the birth of both the colony and the nation.” Interest has only grown since then, with its historic district being featured numerous times on HGTV and in the New York Times.

There is uncertainty on the horizon for Edenton’s future. Like the rest of the Albemarle region, it has the potential to be a suburb of Norfolk. Interstate 87 has the potential to substantially reduce driving times between the Albemarle and the Hampton Roads area. Edenton is only 50 miles south of Suffolk, Virginia, a town that has grown by nearly 10 times since 1970. It has the potential to become a bedroom community, defined by large apartment complexes, chain stores, and subdivisions.

Despite this growth, there is hope here that state laws and the local love of history will preserve downtown Edenton as a center for the state’s historic heritage for generations to come.

While Morehead City in Carteret County may only be the Crystal Coast’s idea of a big city, it is a transportation hub, occupying an important spot on both a state railroad and a U.S. highway, the latter of which is in the process of upgrades to interstate quality.

The city has already grown to the point where it hosts some of the only major chain restaurants and retail stores, as well as the largest car dealerships in the county, and a new interstate connection is sure to amplify that growth.

But 200 years ago, the land that Morehead City now comprises was an almost-blank spot on the map. It took years of planning, a shift in state policy, and the burgeoning growth of tourism for Morehead City to become one of North Carolina’s economic drivers.

Morehead City emerged over a century after the formation of Carteret County and its neighbor to the east, Beaufort. In Carteret County’s first century, the county and the whole state were focused on turning the town of Beaufort into a major port. That project was slow, however, and the rest of Carteret County was kept impoverished by poor soil and isolation from the rest of the state. Without limited shipping and the naval stores industry, the county would have had no economic base.

But in the mid-19th century, eastern Carteret County became the site of a new plan to rejuvenate the state’s economy through transportation. The plan was centered around the railroad and the vision of a former governor, John Motley Morehead. Morehead was a believer in internal improvements: the construction of roads, canals, and railroads to facilitate commerce and urban development. Canal building and the plank roads movement had been slow and tedious, but railroads seemed to hold greater promise.

After initial experiments, two railroads were built in the 1830s. The success of these north-south routes, the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad and the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, prompted interest in an east-west line stretching from either the mountains or the western Piedmont to the coast.

In 1849, the North Carolina Railroad Co. was incorporated to put this plan into motion, and Carteret County’s central position along the coast meant that it was a natural home for the railroad’s eastern terminus. 

The North Carolina Railroad started out as a 130-mile stretch between Greensboro and Goldsboro. Three years later, the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad was incorporated to bring this line to the coast. Now a 317-mile rail corridor connecting Charlotte and the North Carolina Port of Morehead City, its eastern terminus was placed at what was then called Shepherd’s Point, a plot that had been bought by the Shepherd’s Point Land Co. near Beaufort.

The town was incorporated in 1857 and named after Gov. Morehead, who had been an investor in the land company.

Just as the town was beginning to grow, the Civil War turned it into an attractive military target. The area was protected by Fort Macon, a nearby masonry fort staffed by a small garrison. In their preparations to take the fort, Union troops under Gen. John G. Parke set up camp in a small community near Morehead City known as Carolina City. Their landing point on Bogue Banks, Hoop Pole Creek, was directly across the sound from Carolina City. Fort Macon fell in less than two weeks and the Union occupied the entire region for the rest of the war.

For several years after 1865, Morehead City was the only railroad hub in Carteret County. It was the industrial center for the county and had the vast majority of its factories and retail centers. By 1903, the town had a furniture manufacturer, an ice factory, two fish factories, five hotels, and 17 general merchandise businesses, two of which were owned by African Americans.

The town’s railroad connection to the rest of Carteret County greatly aided the county’s farmers, who could send their produce to Morehead City and have it shipped to far-off locales. The railroad also facilitated tourism, which had been limited to boat traffic prior to the 1850s.

A visible symbol of this new industry was the Atlantic Hotel, first located in Beaufort and moved to Morehead City in 1880. The hotel’s popularity led to several organizations being founded in its event spaces, including the state’s teacher and banker associations. 

The early 20th century saw Morehead City grow even more sophisticated. It became the home for marine research facilities and sport fishing tournaments. The city attracted tourists who took the railroad and later came via U.S. Highway 70, which was completed in Morehead City by the late 1920s.

As a reflection of this prosperity, Morehead received one of the county’s most architecturally significant buildings outside of Beaufort in 1926. At 202 S. Eighth St., the Morehead City Municipal Building is described in “A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Eastern North Carolina” by Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern as Morehead’s “most distinctive downtown landmark.” It is “an imposing two-story structure with a large hip roof and tall Ionic columns,” according to Bishir and Southern.

Morehead City’s status as the business center of Carteret County was particularly relevant for those who grew up in the coastal town.

Dee Lewis, a local historian and frequent volunteer at the Carteret County Historical Museum, grew up in Morehead City in the 1950s and 1960s. He recalls that Morehead City was the economic engine of the county throughout his childhood. It was the center of good-paying jobs at the port and nightlife down Arendell Street. Lewis contrasted the economic and entertainment opportunities in Morehead with the sleepy communities on the mainland and the seasonal tourist spots on Bogue Banks.

As for Morehead City’s historic neighbor to the east, Lewis noted that when he was younger, “the sidewalks rolled up at sundown in Beaufort.” 

Only since the 1950s have other areas in Carteret County grown to rival Morehead City for economic impact. Two developments helped to shift this growth. The first was the construction of bridges connecting Emerald Isle with the mainland. These new bridges led to an explosion of population on the island and the transformation of Bogue Banks from a regional vacation destination to a national one. Visitors to the island could now enjoy many of the lodging and amenities that had previously been located only in Morehead City. Consequently, the population of Emerald Isle increased from 14 in 1960 to over 3,000 by the 2000 census. 

At around the same time, Newport and the surrounding areas were bolstered by the construction of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in nearby Havelock. This new base resulted in a need for housing that bolstered Havelock as well as its neighbor to the south, Newport. The growth of these areas has supported the county while taking little away from Morehead City’s economic strength. The city’s population more than doubled between 1940 and 2000, and it remains the largest town in the county by several thousand residents. 

Today, Morehead City remains a center of economic activity for the county. It was a featured location for a 2022 episode of Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” when host Guy Fieri held a family reunion on the Crystal Coast and visited several restaurants.

The town continues to grow and construct new businesses while also maintaining its older institutions, such as the famous Sanitary Fish Market and the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament. 

Longtime resident Bob Guthrie recalled that as a child, he always wanted passenger trains to run through the city, but now it is a busy hub of tourism, and “you don’t like tourism when you can’t get to things.”

Morehead City is awaiting the completion of Interstate 42, which is to consist of improvements to U.S. 70 between Raleigh and Morehead City and is touted as a way to drastically reduce travel times between the Piedmont and the coast.

Lower travel times may lead to further growth in Morehead City, a municipality that, at 9,556 residents, is still relatively small for a tourist center on the North Carolina coast. The project includes the nearby Havelock Bypass currently under construction.

This new highway has the potential to change the mix of business development and small-town charm that has defined Morehead City for the past century.

Four miles before the eastern end of U.S. Highway 70, there is a right turn that brings travelers across a small bridge and into the town of Beaufort, North Carolina.

Beaufort is humming with activity in all months of the year, whether with government business near the 115-year-old Carteret County courthouse or tourist activity closer to the waterfront. The town has nearly as many restaurants and museums as it has accolades from national magazines.

But for much of its history, Beaufort was almost forgotten. It was a small outpost that represented a bypassed hope for the future of North Carolina. Over the span of a century, Beaufort has turned itself into a center for history, water activities, and environmental study. It has gone on a long journey to become one of the most memorable places on the North Carolina coast.

Beaufort was laid out in 1713 and incorporated in 1723, making it the fourth oldest town in North Carolina. It was part of the English attempt to turn North Carolina into a productive colony. Beaufort was founded near Beaufort Inlet, one of the few longstanding ocean inlets along the Outer Banks. Given the primacy of water transportation at the time, the hope was that ocean-going traffic through Beaufort Inlet would help bring North Carolina the prosperity that Virginia was experiencing at the time through its wide, deep Chesapeake Bay.

Unlike two of the first four towns, Edenton and New Bern, Beaufort remained isolated throughout its first several decades. Edenton was the colonial capital for several decades and close to Tidewater Virginia, while New Bern benefitted from substantial growth in the Neuse and Trent River basins. Beaufort remained isolated, like the original town of Bath, and did not attract settlement to the mainland area of Carteret County. Consequently, the town only had a few dozen people in 1765, according to a French traveler’s account cited in the downtown district’s nomination form to the National Register of Historic Places.

Even after Beaufort grew to a few hundred residents by the first census in 1790, Carteret County was the state’s second-least-populated county in that census and remained one of the 10 smallest for decades. Beaufort also was not as defined by plantation slavery as the other larger, early towns. Despite the lesser reliance on large cotton or tobacco plantations, enslaved people still worked in agriculture and in maritime professions throughout the town and the coastal area of Carteret County.

Despite its small size, Beaufort had several resident political leaders. These included Otway Burns, the famed privateer of the War of 1812, and revolutionary leader William Thompson. Some of these leaders were interred in the Old Burying Ground, one of the state’s oldest cemeteries. According to land records, the earliest potential burial at this Beaufort graveyard dates to 1724. There are dozens of stories about its most notable graves, from the British officer buried standing up (and facing England) to the little girl buried in a barrel of rum.

Another early heritage of Beaufort is its historic houses. The housing landscape in Beaufort today stretches back to the late 18th century. There was once a theory that one of the oldest houses in town, the Hammock House, was built in the early 18th century and was even visited by Blackbeard. Despite its popularity among locals and mid-20th-century writers, this theory is almost certainly false. It would have been difficult for residents so far from centers of commerce and industry to have brought together the materials and expertise to build such a substantial home in the 1710s. Instead, Beaufort’s earliest standing houses were likely built around the 1780s, which still ranks them as some of the oldest in the state.

Beaufort was only of nominal strategic importance during the Civil War. Beaufort Inlet never grew to the size and depth that the town would have required to become a major port. The Union captured the town early in 1862 after subduing nearby Fort Macon and held it for the rest of the war. There were no substantial battles to rival those in important towns like Wilmington, New Bern, or even Plymouth, where the Confederates secured arguably their greatest North Carolina victory in 1864. Instead, Beaufort was taken with almost no effort.

The 20th century was defined by two developments that continue to shape the town to the present day. One was the growth of industry. Beaufort counted a number of businesses by 1916 including two manufacturing plants, two banks, nine building contractors, and eighteen grocers.

The study of marine biology also brought experts and attention to the town. One of the nation’s first centers for the study of marine biology was opened in the Gibbs House by Johns Hopkins in 1880. The Johns Hopkins Seaside Laboratory eventually helped prompt the foundation of the numerous marine labs currently located on Pivers Island, including a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility and the Duke University Marine Lab. 

The other major development of the past century, of course, was tourism. With the railroad’s arrival in 1906, travelers began to see the benefits of the quaint coastal town. Beaufort also benefited from having been small throughout the 19th century. Unlike more developed towns such as Elizabeth City or Wilmington, limited growth meant that the town kept its original cityscape. While the town began adding hotels, restaurants, and marinas in the 20th century, it retained its 18th-century homes and street grid. A 1988 report in the New York Times noted, “though surrounded today by modern shipping facilities and undistinguished commercial development, the heart of Beaufort has changed little since it was laid out in 1713.”

One of the legacies of tourism’s impact in the town is its keen interest in historic preservation. It is an attractive place for new homeowners to move in, restore old houses, and showcase those houses to the greater community.

One of these homeowners is Eric Lindstrom, who recently finished renovating the 18^th century Piver House on Ann Street.

Lindstrom had worked on historical rehabs in Fayetteville for many years and had been on the lookout for a historic home project before settling on Beaufort. Lindstrom said that the biggest challenge to this renovation was not material or labor but time.

“The work takes a long time and we wanted to do it right,” he said.

The project included some modernization but also a strenuous effort to retain original material such as period-appropriate windows. With the renovation, Lindstrom joined a community of other historic homeowners in Beaufort who share tips and open up their homes for the Beaufort Historical Association’s annual Old Homes Tour.

Today, Beaufort could be viewed as an economic success story. As of June, it had 21 restaurants, one of the highest totals for any North Carolina town with fewer than 5,000 permanent residents.

Beaufort was voted America’s Coolest Small Town in 2012 and has been featured on HGTV and other television channels. It has also started to work harder to acknowledge its African American history with attention to historic Purvis Church and a regular African American bus history tour.

The town is 7 miles from the nearest beach and yet has the kind of summer traffic that sand-adjacent towns often enjoy.

Beaufort stayed mostly the same for over 100 years, but a combination of economic development, tourist attention, and rising sea levels have made change a reality. Now, Beaufort looks to move beyond its small-town identity as it grapples with this newfound importance in its fourth century of incorporation.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties. This post has been updated.

Brunswick County is the state’s southeast corner and in numerous ways a microcosm of the entire coastal region.

Brunswick has swamps, former plantations and a historical legacy that stretches back centuries. The county today is dealing with the effects of booming tourism, rapid growth and the threat of rising sea levels. And while its beaches may not be as famous as those in Carteret or Dare counties, and its towns are not as large as Edenton or New Bern, Brunswick County does share many of the traits that make coastal North Carolina such a fascinating region of the state.

Following the Tuscarora War, a number of English families settled along the rivers of central and southern North Carolina. One popular destination was the western side of the Cape Fear River near the South Carolina border. Sometime prior to 1728, Maurice Moore had reached the area and helped found Brunswick Town.

Moore had been a captain in the South Carolina militia and had become familiar with North Carolina in the fight against the Tuscarora. He settled along with his brother, Roger Moore, who built the famous Orton Plantation at Winnabow in 1735. Orton, which was enlarged in the 1840s, remains one of the best-preserved plantation homes in the state.

Brunswick Town became one of the colony’s most important towns over the next 30 years. It was a significant port and a seat of government, with governors Arthur Dobbs and William Tryon living in the town and attending its considerable church, St. Philip’s, the ruins of which can be seen today.

The county of Brunswick itself was formed in 1764 from New Hanover and Bladen counties. Its original boundaries were the Northwest Cape Fear River, the South Carolina boundary, the Atlantic Ocean, and a western line drawn near Waccamaw River and Juniper Creek, according to historian David Leroy Corbitt.

The late 18th century was a pivotal time in the history of Brunswick County. Brunswick Town faced competition starting in the 1730s with the formation of Newton on the other side of the Cape Fear River. Newton, which was incorporated as Wilmington in 1760, quickly outpaced its rival to the southwest.

Brunswick Town’s population declined. It was described by Scottish visitor Janet Schaw in her travelogue of North Carolina, where she stayed for nearly a year in 1775. Schaw wrote that Brunswick was “the best sea port in the province” but that “the town is very poor — a few scattered houses on the edge of the woods, without street or regularity.” The town was later abandoned after being burned during the Revolutionary War.

The burning of Brunswick Town led to a substantial southward shift in the county’s population. The town of Smithville was incorporated in 1805 and became the county seat three years later. It was the home of Fort Johnston, a colonial fort where Gov. Josiah Martin sought refuge before fleeing North Carolina entirely.

One of the county’s barrier islands also contained Fort Caswell, a Third System, or masonry, coastal fort built to protect the American coastline after the War of 1812. Benjamin Smith, the 16th governor of North Carolina, 1810-11, lived in Smithville and was buried in the town’s Burying Ground.

The antebellum period saw modest growth in Brunswick County as well as Smithville. The county received its first brick courthouse in Smithville in 1844. Several plantation owners in the country grew substantially wealthy, mainly through the cultivation of naval stores as well as corn and sometimes cotton. Well-known families in the county included the Smiths, Moores, and Drys.

Their success, of course, was built upon slave labor. More than 44% of the county’s population was enslaved in 1860 according to the Hergesheimer Map. The county was one of the few in the state that cultivated rice, a specialized process that used flooded fields and skills that enslaved people had brought from West Africa.

The Civil War renewed the Brunswick Town area. Confederates built Fort Anderson on the town’s ruins to protect the Cape Fear River and Wilmington from the Union blockade. Fort Anderson, along with Fort Caswell and the much larger Fort Fisher, helped form one of the Confederacy’s largest defensive formations. It held out until the last few months of the war. Much of Fort Anderson remains today and is accessible to tourists.

Brunswick County stagnated somewhat in the late 19th century. It avoided much of the industrial and commercial development of its neighbor to the east, New Hanover County. Brunswick’s population grew by only about 20% between 1860 and 1890.

The railroad did not reach the county seat until the early 1900s. But Brunswick still underwent some substantial changes. The most notable was the change of Smithville’s name to Southport in 1887, which heralded the growth of new industry and houses in the small town.

As the author of Southport’s National Register nomination form wrote, “In contrast with the slow and often stagnant growth of antebellum Smithville, the new town of Southport bustled with building activity …”

Tourism began to change Brunswick County’s fortunes starting in the 1930s. During that decade, beach development began in the county. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, completed in the 1930s, went through the county and facilitated water commerce. A bridge from the mainland to Oak Island spanning the waterway was completed soon after.

By 1958, Oak Island had a number of homes, businesses, and one of the state’s tallest lighthouses. Successful development on that island later inspired settlements on the county’s other barrier islands. The state incorporated six towns on Brunswick barrier islands between 1955 and 1975, which grew along with the nonincorporated, ferry-access-only community at Bald Head Island.

Tourists have also frequented several other historic and notable towns on the mainland. Brunswick Town became a state historic site in 1952 and attracts thousands of visitors each year. Southport has become known for its naval museum, historic sites and multiple locations from notable films. There is also Calabash, a town known throughout the country for its fried seafood.

A number of important people have called Brunswick County home. Many have been from Southport, including civil rights activist Bertha McNeil, baseball player Quinton McCracken, and military pioneer Margaret Craighill. Another was George Rappleyea, a businessman who helped organize the Scopes Monkey Trial and lived in Southport late in life.

Today, Brunswick County is a center for tourism and suburban development. It contains several bedroom communities for commuters to the thriving city of Wilmington. In Leland, the largest of these communities, the population grew 598% between 2000 and 2010. The southwestern corner of the county has also grown due to its proximity to Myrtle Beach.

More houses and communities have put strain on county resources and have exacerbated flooding caused by higher sea levels. Brunswick County’s prime location has bought it great benefits throughout its history, but this location may also fuel the challenges the county will face over the next few decades.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Wilmington is one of North Carolina’s best-known cities. Visitors to the state’s southern beaches pass through the city at the eastern end of Interstate 40. Many may be familiar with the Battleship North Carolina Memorial, or films and TV shows shot in the area, or some of the famous people who have called New Hanover County and its biggest city home.

Behind these relatively recent attributes and trivia are nearly three centuries of historic development.

Scenic Wilmington also is one of the state’s most historically important, in both a positive light and as the site of one of the darkest moments in North Carolina history.

Following the Tuscarora War in the early 1700s, English settlers began to move south and west throughout the area once occupied by that powerful Native American group. One of the earliest settlements was in present-day Brunswick County on the western bank of the Cape Fear River. The pre-Revolutionary success of that settlement, known as Brunswick Town, helped inspire a number of settlements on the eastern side as well.

Families such as the Moseleys, Swanns and Moores claimed large land grants and founded sizable plantations. As Lawrence Lee noted in his history of New Hanover County, “They were men of wealth and position who brought their families and slaves and settled on large plantations.” They grew rice and corn and harvested naval stores. The navigable Cape Fear River allowed them to quickly transport their products to market and become relatively wealthy as a result.

Early settlement led to a new county to facilitate commerce and ease legal burdens. In 1729, New Hanover County was formed from the southeast portion of Craven County. It was named after the House of Hanover, the German royal family that ruled England at the time. The county originally stretched westward to the extent of settlement and northward to the White Oak River, according to archivist and historian David Leroy Corbitt.

One important action by these early settlers was to form a town on the eastern bank of the Cape Fear River 30 miles north of its mouth. This town, first called New Carthage, soon became known as Newton. It was finally incorporated in 1760 and named Wilmington after the then-governor’s patron, Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington. Its potential as a major political center in North Carolina was clear by the 1740s, after it was made the county seat of New Hanover County. 

Wilmington soon became one of the most important cities in North Carolina. It was a center for patriotic sentiment during the Revolution and was home to Cornelius Harnett, the first leader of the state’s Committee of Safety.

Later in the war, the Burgwin-Wright House on Market Street in downtown Wilmington, now a museum, served as a headquarters for Charles Cornwallis as he planned the campaign that ended at Yorktown. The war also resulted in the burning and abandonment of Brunswick Town, which was never rebuilt and led to further growth for Wilmington and the upper Cape Fear.

The 18th and 19th centuries saw a number of changes in the boundaries of New Hanover County. It was first reduced because its enormous size had made travel to the court difficult. Onslow, Duplin, Bladen, and Brunswick were all formed from New Hanover between 1734 and 1764.

Later in the 19th century, the county shrank further with the formation of Pender County. Pender’s creation was less about helping local farmers and more about minimizing the political importance of New Hanover County, which by that time was a center of African American political power.

The resulting area was dominated by Wilmington. The city grew by nearly 10 times between 1800 and 1870. It was the largest city in North Carolina between 1830 and 1910 and became a center of political and cultural importance.

The city was home to several early leaders such as signer of the Declaration of Independence William Hooper, Gov. Edward B. Dudley and Congressman Timothy Bloodworth. Its importance in cultural matters was established by the construction of Thalian Hall, one of the first theatrical venues in the state.

During the Civil War, Wilmington became a nationally important site of blockade running. The city was a destination for ships travelling to and from Europe, particularly after the fall of the ports of New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. Ships could quickly transport international goods to the city, where they could travel up the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad to supply Confederate armies in Virginia.

This economic activity was protected by Fort Fisher, an earthen fort known as the “Gibraltar of the South” for its ability to withstand Union cannonades. Fort Fisher survived a substantial assault in December 1864 before being taken over by a Union force of more than 10,000 soldiers and sailors a month later. Many historians consider this event to have heralded the end of the war three months later.

Following the war, Wilmington became a center of civil rights struggles and racial violence in North Carolina. The population was majority African American and the city became a Republican stronghold. One of its local leaders, Daniel Russell, a white Republican, was elected governor in 1896. The city had a biracial city council in the late 19th century and an African American-owned newspaper, The Daily Record, the only one in the country, according to David Cecelski and Timothy Tyson.

This political power was shattered in the 1898 Wilmington insurrection. Following a monthslong white supremacy campaign by state Democrats, a group of local white men led by Alfred Moore Waddell armed themselves, attacked the city’s African American residents and burned the offices of The Daily Record. They sought to lynch the newspaper’s publisher Alexander Manly and killed dozens of African Americans and forced hundreds of others to flee the city. The group also forced out the city council and replaced it with a group led by Waddell.

This usurpation remains the only successful coup d’état in American history. African Americans were soon restricted from voting and numerous social activities by the state’s new white supremacist legislature. Wilmington’s African American population decreased by thousands over the next two decades, partially because of the Great Migration and partially due to the memory of the 1898 insurrection.

The 20th century saw continued growth and development in New Hanover County, particularly for the county’s white population. Wilmington became a center for industry and the home of large companies like the pharmaceutical company PPD and Reeds Jewelers. It was bolstered by the construction of two bridges across the Cape Fear River, one in 1919 that was replaced in 1969 and another in 1980.

A new courthouse was built in 1892 at 316 Princess St., and a steel-frame skyscraper, the Murchison Building, was completed in 1914 at the corner of Front and Chestnut streets.

This period was also the beginning of substantial development on New Hanover County’s coast. A trolley line was built to Wrightsville Beach in the early 20th century. This line allowed tourists from Wilmington and beyond to enjoy the island’s beaches. The same process helped develop the other beaches of what became known as Pleasure Island, most notably Carolina Beach and Kure Beach.

The late 20th century was the heyday of movie production in Wilmington. The city was the site of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, a film production company that was eventually bought by Carolco Pictures. These companies took advantage of loans and incentives offered by the state government and continued operating in Wilmington for decades. Well-known films shot in Wilmington include “Blue Velvet,” “The Crow,” and more recently, “Iron Man 3.” While De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and Carolco are no more, several film studios still operate in the area, including Screen Gem Studios and Dark Horse Studios.

Wilmington is one of the state’s largest and most economically successful cities. This status has resulted in numerous well-known people calling the city home. One of the most famous is probably Michael Jordan, who was born in Brooklyn but his family moved to Wilmington when he was a small child and lived in the area until Jordan was drafted from the University of North Carolina by the Chicago Bulls in 1984. Other famous area residents include country music legend Charlie Daniels, broadcaster Charles Kuralt, and Sammy Davis, father of the famous singer and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.

Wilmington has emerged from industrial and agricultural decline faster than nearly any other coastal area over the past two decades. It has reinvented its downtown with restaurants, shops in repurposed warehouses, and events such as ghost tours. The city is now a home of research thanks to several large local companies and UNC-Wilmington.

It is also becoming a cultural center for both the region and the state with the Battleship North Carolina and events such as the annual Azalea Festival, which is scheduled for Wednesday through Sunday.

Wilmington has embraced its public role in part by turning a critical light on its past. After decades of suppression, the city finally acknowledged the Wilmington insurrection before its 100th anniversary in 1998. There is now a memorial park dedicated to its victims.

Today, Wilmington is a center of tourism and economic development for the region. Like other coastal cities, residents are dealing with rising sea levels and the effects of sprawl. Wilmington’s expansion has led to substantial growth in nearby towns as area workers move farther out to find lower housing costs.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Visitors to the Crystal Coast often stop at the scenic town of Swansboro on their way down to Beaufort or Atlantic Beach. This town has become associated with the beaches and hamlets that have made Carteret County famous, but Swansboro is actually part of neighboring Onslow County, an area better known for its sprawling Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune than for its history or beaches.

From colonial leaders and war heroes to its miles of barrier islands and maritime forests, Onslow County may deserve greater recognition as a tourist destination along the North Carolina coast.

Onslow County was formed through the same migration that established other southeastern counties such as New Hanover and Pender. Following the Tuscarora War, English settlers moved north from South Carolina and south from the Albemarle region to settle near the Cape Fear River. These settlers used the river both for personal transportation and to carry their agricultural products and naval stores to oceangoing vessels. But the Cape Fear was not the only river in the region that afforded these benefits. Two others were the White Oak River and the New River, shorter than the Cape Fear but also deep and with its own stable inlet.

The presence of these rivers was a major impetus for the early formation of Onslow County. The first counties in North Carolina were wide tracts of land that sometimes extended for dozens or hundreds of miles. New settlers worked their way down major rivers and creeks from the first ports or towns. Eventually, these settlers found themselves several hours or days away from their courthouse and petitioned the colony for a new county. In 1734, this process occurred in the northeastern section of New Hanover County near New and White Oak Rivers, and a new county was formed.

The new county was named after Arthur Onslow, a powerful English politician and longtime speaker of the British House of Commons, as noted by historian David Leroy Corbitt.

The greater White Oak and New River areas became a locus for settlement in the mid-18th century. Families such as the Starkeys, Warburtons, and Grants reached the area and set up small settlements and plantations. By the late 18th century, the area had its first significant town. Swansboro was established in 1783 and named for Samuel Swann, one of the colony’s most accomplished political leaders. He served as speaker of the Colonial Assembly and was a member of William Byrd’s 1728 expedition to survey the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia, according to the N.C. Highway Historic Marker program.

The antebellum period was one of exciting changes for Onslow County. Early in the 19th century, one of the county’s most famous historical figures made his name on the high seas. Otway Burns was a local shipbuilder and politician. At the beginning of the War of 1812, he became a privateer and commanded a ship, the Snap Dragon, which captured a number of prizes in the Caribbean and off Nova Scotia before being captured itself in 1814. Burns later built the first steamship in North Carolina. He died in 1850, and his grave in Beaufort is currently marked by a memorial topped with a cannon. A statue of Burns stands in Bicentennial Park in Swansboro. 

A few decades later, the population of Onslow County expanded to the southwest. Residents founded a new town at the site of the old courthouse on New River. Established in 1849 and named after the former president, Jacksonville was much smaller than Swansboro throughout its early history. It is home to the Pelletier House, named after turpentine magnate Rufus Ferrand Pelletier. This house, known for the spring in the backyard and its overarching porch, is the oldest structure in Jacksonville, according to the house’s National Register nomination.

The founding of Jacksonville only slightly affected the modest growth of the county. Onslow County’s population increased by about 50% between 1810 and 1860. What wealth the county had was a result of exploitation from slavery, with over 40% of the county’s population enslaved in 1860, according to the Hergesheimer map.

The Civil War mainly bypassed Onslow County. The Union was more interested in Fort Macon to the north and the greater Cape Fear area to the south. But there was some action in Swansboro and on the county’s barrier islands. County historian Alan Watson noted that after 1862 the White Oak River “constituted the division between the Union-occupied area in eastern North Carolina and the Cape Fear defense district of the Confederacy.”

Following the war, Onslow County was part of the 3rd Congressional District, which was at one time represented by Daniel Russell, a future Republican governor. After numerous fits and starts, a substantial railroad finally reached the county in 1891, according to Watson. The new railroad, which connected Jacksonville to Wilmington — and later New Bern — led to the formation of towns Holly Ridge and Verona.

During the early 20th century, Jacksonville continued its slow growth, with the Onslow County Courthouse that stands today — with renovations — being built in 1904. The entire region received a jolt in 1942 with the founding of Camp Lejeune. This Marine Corps base, one of the largest in the country, was located near Jacksonville because of the area’s water accessibility, cheap land, and barrier islands that were perfect for amphibious landings. It was named after John A. Lejeune, a longtime Marine Corps commandant.

Construction of the base also led to the end of the small New River village of Marines, which was swallowed up by the base and whose residents were forced to move. Camp Lejeune played a pivotal role in training and military preparations for both the Second World War and the Vietnam War. After 9/11, the base closed to civilian traffic along N.C. Highway 172, cutting off the small community of Sneads Ferry from the northern approach to Swansboro and Carteret County.

The development of Camp Lejeune has dominated much of Onslow County since the mid-20th century. Jacksonville continues to grow and has gained a variety of businesses such as international restaurants, used bookstores and a mall. Surrounding towns and communities have experienced a massive increase in population. The community of Sneads Ferry has had to adapt to new housing development and a sprawling business district on Highway N.C. 210, challenging its historic identity as a quaint fishing village.

The county’s periphery has had its own developments during the past five decades. Swansboro has benefited from its proximity to the Carteret County beaches. It is a center for historic homes and hosts the Mullet Festival, an annual tradition celebrating fishing and the completion of the White Oak River bridge, according to Carolina Coast Online. There has also been a considerable amount of nature-related tourism to the county. This natural tourism has extended back decades. Hammocks Beach State Park, founded in 1961, was one of the few state parks established for African Americans prior to park integration in 1964. 

Jacksonville and the small towns throughout the rest of Onslow County have been home to several remarkable people. These include former governor Edward B. Dudley, University of North Carolina sports announcer Jones Angell, former Notre Dame football coach Tyrone Willingham and astronaut Christina Koch. There was also Art Bell, a broadcaster and conspiracy theorist who founded the radio show “Coast to Coast A.M.”

The 21st century has brought new challenges to the county. County officials have had to contend with rising sea levels and eroding beaches, most notably at the northern end of Topsail Island. Camp Lejeune is still dealing with a contaminated water crisis that has made national headlines. But tourism is still booming, and the military base continues to bring new residents, jobs and funding.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

The North Carolina coast has several regions of world-renowned beaches and barrier islands. They offer miles of sand, substantial hotels, and a full host of shops, restaurants, and sites available for tourists and residents alike.

Along with the Outer Banks to the north and the Wilmington-area beaches to the south, the Crystal Coast, a tourism marketing term coined in the 1980s, has gained recognition over the past century for its abundant amenities.

The term has since come to also include neighboring destinations, but it mainly refers to the beaches of Carteret County, one of the state’s oldest counties with history dating back three centuries. Its history has been defined by war, industrial development and the tourism boom that has shaped so much of society on the North Carolina coast.

Following the initial establishment of North Carolina on the Albemarle Sound, colonial settlers began to move south and west to find more areas for tobacco cultivation and trade. Many went to cultivate the rich soils along the Neuse River and, by the 1720s, the Cape Fear and Tar rivers. The settlers displaced native peoples throughout this process, including the Tuscarora and Core.

Some colonial families decided to stay along the coast and settle near inlets. One of these settlements was the future Carteret County seat of Beaufort, settled near Beaufort Inlet in the 1710s and incorporated in 1723. Beaufort was the colony’s fourth incorporated town. Carteret County itself was founded a year earlier and named for Sir John Carteret, one of the Lords Proprietors, according to historian and author David Leroy Corbitt.

Beaufort was a port town, a center for ocean trade and a stop for ships navigating through Beaufort Inlet. But the port was isolated from the rest of the more prosperous areas of the colony and remained small throughout its early years. The one exception to its sleepy early beginnings was in 1747, when the town was captured by the Spanish as part of the War of Jenkins’ Ear between Great Britain and Spain. Local militiamen retook the town three days later and ended the Spanish threat.

Outside of Beaufort, the area remained isolated and rural. The island of Bogue Banks, popular today for its many tourist attractions, was barely inhabited throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. But on another barrier island here, one of the county’s earliest prosperous towns was Portsmouth, a town on Portsmouth Island near Ocracoke Inlet. The town had more than 500 residents in 1850 before losing most of them following the reopening of Hatteras Inlet in 1846. Portsmouth is now a ghost town and part of Cape Lookout National Seashore. The seashore also contains one of North Carolina’s tallest lighthouses, the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, originally built in 1804 and rebuilt in 1859.

On the mainland, communities such as Peletier and Broad Creek gained their first settlers in the 18th century. But rural isolation, the marshy environment, and a lack of large-scale shipping kept the inland population low. Carteret County had the second smallest population of any North Carolina county in 1790. The people who lived in the county supported themselves with shipping, agriculture and naval stores – pitch, tar and turpentine products harvested from the abundant pine forests.

Plantation agriculture and slavery were less prominent in this area than in surrounding counties. The 1860 census showed that 24.5% of Carteret County’s population was enslaved, the lowest percentage east of Moore County.

The mid-19th century brought an economic boost to Carteret County in the form of the North Carolina Railroad Co. Connecting the Piedmont and the coast, the new railroad was to have its eastern terminus in a new town. The tract that included what was then known as Shepard’s Point was platted as a grid design in 1854 and named Morehead City for its chief planner, John Motley Morehead, who had served as governor from 1841 to 1845. Morehead organized investors in the land development company, led the effort to raise private funding for the state-appropriated rail line and served as its first president.

Morehead City was incorporated Feb. 10, 1861. Meanwhile, the railroad also linked other Carteret County towns and communities, including Wildwood and Newport.

But the railroad and Carteret County’s strategic coastal location made it a prime target for the Union during the Civil War. The primary target was Fort Macon, which had been built in 1834 to protect the entry into Beaufort Inlet. Confederate troops stormed the nearly abandoned fort before North Carolina had even seceded, according to John G. Barrett. Less than one year later, Union forces landed at Hoop Pole Creek in present-day Atlantic Beach and captured the fort. The larger coastal area quickly fell to the Union. Farther inland, the Battle of Newport Barracks in February 1864 resulted in three Medals of Honor being awarded to a group of Union soldiers from Vermont. 

The next 75 years were a time of steady growth and development in Carteret County. Its population nearly doubled between 1860 and 1920. An effort to designate Morehead City a state port began in the 1920s and culminated with a $7.5 million appropriation in 1949. Beaufort became a center for tourism and marine research as well as shipping and fishing.  New funds into Beaufort from this growing prosperity led to the construction of a new courthouse for the county in 1907.

By the 1920s, Carteret County was becoming a tourist destination. The first bridge connecting Bogue Banks to the mainland was built in 1928 by a group of local investors who then sold the bridge to the state eight years later. The Morehead-Atlantic Beach bridge and the Emerald Isle-Cape Carteret ferry, which was replaced by a bridge in 1971, eventually led to hotels and fishing piers throughout the banks.

The central part of the Bogue Banks between Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach received an early benefactor in 1917 when Alice Hoffman, a relative of Theodore Roosevelt, bought a large tract. Hoffman spent much of her life building up an estate on Bogue Banks and feuding with local fishermen, as noted in Kathleen McMillan Guthrie’s biography of Hoffman. The sale of Hoffman’s land after her death in 1953 led to considerable development and the eventual formation of the towns of Indian Beach and Pine Knoll Shores.

Growth on Bogue Banks occurred alongside development in other parts of the county. While Beaufort’s population remained small, it started to gain shops, restaurants and tourist attractions such as the North Carolina Maritime Museum. Newport’s population more than doubled in the 1960s, while the Down East communities such as Atlantic and Sea Level experienced growth and became centers for fishing and boating. Sea Level became the site for the national Snug Harbor Navy retirement facility, a home for retired merchant mariners that operated from 1976 to 2019. Newport was also aided by the construction of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in nearby Havelock, for which it became a site for housing. Reflecting this development and its growing tourist reputation, the term “Crystal Coast” was introduced in the late 20th century to describe the towns and beaches of the area. 

A number of remarkable people called Carteret County home in the 20th century. These included architect Bill Ransom Campbell, author Gerald R. Weeks, and Major League Baseball pitcher Lonnie Chisenhall, all from Morehead City. Other famous residents include Judge Algernon Marbley and Samuel Herring, singer of the band Future Islands. One famous Beaufort resident was Reginald Hawkins, civil rights leader and the first African American to run for governor of North Carolina. Another was Fairleigh Dickinson, a business leader who also became the namesake of Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. Michael J. Smith, the pilot of the Space Shuttle Challenger mission, which exploded soon after takeoff in 1986, was also from Beaufort.

Today, Carteret County is one of the centers for tourism in coastal North Carolina. There are dozens of well-known restaurants, recreational facilities, and hotels on Bogue Banks and elsewhere. Earlier this year, Food Network personality Guy Fieri filmed his family reunion special in the county, touring several of its restaurants and markets. Beaufort has won numerous “best small town” awards in the past decade, most notably one from Travel and Leisure magazine in 2014.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Craven County and Pamlico County may present one of the largest contrasts between neighboring counties in eastern North Carolina.

Craven County is one of the most urban, densely populated counties in the region. It is the home of the sizable city of New Bern and dozens of historic homes, shops and restaurants. Most of the counties surrounding Craven County are much smaller and almost entirely rural. Its eastern neighbor, Pamlico County, is one of the region’s newest counties and one of the state’s least populated.

Despite its sparse population and short history, Pamlico County is a hidden gem that offers both natural beauty and small-town charm.

Pamlico County was first reached by Europeans in the early 18th century at around the same time that the Swiss settled New Bern. It was originally the eastern section of Craven County. Unlike the prosperous area north and west of New Bern, much of the eastern section of the county was swampy with poor soil and inadequate transportation. The population grew more slowly, with most families focusing on the trade in wood products and naval stores instead of plantation agriculture.

By the early 19th century, the area that later became Pamlico County was beginning to develop its earliest towns. The communities of Oriental and Vandemere attracted their first settlers by this time. The county did not have its first incorporated town until 1857.

Pamlico County’s rural setting has led to a proliferation of small communities and interesting place names. Oriental’s name has a disputed backstory. Tradition states that the name came from a steamer, the Oriental, which was built in Philadelphia in 1861 and used as a federal transport ship in the first year of the Civil War. The ship ran aground near Bodie Island in 1862.

More than 30 years later, a post office was established on the Neuse River called Smith Creek. The postmaster’s wife, Rebecca Midyette, wanted the community to have a more fitting name. She either found the nameplate for the Oriental or saw it in an Outer Banks home. The name stuck.

Today the only Pamlico County structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places is China Grove. Likely built in 1803, China Grove was originally the home of Edward Carraway, a naval stores manufacturer who owned an extensive plantation. It is known for its sizable, two-tiered porch and prominent location near the mouth of the Neuse River, according to the house’s National Register of Historic Places listing.

Pamlico County was formed in the heated political conflict that characterized much of the Reconstruction era. White supremacists in the North Carolina General Assembly believed that creating a new eastern county with a majority white population would help them win elections in the 1st Congressional District. As a result, the state formed Pamlico County in 1872. According to David Leroy Corbitt, the county was formed from eastern sections of Craven and Beaufort counties.

After formation, Pamlico County’s population remained below 10,000 until 1970.

Its county courthouse reflected the area’s general privation. According to historian Joe Mobley, for its first five years “the county seat moved from place to place until the county commissioners finally agreed on one site.”

That site was Bayboro, where court was held in a rented building until a courthouse was built in 1893. The original courthouse was replaced by the current one built by the federal Works Progress Administration in 1939.

The 20th century brought new opportunities for the county. It grew alongside New Bern and benefitted from the construction of the Pamlico, Oriental & Western Railroad between New Bern and Oriental, completed in 1906. As a result, Pamlico County’s population grew by more than 20% between 1900 and 1910. One of the most notable firsts in Pamlico occurred in 1917, when Oriental operated the state’s first motorized school bus.

As noted in a highway historical marker essay, “the introduction of a motorized bus to deliver students from outlying areas to the schoolhouse was considered an organizational triumph.”

Pamlico County remained a quiet rural area throughout the late 20^th century. It gained several industries and had a modest amount of economic success. Oriental began to attract tourists interested in boating and maritime activities. A Neuse River ferry opened between Minnesott Beach and Cherry Branch, facilitating transportation to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and the beaches of Carteret County.

Arguably Pamlico County’s most famous native lived in the county during this time. Kevin Williamson grew up in Oriental and was influenced by his experiences there when he created the television show “Dawson’s Creek,” named after a nearby body of water popular as a recreation spot. Williamson also wrote the horror movie, “Scream,” and dozens of other movies and television shows.

Today, Pamlico County is defined by its miles of untouched swampland and water access. There are several tourist attractions such as marinas, Goose Creek Game Land, and the multiple camps and retreats at Minnesott Beach. Oriental is the site of the 2022 Southern Living Home, a house featured in the magazine’s October 2022 edition that is available for tours.

With its forests and quaint shops, marinas and restaurants, Pamlico County has become a destination for travelers and homebuyers seeking rural and small-town charm.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Coastal North Carolina is dominated by rural landscapes, water and small towns. Two counties in the state’s coastal zone do not even have a municipality, while two others have only one municipality with fewer than 900 people. The counties that do have considerable urban areas have a rich, fascinating history of development and diversity that stands out compared with their quieter neighbors. Craven County is one of these urban coastal counties.

Dominated by the city of New Bern, Craven has transformed from a colonial trading post into a center for industry and tourism since its incorporation three centuries ago.

Craven County was the third area of North Carolina permanently settled by Europeans. While the Albemarle Sound and the region near Bath Creek were home to English settlers, the Neuse River and Trent River attracted Swiss and German immigrants. These Swiss and Germans arrived in 1710 under the leadership of Baron Christoph Von Graffenreid. The explorer John Lawson laid out their town, New Bern, that same year. Craven County was formed two years later in 1712 from Bath County, according to David Leroy Corbitt.

New Bern’s settlement became the center of the Tuscarora War. It represented a major encroachment of Europeans into an area held by the powerful Tuscarora Native Americans. The Tuscarora killed Lawson, captured Von Graffenreid and devastated both New Bern and the other North Carolina town of Bath, according to historian David La Vere in his book, “The Tuscarora War.” An expedition from South Carolina finally ended the war in 1713 with a horrific massacre at the Tuscarora town of Fort Neoheroka.

Starting in 1766, New Bern became the capital of the North Carolina colony. It was a center for governance and the home of many of the colony’s most powerful families.

The town was where colonial governor William Tryon built his imposing palace in 1770, a construction project that prompted the colony-wide Regulator revolt. New Bern was also arguably where the American Revolution started in North Carolina. In May 1775, Tryon’s successor Josiah Martin was forced to flee Tryon Palace when a large mob gathered and threatened to tear down the gates. Martin’s flight was the unofficial end of royal control in the colony.

New Bern and surrounding Craven County had several natural advantages that helped them grow to substantial wealth during the antebellum period. The city is located at the confluence of two navigable rivers, the Trent and the Neuse. Those rivers flow through hundreds of miles of rich soil in Jones, Johnston and Lenoir counties as well as others nearby. Since those counties lacked substantial markets, New Bern was their connection to the rest of the world. 

Accordingly, the city’s population increased, and it was the largest in the state until the 1840 census. Wealth brought new buildings and expansion as well as a large population of enslaved people. Craven County had the 29th highest percentage of enslaved people in the state in 1860, according to the Hergesheimer map. It also had a large number of free African American residents, including prosperous barber and anti-slavery advocate John C. Stanly.

New Bern escaped much of the privation that affected other coastal towns such as Elizabeth City and Plymouth during the Civil War. It was captured by the Union in 1862 and held for the remainder of the war. Following the war, New Bern was economically overtaken by Piedmont towns that embraced industrialization more quickly. It sank to the seventh largest town by 1900. But New Bern still retained a substantial amount of wealth given its importance to the state’s still-dominant agricultural sector.

This wealth was reflected in a number of large government buildings and fine homes built throughout the city. The stately county courthouse, a Romanesque Revival building with a mansard roof, was completed in 1897. One of the largest private homes was the Blades House (1903), described by historian Catherine Bishir in her book, “Architecture of Eastern North Carolina” as “among the state’s prime renditions of the energetic synthesis of Queen Anne style massing and early Colonial Revival detail.”

The 20th century was a time of transition and reflection for New Bern. The city began to embrace industry and build on its railroad connections. According to a 1920 city directory, the city had four banks, 12 lumber companies, and six fertilizer manufacturers. The railroad, which reached New Bern in 1858, continued to expand. It brought development to the city and enabled the creation of the county’s other towns such as Havelock, Cove City and Dover. 

Despite this growth, it was clear that New Bern’s place at the top of North Carolina’s urban hierarchy was gone. This shift in the city’s fortunes pushed it to embrace its past in a way that few other North Carolina cities had. In 1945, the Tryon Palace Commission began fundraising to rebuild Tryon Palace, which had burned in 1798. Due chiefly to the efforts of local philanthropist Maude Moore Latham, the historically accurate palace opened to great acclaim in 1959. In the past few years, Tryon Palace has attracted over 200,000 visitors per year who pour millions of dollars into the local economy at hotels, shops, and restaurants downtown, according to newspaper articles and the Palace Foundation’s 2019 annual report.

Today, Craven County is one of coastal North Carolina’s most prosperous counties. It continues to attract industry and tourism, with sites such as Tryon Palace and the Birthplace of Pepsi-Cola. Havelock has grown rapidly with the expansion of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. The county is also a popular stop for travelers on the way down U.S. 70 to Carteret County beaches and attractions.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Eastern North Carolina is a region dominated by agriculture, small towns, and miles of forests and swamps. One of the area’s oldest counties, Hyde County, also is one of its most wild and undisturbed.

The residents of Hyde County, both before and after European contact, took advantage of its natural resources and tried to use its swamps and rivers as efficiently as possible. But after centuries of trying to exploit this land, the current residents now see unspoiled nature as their greatest asset and many are trying to preserve it as much as they can. 

Hyde County’s first settlement by the English occurred in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. After establishing the colony of North Carolina north of Albemarle Sound, colonists moved south. Some built farms and a town in what became Beaufort County, while others settled east of Bath Creek to the Pamlico Sound. This area had relatively poor soil and was the domain of numerous Native American groups. Many of these groups were defeated in the Tuscarora War and moved away.

The eventual namesake of Hyde County came from the period of the war. The county was formed in 1705 and first named Wickham Precinct after an estate in England. The name was changed to Hyde County in 1712 to honor Edward Hyde, the North Carolina governor who requested help from South Carolina to fight the Tuscarora.

Throughout its history, Hyde County has been dominated by the large body of water known as Lake Mattamuskeet. Mattamuskeet is the largest natural lake in the state. It was long believed to have been the result of a meteor strike, although scientists now suspect the lake was formed by a massive peat fire.

The area around Mattamuskeet was home to a number of Native American groups prior to English contact. The Mattamuskeet Native Americans, along with nearby Corees, were forced onto a reservation by the English in 1715 following the Tuscarora War. Numerous attempts to drain the lake and build canals have been made since the 18th century. These attempts have substantially decreased the lake’s size.

Outside of the area around Lake Mattamuskeet, the county grew slowly. It lost its prosperous western half in 1729 with the formation of Beaufort County and much of its Outer Banks territory in 1870 to Dare County, according to historian Daniel Leroy Corbitt.

The Hyde County Courthouse reflects this shift in focus. Court was first held in Bath before moving to Woodstock Point on the Pungo River. The courthouse at Woodstock Point, which burned in 1789, left ruins that can still be seen in the Pungo River, according to the North Carolina Gazetteer.

The court later moved 15 miles east to Swan Quarter, which remains unincorporated. Hyde County’s next courthouse was built soon after the move in the 1850s and was described by historian Catherine Bishir in “A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Eastern North Carolina” as a “compact, stuccoed, 2-story brick building” with light roof decorations.” The building is one of the oldest courthouses in the state.

The 19th century saw farmers try to extract as much wealth as they could from the swamps of Hyde County, with little success. The county profited from slavery, however, with 37.4% of its population enslaved in 1860, one of the lowest percentages in eastern North Carolina. Many of these slaves worked in either smaller farms or forestry. They took advantage of hardy swamp woods to produce shingles. Areas drained by canals were viable centers of agriculture, although farmers never succeeded in draining the area’s largest lakes. Shipping also brought in a modest income on the Outer Banks. Ocracoke was adjacent to Ocracoke Inlet, a major inlet for oceangoing ships until the mid-1800s when more efficient inlets opened up. 

In the 20th century, the county continued to be defined by Lake Mattamuskeet and Ocracoke. Mattamuskeet became a center for hunting, fishing and wildlife viewing.

One reminder of the area’s history as a hunting destination is Mattamuskeet Lodge, located on the lake near the community of New Holland. Originally built as a pumping station in 1911, the building was renovated after 1934 following the federal government’s takeover of the Mattamuskeet area as a wildlife refuge. It is by far the tallest structure in the county and at one time could accommodate over 50 travelers, as noted in the building’s National Register nomination.

Twenty-five miles to the south of Mattamuskeet, Ocracoke Island attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. They arrive by ferry to enjoy the island’s beaches, seafood restaurants, and historic 1823 lighthouse.

Outside of these two areas, the 20^th century was mostly quiet for Hyde County. Its population decreased by almost half between 1900 and 2000.

The county’s main period of prominence occurred during the desegregation struggles of the 1960s. Between 1968 and 1969, African American residents protested the closure of two historically Black schools. They refused to send their children to any school, marched on Raleigh, and fought back against violent attempts to influence their actions.

According to historian David Cecelski, this battle ended up leading to a referendum and an extraordinary settlement with state officials in Raleigh that kept the schools open.

Today, Hyde County has embraced its natural heritage and status as a tourism center. It has the second-smallest population in the state with fewer residents than it had in 1800. There are few shops, restaurants, or businesses outside of the tourism industry in Ocracoke. But the county does have several visitor centers and areas for natural recreation. It has embraced its pristine beauty and remains a haven for nature lovers.

The military has been a boon to North Carolina’s economy. It has brought in millions in government spending, thousands of jobs, and generations of families eager to live and retire where they used to serve.

Newspapers, historians, and the media often focus on large cities, base locations such as Fayetteville and Jacksonville, when discussing the impact of these military installations. But smaller towns also play an important role. This is the story of two coastal towns and how their histories have been shaped during the past 80 years by the Marine Corps bases nearby.

For more than 200 years, Snead’s Ferry, the vessel for which the Onslow County community was named, plied the waters of the New River between Ferry Point and Pollocks Point. It served as a vital connection on the King’s Highway, a colonial postal route near present-day U.S. 17 that was essential to communication in remote parts of eastern North Carolina. The ferry continued long after the end of colonial rule, the widespread building of bridges and new turnpikes, and the emergence of railroads in the 1840s. Snead’s Ferry finally ceased operations in 1939 following the construction of a nearby bridge.

Today, Snead’s Ferry likely could not legally run the same route. The Ferry Point side is still part of the historic community, surrounded by fishing companies and old homes. But the other side of New River features a small wildlife viewing area surrounded by Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base with more than 40,000 stationed Marines and restricted public access

Camp Lejeune, founded in 1941, has severely limited outside traffic on the base since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Just 1,500 feet on the other side of the Sneads Ferry bridge on N.C. 210 is a gate that would stop any prospective traveler. Except for the wildlife area, there would be nowhere for the ferry to land that was accessible to the public.

Sneads Ferry, the community that grew up along the New River ferry, is just one of several coastal towns that have been shaped by military expansion in the past 70 years. Nearby towns such as Sneads Ferry and Newport in Carteret County are now destinations for thousands of military families and employees. Before the bases were built, these towns were small, located on naturally advantageous river bends and points of land. They operated small-scale businesses and were mostly bypassed by the large-scale agricultural and industrial developments of the past century. 

But the needs of military bases changed the nature of their locations. Chosen for their cheap land and access to water, these installations ended up radically transforming not just their host towns but the overall region in which they were located. This new situation presents challenges and opportunities that create a new way of living for many in coastal North Carolina.

Sneads Ferry dates back nearly three centuries to the earliest years of the North Carolina Colony. In 1725, Edmund Ennett began running a ferry across the New River. It was known as the Lower Ferry because it was down river from Wantland’s Ferry, near present-day Jacksonville.

A later ferry at the same spot was operated by Robert W. Snead, who moved to the area in 1760. By the mid-18th century, the ferry was an established part of postal communication in the colonies. 

Like many places in eastern North Carolina, Sneads Ferry was overlooked by the historical forces that built up much of the state. It was not attractive to railroad lines or a productive location for industry. The railroad did not reach the vicinity of Sneads Ferry until the 1880s.

Robust growth in Wilmington and New Bern did little to change the fortunes of New River communities. In his history of Onslow County, Alan D. Watson makes only the occasional reference to Sneads Ferry, the main examples being its historic relevance to the post road and its status as the home of John Everett, an African American who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Sneads Ferry remains unincorporated to this day.

This quiet history was surpassed only slightly by development in Newport, about a 60-mile drive from Sneads Ferry and about 10 miles from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

Settled in the 18th century, Newport remained a mostly isolated spot on the Newport River. During the Union occupation, it was the site of a Civil War battle in which a Union barracks and a railroad bridge were destroyed. The town incorporated in 1866, but from 1870 to 1940, Newport’s population never exceeded 500. The town remained small until the middle of the 20th century.

In 1941, the futures of these two towns were dramatically changed. It was during that year that the Marine Corps began work on what would become Camp Lejeune on the New River. The Marine Corps acquired a sizable tract of land in what was once the community of Marines and began constructing barracks and warehouses. Men and women from Sneads Ferry, lured by the prospect of well-paying jobs during the Great Depression, flocked across the river to pitch in. By 1942, thousands of Marines were living in and being trained just a few hundred feet north of the community. 

That same year, in Havelock, construction began at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. The air station became home to thousands of Marines as well as various squadrons and aircraft repair facilities. Those repair facilities saw active use during the Vietnam War and drove the 488% population spike in Havelock during the 1970s.

Neither Newport nor Sneads Ferry is host of a military base. Neither has witnessed the expansion seen in Jacksonville or Havelock. But of the two, Newport is closer to embracing its status as a military town.

In Newport, town leaders early on saw advantages in putting out the welcome mat by way of a land swap for national forestland to create a large residential neighborhood primarily for military retirees from the air station.

Plans for Newport’s Cherry Point Veterans Mutual Housing Association development were drawn up in 1951, and the first houses were completed before the new streets were paved. The new part of town, also referred to as West Newport, included more than 70 homesites near the still-standing Forest Service fire tower.

Newport today is mainly composed of two areas, the older downtown along old U.S. 70, or Chatham Street, and the more recently developed areas on either side of the U.S. 70 bypass. This divide is clear when looking at historical growth patterns versus the growth that characterizes development connected to Cherry Point. The town has grown from fewer than 500 residents in 1940 to nearly 5,000 residents today. This growth does not take into account the expansion along the U.S. 70 bypass, where the ZIP code that includes the town has ballooned to approximately 10,000 housing units. As Mayor Dennis Barber told Coastal Review, the downtown was small prior to the base’s construction.

“Newport had everything they needed,” Barber said, referring to the community’s resistance to change for much of its history. This resistance led to an outflow of population, as mainly younger residents left the town in search of new opportunities and did not return.

Sneads Ferry, on the other hand, has grappled with its connection to the massive base across the river. Like Newport, the community is in many ways split in two. There is the historic town area near the site of the former ferry, also known as Fulcher’s Landing and home to the Riverview Cafe. This area is the site of the annual Shrimp Festival. It is still tied to the seafood industry. A 2009 Our State feature on Sneads Ferry described the town as one defined by “shrimping, family, and the pleasures of life in flip-flops,” not as a military retirement community.

Beyond the waterfront, Sneads Ferry is growing. Businesses stretch back several miles up and down nearby N.C. 210. These are not historic seafood restaurants and local shops but are modern retail chains, much different from the coastal community at Fulcher’s Landing. 

Newport, meanwhile, continues to embrace its reputation as a small town that attracts current and former military personnel. Mayor Barber said he’d like to see Newport remain a military destination. Barber is a former Coast Guardsman and has been connected to the town for decades, loving both its military connection and its being the kind of small town where “people still wave at each other.”

Meanwhile, Sneads Ferry continues to develop its waterfront. When asked about Sneads Ferry’s future, Lisa Whitman-Grice, director of the Onslow County Historical Museum, credited Camp Lejeune with making the county part of a global community. But she added that despite the trappings of military-related growth, “Sneads Ferry really wants to keep its historical connections.”

Library assistant Amanda Summers agreed. A local with connections to the seafood industry, she noted that “the town is growing and everyone can feel it,” but she rejected the idea that there was any conflict associated with military growth.

Sneads Ferry and Newport continue to be defined by their relationships to the Marine Corps. Both towns welcome more military-related newcomers and the infrastructure challenges associated with rapid growth on the North Carolina coast. These challenges include land use, sewer, and water infrastructure. Newport, for instance, is about to build another water treatment plant, and town officials have touted the town’s exceptional water infrastructure for a municipality of its size.

Despite numerous obstacles and the threat to small-town life, proximity to a military base means money and activity for these towns, both of which many of its residents welcome.

As Dee Lewis, genealogist and volunteer at the History Museum of Carteret County, said when asked about Newport’s future as a military retirement center, “The weather is nice, the people are friendly, and you can golf all year round. Of course people would want to retire there.”

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Beaufort County, a growing center for commerce and sightseeing in coastal North Carolina, is home to two of the state’s oldest towns, its oldest church and dozens of historic houses.

The county is a centerpiece of the Inner Banks, with a state park and several smaller parks to complement its colonial heritage. After centuries of agricultural and small-town life, its history is a big part of Beaufort County’s lure as a tourist destination.

The earliest permanent European settlement in North Carolina was north of Albemarle Sound in the mid-17th century. This colony was mainly based on tobacco and corn cultivation, which took up large swaths of land.

The growing population and soil exhaustion soon led the English to look for more places to settle in the Carolina land grant. One of these areas was along Bath Creek near the Pamlico River. Bath itself was formed in 1690 and laid out by the famed explorer John Lawson. It became North Carolina’s first incorporated town in 1705.

Bath County was organized to administer some of the territory south of Albemarle Sound. It was the first new county in the area. Bath County originally had three subdivisions known as precincts. The western precinct stretched from the Pungo River area to the Pamlico River, according to author David Leroy Corbitt. Originally known as Pampticough Precinct, it became Beaufort Precinct, named for one of the Lords Proprietor, in 1712. Beaufort County did not form until 1739 when Bath County was formally dissolved.

Bath determined the early history of Beaufort County. The town was a temporary home of the pirate Blackbeard. Arguably North Carolina’s most famous pirate, Blackbeard purchased a home in the town and lived there briefly after a pardon from Governor Charles Eden. Historian Robert E. Lee wrote that with Blackbeard in town, “Bath undoubtedly was a lively place … people came great distances to buy merchandise from foreign lands in the shops of Bath. The ordinaries (the hotels of colonial times) and bars were crowded with customers. The village came to life.”

The pirate could not abandon his lawless ways, however. After a few months, he rejected his pardon and took up piracy again off the North Carolina coast. Blackbeard was finally killed in November 1718 off the coast of Ocracoke, about 50 miles from Beaufort County.

Bath was burned during the Tuscarora War and remained small for the next three centuries. Its population reached a peak of 400 in 1900 and is now less than 250. But a number of remarkable early buildings still exist in this sleepy town.

It is home to the oldest church in North Carolina, St. Thomas Episcopal, built in 1734. In her history of eastern North Carolina architecture, Catherine Bishir wrote that the church was “a major accomplishment for its time and place, its small size and simplicity reflecting the challenges of building well in the colony in the early 18th (century).” Bath is also home to the Palmer-Marsh House, built in 1750 and famous for its two large chimneys, and the Bonner House built in 1835.

After the formation of Beaufort County, Washington eventually supplanted Bath and grew to become the center of commerce of the county. Known as “Little Washington,” it was the first town in the country named after George Washington. It was located on the Pamlico River and soon became a considerable town in the region. Washington became the county seat in 1785 and the courthouse was built a year later.

The antebellum period was one of considerable success for Beaufort County landowners. Agricultural wealth resulted from rich soil, especially near the Pamlico River, as well as the widespread practice of slavery.

Over 41% of Beaufort County’s population was enslaved in 1860, according to the Hergesheimer map. Washington and Beaufort County were also centers for free African Americans. According to John Hope Franklin, Beaufort County a considerable number of free African Americans for eastern North Carolina by 1830, a number that roughly doubled by 1860.

The county’s wealth and Washington’s strategic location made it a prime target for the Union during the Civil War. Washington was captured by Union troops in 1862 after Ambrose Burnside’s expedition against eastern North Carolina. It changed hands again in 1864 before falling back under Union control in the final months of the war.

Beaufort County remained dependent on agriculture throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Tobacco cultivation gave way to peanut and later soybean farming. Cotton farming was also prevalent in the county, with farmers cultivating 11,785 acres according to the 1880 census.

Washington eventually developed into one of eastern North Carolina’s most prosperous small towns. Its burgeoning waterfront hosted considerable business in shipping and shipbuilding. Washington was joined in the ranks of Beaufort County towns by Belhaven, which was incorporated in 1899 and later became the second-largest town in Beaufort County.

In addition to agricultural and commercial success, Washington also was home to a number of well-known people. In the 19th century, some of these residents were connected to politics. Churchill C. Cambreleng, who moved to New York as a teenager, became a noted federal representative and key ally of Andrew Jackson. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him as the “crony of (Martin) Van Buren … a small man, inclining toward portliness, alert in expression, friendly in manner …”

Other former residents of the county included Tillie Ehringhaus, wife of Gov. J.B. Ehringhaus and Woodrow Wilson’s Navy Secretary, News & Observer publisher and white supremacy propagandist Josephus Daniels. Those who called Washington home in the past century included politician Henry Covington Bonner, namesake of the Bonner Bridge, and NBA stars Dominique Wilkins and Bam Adebayo. Actor Murray Hamilton, who gained fame for playing the mayor in the 1975 Steven Spielberg film “Jaws,” was also from Beaufort County.

Today, Beaufort County is reorienting its economy to focus more on tourism. Goose Creek State Park attracts about 275,000 visitors yearly, including hikers, campers and kayakers. Washington is home to shops, bed and breakfast inns, and the Bank Bistro, a regionally known restaurant located in an 1854 bank. Belhaven also has a popular restaurant and several B&Bs.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Coastal North Carolina is made up of a wide variety of historic towns, marshes, sounds and beaches but only a small percentage of the coastal area is the Outer Banks, that set of barrier islands most tourists consider when they think about the state’s coast.

Much of the Outer Banks is in Dare County, which stretches from Old Caffey’s Inlet south to Hatteras Inlet, and west on the mainland to the Alligator River, according to “The formation of the North Carolina counties, 1663-1943” by David Leroy Corbitt.

Dare County played a key role in two early North Carolina settlements. It was the site of the Sir Walter Raleigh colonies, the first attempts by the English to permanently settle in the New World. The last of these colonies, John White’s 1587 colony, disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590.

Eighty years later, the land was part of the original Albemarle settlements. One of the earliest Albemarle land grants was in 1663 to one of the Lords Proprietor, Sir John Colleton, for the Outer Banks island now known as Collington Island. This plantation was not profitable for agriculture and soon failed. But it introduced the practice of livestock cultivation on the Outer Banks, a popular method of economic activity since animals on islands did not need to be fenced.

Life on the Outer Banks changed little for the next two centuries.

A small number of residents on the mainland farmed commercially, but most made their living through commerce, livestock and fishing. There was a modest number of African Americans living in the county. Tyrrell County, of which most of Dare County was then a part, had an enslaved population that was 33% of the total population according to the 1860 Hergesheimer map, one of the lowest percentages in eastern North Carolina.

The area received a jolt in 1861 with the beginning of the Civil War. Union armies captured Hatteras and then Roanoke Island in 1862 in a major operation led by Union general, Ambrose Burnside.

Hatteras was also supposed to be the center of a new loyal government for the state in 1861. The government never received support outside of Hatteras, however, and fell apart within a few months. During the war, Roanoke Island became a center for settlement known as the Freedmen’s Colony, where plantations were seized and handed over to freed African Americans.

Although Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island only lasted until the end of the war, African Americans continued to play a role in the county long afterwards.

While many left due to a lack of arable land, some African Americans stayed. One was Richard Etheridge, who lived on Roanoke Island before eventually enlisting in the Union Army and being deployed to Texas.

After the war, Etheridge came back and led the Pea Island Lifesaving Station, the only all-African American crew in the lifesaving service. Etheridge served on the post for 21 years, dying  on the job in 1900. The Coast Guard, the successor to the United States Life-Saving Service, awarded Etheridge and his crew the Gold Lifesaving Medal in 1996, and a statue honoring Etheridge was dedicated in Manteo in 2010.

In 1870, the eastern section of Tyrrell County pushed for new local representation. Many residents on the Outer Banks were miles away from the county courthouse in Columbia. They received a new county that year named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World. The formation of Dare County led immediately to the establishment of Manteo, the county seat, where a courthouse was built in 1904.

Versions of the county’s two major lighthouses, Cape Hatteras and Bodie Island, were built that decade and have served as symbols for the Outer Banks ever since. County formation also set in motion a uniquely loose governing structure, owing to the difficulty of transportation in the mostly aquatic county. As David Stick wrote in his history of Dare County, “As recently as the 1940s it was frequently said that there were two ways to do things in North Carolina: either the Dare County way, or the way they were done in the other ninety-nine counties.”

The early 20th century witnessed several significant moments in the history of Dare County. In 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first successful manned, powered flight from a particularly tall dune at Kill Devil Hills. This great achievement led to the county being internationally known, with a triumphant monument built overlooking the beach in 1932. The monument, Wright Brothers National Memorial, administered by the National Park Service, became well known in its own right and was the scene of the climax in the 1983 science fiction film, “Brainstorm.”

The Wright Brothers brought fame and a handful of tourists to the Outer Banks. But a construction project finished in 1928 changed the area forever. Once the first span bearing the name opened, the Washington Baum Bridge turned Dare County into one of the most visited areas in the state. The current Baum bridge was completed in 1994.

That first bridge was soon joined by the Wright Memorial Bridge in Currituck County in 1930 and, later, the Bonner Bridge in 1963. David Stick notes that as a result of bridge construction, the developed areas of Outer Banks beaches expanded from around a mile in the 1910s to 75 miles by 1970.

The past 70 years have seen considerable buildup throughout Dare County.

David Stick, the historian, became a major developer of the community known as Southern Shores. Dare County’s population as of 2021 is 37,826, a 685% increase from 1950, and more than 10 times the population of neighboring Tyrrell County. The only areas that have escaped the influx of tourists and new residences are the swamps on the mainland and the areas protected by the federal government.

Much of the northern tip of Roanoke Island is part of the federal Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, which operates the theater where the outdoor drama, “The Lost Colony” is staged every summer. There is also a wildlife refuge on Pea Island as well as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the first national seashore.

Dare County, unlike a number of other coastal counties, has substantial economic activity and nearly as many tourists as its infrastructure can handle. There are more restaurants in one small Outer Banks hamlet than in entire Albemarle region. But Dare County is facing the increasingly evident effects of climate change and rising sea levels. Balancing the desires of tourists with the need to remain resilient and protect natural resources will continue to be a challenge.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Tyrrell County in North Carolina’s Albemarle region was formed in the earliest years of Colonial settlement, but Tyrrell does not have the historical reputation of other early counties.

It has the smallest population in North Carolina and is known more for its animals and creeks than its historic sites. Despite its reputation as a large swamp mostly devoid of people, Tyrrell has a fascinating history that has kept settlers and visitors coming for the past three centuries.

Following the establishment of Albemarle County in the 1660s, settlers began to move west and south in search of fresh lands for corn and tobacco production. Many of these settlers ended up on the southern side of the Albemarle Sound. At first, these areas were part of the original North Carolina counties: Chowan, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Currituck. But in the 1720s, the population grew to a point where settlers required representation in a more accessible court. 

These men and women were granted a new county in 1729, one that extended from the Roanoke River to the Atlantic Ocean north of Bath County, according to “The formation of the North Carolina counties, 1663-1943” by David Leroy Corbitt. The county was named after Sir John Tyrrell, a lord proprietor who had died that year. Over the next 150 years, Tyrrell County’s territory was reduced substantially. Its western third became Washington County in 1799, while the eastern third became Dare County in 1870.

Tyrrell County was one of the poorest and most sparsely populated in all of North Carolina. The vast majority of the county was swampland. Swamps had to be drained with ditches and canals to produce any sizable farmland.

A few planters tried their hand at this arduous project. Most notable among them were Ebenezer and Charles Pettigrew, who tried to develop the area between Lake Phelps and the Alligator River with some success. These efforts led to a limited network of plantations that grew primarily corn and wheat. Prominent residents helped establish Columbia, which is the lone incorporated town in Tyrrell County and situated on the Scuppernong River in the northern section of the county.

The Scuppernong River also became famous at this time for its connections to the scuppernong grape. Scuppernong grapes are a bronze variety of the more widespread muscadine grape. This grape grows throughout North Carolina, but it was first written about in connection to the river in the early 19th century. Since that time, scuppernongs have become a well-known variety of grape and have been used in juices and wines. The scuppernong grape was named the state fruit of North Carolina in 2001.

The work of draining and eventually tending the fields of Tyrrell County was done mostly by enslaved African Americans. They made up a third of the population in 1860, according to the Hergesheimer Map. A considerable number of free African Americans also lived in the county’s swamps. These forbidding areas, unsuitable for agriculture and lightly populated, sustained colonies of runaway slaves and other African Americans, similar to the larger groups living in the Great Dismal Swamp.

The Civil War mostly overlooked Tyrrell County. Its main contribution was J. Johnston Pettigrew, a respected Confederate brigadier general and member of Tyrrell’s Pettigrew family. Pettigrew participated in the Peninsula campaign and was a leader of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. He died from wounds sustained after Gettysburg, his loss acknowledged by Robert E. Lee as a severe blow to the Confederate Army. There is today a building on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus named after Pettigrew.

Following the Civil War, development in the county remained slow. Tyrrell’s population decreased between 1860 and 1920.

A notable project during that era was the construction of the current county courthouse in Columbia. This courthouse, completed in 1903, is in the Romanesque Revival style and made of brick with arched windows and gabled dormers, according to its National Register of Historic Places nomination.

According to Alan D. Watson, writer of “Tyrrell County — A Brief History,” the county was worried about the potential of fire and banned most events from the courthouse, including “entertainment, ice cream supper, or anything of the kind.”

One of Tyrrell’s most famous residents, Edward Warren, did much of his work during this period. Born in Tyrrell in 1828 and afterward raised in Edenton, Warren became a celebrated doctor and medical leader in North Carolina, eventually becoming the state surgeon general. He left after the Civil War and went to Egypt, where he served for several years as an Egyptian governor’s personal doctor. Warren then spent the rest of his life practicing medicine in France, where he died in 1893.

In his memoir, “A Doctor’s Life in Three Continents,” Warren recalls how he gained the knowledge of his life in “the swamps of Carolina, the battle-fields of Virginia, the sands of Egypt, and the quartiers of Paris.”

In the mid-20th century, Tyrrell County began to benefit from its natural beauty and its proximity to other attractions. U.S. Highway 64, which connected the Triangle to the Outer Banks, came through Tyrrell in the 1920s and 1930s. This highway brought thousands of visitors each year through the county and eventually through the town of Columbia. The route, along with N.C. Highway 94 connecting Tyrrell to Hyde County, served as Tyrrell’s “windows to the outside world” according to Watson. 

Tyrrell mostly failed in its attempts to become a center for industry. It was too rural and remote from other population centers. In addition, the attempts at industry that did occur, along with large-scale agriculture, polluted the pristine natural areas throughout the county.

Residents fought back, and as a result, the county eventually became the site of new state parks and wildlife refuges. Pettigrew State Park, founded in 1939, and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, founded in 1990, began attracting visitors with miles of hiking trails, accessible rivers, and hunting opportunities.

Today, Tyrrell is mostly known for its natural beauty and its sparse population. Columbia offers a few amenities, such as restaurants and a sizable antique store, but most of Tyrrell County is dedicated to outdoor exploration and wildlife. There are nearly as many bears in the county as there are people. Visitors can explore miles of hiking and kayaking trails and engage in a wide variety of outdoor activities. Its natural wonders have defined settlement in Tyrrell County for centuries and will likely remain the basis of its economy for years to come.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Most of the earliest English settlers in North Carolina lived on the northern side of the Albemarle Sound. Their settlements built the foundation of North Carolina and evolved into the Colony’s first towns and political centers.

At this same time, the English were settling slightly to the west of the Albemarle Sound near the Chowan River. One of the first areas in which they built homes and plantations later became Bertie County. This county, which turns 300 years old this year, has been a center of political leadership, agricultural wealth and local tourism ever since the earliest times in Colonial North Carolina.

English settlement of the Cashie River and areas west of the Chowan River began in the mid-17th century. Some of the earliest immigrants such as Nathaniel Batts and Samuel Stephens lived near the confluence of Salmon Creek and Chowan River. Settlers following their lead moved either south from Virginia or west from the Albemarle region. They established corn and then tobacco plantations. These efforts were relatively successful, as farmers could take advantage of the rich alluvial land of the Cashie, Roanoke and Chowan rivers.

Plantations also used these rivers for transportation and connections with Colonial government on the eastern side of the Chowan. In addition to agriculture, the county produced staves and other wood products from its abundant timber resources.

The area that became Bertie County also played a strategic role in the Colony’s early treatment of Native Americans. While the earliest settlers bought land from local Native Americans and coexisted with them, outright theft and exclusion soon became the English policy. Tensions caused by this policy led to the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713. After the English victory, the Tuscarora, who had signed treaties with the Colony, were granted a reservation in present-day southern Bertie County known as Indian Woods.

In his history of Bertie County, Alan Watson notes that by 1801, “finding little sympathy among the white populace and having their land taken in (a) callous fashion, the aged, dwindling remnant of the Tuscarora (at Indian Woods) soon proved ready to move northward.” The Tuscarora sold the last rights to their land in 1831.

Following the Tuscarora War, the region west of the Chowan River quickly gained enough English residents to petition for a new county. In 1722, that petition was granted. A new county was formed, with its eastern boundary being the Chowan River and its western boundary being the “limits of the government,” according to Daniel Leroy Corbitt. Bertie County was named after two Lords Proprietor of North Carolina, James and Henry Bertie.

The centerpiece of town settlement in Bertie County was Windsor, formed at the head of navigation of the Cashie River. Windsor, named for the royal castle in England and incorporated in 1768, was one of the last towns in North Carolina sanctioned by the British monarchy. It joined other Colonial towns established in the 1760s including Salem, Winton and Charlotte. Windsor became the county seat of Bertie County in 1774. The present courthouse off King Street was built in 1889.

Bertie County was an economically successful antebellum county. It became the site of several plantations and plantation homes that have survived to the present day. The most notable was Hope Plantation, built in 1803 by future North Carolina governor David Stone. There was also Rosefield, built in the mid-18th century — present building first constructed circa 1786 — and at one point the home of William Blount, one of North Carolina’s three signers of the Constitution.

Blount later, as a senator from Tennessee, was found to have committed treason by plotting to hand French territory in the South over to Britain. “When will we cease to have Judases?” Abigail Adams wrote in a letter to her sister when she learned of Blount’s plans. Blount later became the first and only senator to be expelled from Congress outside of the Civil War years.

Bertie County was mostly spared during the Civil War. It did not suffer a destructive fire like Winton or a significant battle like Plymouth. But following the war, the county’s economy was devastated like the rest of the state. Planters had to shift away from previous staples and toward newer crops such as peanuts and later soybeans. Bertie County eventually became the leading peanut-producing county in the state.

The political system shifted as well. In the years after Reconstruction, the county was in the 2^nd Congressional District and was represented by two African Americans, Henry Cheatham and George White, during the 1880s and 1890s. Bertie remains one of 20 majority-minority counties in the state.

The 20th century saw Bertie County continue the slow, mostly rural growth that characterized much of eastern North Carolina. Bertie County did not turn toward industry at the same scale as Plymouth or Elizabeth City. However, the county’s agriculture and location near U.S. 64 meant that it did not remain as isolated as Gates County to the north. Instead, Bertie’s towns mostly stayed small and continued with the same stores and patterns that had always characterized town life.

Despite the county’s slow growth, there were several influential people who hailed from Bertie County during the 20th century. These included Negro Leagues pitcher Willie Wynn, actor Jeorge Bennett Watson and University of North Carolina leader George T. Winston. There was also Joanna Houston Ransom, an influential university administrator who once helped lead the association of African American fraternities and sororities known as the Pan-Hellenic Council.

As for important businesses, one of North Carolina’s most well-known barbecue restaurants, Bunn’s Barbecue, opened in Windsor in 1938. Bunn’s received recognition in 2013 as one of LocalEats’s best barbecue restaurants in America. The Bertie County Peanuts company, Powell & Stokes, is also famous. In 2013, according to the Winston-Salem Journal, “the company shipped nearly 200,000 pounds of packaged peanuts as far away as Japan.”

The agricultural focus of previous decades has shifted somewhat in recent years, particularly in Windsor. The town of Windsor and its businesses have attempted to turn the small town into a tourist destination. They have done so by taking advantage of the natural environment of the town and its unique attributes. The town has publicized Livermon Park and its connected miniature zoo. It has also built tree houses on the Cashie River that appeal to campers and kayakers.

Bertie County today is in an interesting middle ground between eastern North Carolina regions. It is close enough to U.S. 64 and Elizabeth City to benefit from some beach and town development. But it is far enough away to retain much of its agricultural heritage and small-town charm.

The construction of Interstate 87 has the potential to increase Bertie County’s connections to Norfolk and the Albemarle region. But for now, it appears that the community will continue as a farm county with a niche tourism business for the foreseeable future.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

The earliest permanent settlement of North Carolina by Europeans occurred north of the Albemarle Sound. But increased migration and the desire for land soon pushed those settlers outside of this limited area.

The men and women who moved south of the Sound found a swampy, inhospitable region. Their perseverance helped create Washington County, at one time a prosperous county that gave the state several of its most famous leaders.

The story of Washington County is one of isolation, success and an eventual renewal on the banks of the Roanoke River.

Following the earliest settlement of the Albemarle region in the late 17th century, English immigrants to North Carolina craved more arable land for tobacco cultivation. While some went west, others moved south across the Albemarle Sound.

Early North Carolinians also secured land grants on several of the area’s major rivers. One of these was the Roanoke River, which starts in Virginia and enters North Carolina near present-day Roanoke Rapids. The community that later became Plymouth, located on a bend of the Roanoke River, was first settled in 1727, according to the North Carolina Gazetteer. Other communities like Roper and Mackeys grew up around the county’s creeks and on the sound. 

The area south of the Albemarle Sound remained sparsely populated for several decades. Over time, an increase in population led to the need for more counties. In 1729, the section of North Carolina north of former Bath County and south of Albemarle Sound became Tyrrell County. In 1799, Tyrrell County’s westernmost section became Washington County, named for George Washington.

According to “The formation of the North Carolina counties, 1663-1943” by David Leroy Corbitt, the eastern boundary was a line “beginning at Bull-point … to the centre of the Indian swamp, where the road crosses … [extending] to the west end of lake Phelps… to [the] Hyde county line.” An 1801 annex gave Washington County all of what was then known as Indian Swamp.

In the antebellum period, Washington County was defined by some of the largest plantations in North Carolina. The Roanoke River and Albemarle Sound were ample sources of transportation. Tobacco and corn were planted in the rich soil of river-adjacent districts. The county also had communications with the northern side of Albemarle Sound by way of Mackey’s Ferry. The ferry operated for more than 200 years and was a key link between the older communities north of the Albemarle and the growing regions to the south and west. 

The most prized plantation in the county was Somerset Place, which was founded by a group led by Josiah Collins on Lake Phelps in the 1780s. According to the plantation’s National Register of Historic Places nomination, Collins was a political leader in the state who acquired a massive amount of land, built mills, and introduced agricultural methods new to North Carolina such as rice cultivation. A nearby plantation owner, James Johnston Pettigrew, became a famed Confederate general that was killed at Gettysburg.

As in the rest of the state, slave labor was prevalent. Over 40% of the county’s population was enslaved, according to the Hergesheimer map of 1860. Somerset Place has become noteworthy not only as a center for antebellum wealth but also a site of memory for the hundreds of enslaved African Americans who lived there in the 19th century.

In the 1980s, historian Dorothy Spruill Redford traced the lives of many of these families and helped organized a reunion of around 1,500 descendants of slaves and their owners. The reunion garnered national attention and a number of prominent visitors, including the North Carolina governor and “Roots” author Alex Haley, according to the New York Times.

In his introduction to Redford’s “Somerset Homecoming,” Haley wrote that when he learned of the project, “I was thrilled — thrilled not just at what was happening there that day, but for the connections that such a gathering of families spoke of — for the thread that ran back through the generations and will most surely run ahead into the future.” Redford’s work transformed the interpretation of slavery at Somerset Place and other plantations throughout the South.

During the Civil War, Plymouth played an important role in an often-ignored campaign late in the conflict. In 1864, the Confederacy attempted to take back eastern North Carolina from the Union. Confederate Gen. Robert F. Hoke, along with the ironclad ram Albemarle, launched an exceptional raid that defeated Union leaders Henry W. Wessells and Charles W. Flusser and led to Confederate control of Plymouth.

The victory was short-lived, for Hoke was recalled back to Virginia a few months later and the Union reoccupied the town for the remainder of the war. Research has shown that the Confederates were also responsible for war crimes against African Americans after recapturing the area.

Following the war, Washington County embarked on an economic project like those of surrounding counties in eastern North Carolina. Much of the county remained agricultural. Tenant farming replaced the plantation system, and some farmers moved from tobacco and corn to peanut and truck farming. But in some areas, industry began to take a hold.

This industry centered on Plymouth, where the population doubled between 1900 and 1910. Plymouth became a center for the manufacture of wooden handles, lumber, and paper. Industrial prosperity led to the construction of the neoclassical Washington County Courthouse in 1919.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous notables called Washington County home. These included stage director Augustin Daly, author and activist Don Brown, and NFL linebacker Charles Bowser.

Comedian J.B. Smoove, known for his work on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” was born in Plymouth and often visited his maternal relatives there.

These famous residents did not lead to prosperity in the county, however. Following the decline of industry, Washington County became one of the poorest in the state. Unemployment remained high and the town of Plymouth emptied out, losing population every decade from 1970 to the present.

Today, Washington County is showing signs of renewal. Farms still dominate the landscape, and agriculture remains the primary economic engine. But the county is also starting to attract tourism. Somerset Place and Pettigrew State Park attract thousands of visitors each year. Plymouth has been the site of new development, especially on its waterfront. There are new restaurants and several museums in the town, along with several historic restoration projects.

The county’s towns also benefit from Outer Banks traffic because of their location on U.S. 64. But because of its distance from the beach or major towns such as Elizabeth City or Greenville, Washington County will likely remain a testament to North Carolina’s agricultural, small-community past.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

The region around the Albemarle Sound was the first part of North Carolina to be settled by Europeans, but they quickly expanded outside of that region and moved on to both the south and the west.

One area they quickly settled in, later named Hertford County, gained an identity all its own over the next three centuries. Although it is small and still mostly rural, Hertford County remains one of the most vibrant, successful counties in the otherwise economically challenged region of northeastern North Carolina.

The area that became Hertford County, home to the Chowanoke and later Meherrin Native Americans, was an early frontier for the colony of North Carolina. It was settled by Virginians moving south and North Carolinians moving west once they started to exhaust the most fertile land east of the Chowan River.

The first European land grants in the area date from 1710. Hertford County was formed in 1759 from sections of Bertie, Chowan and Northampton counties. According to the Colonial Records of North Carolina, the county was formed because the large size of existing counties “render[ed] it grievous and burthensome to many of the Inhabitants thereof to attend the Courts of Justice, and other Public Meetings appointed therein.”

The county was named after Francis Seymour Conway, Marquis of Hertford, whom David Leroy Corbitt described as a nobleman and soldier.

Hertford County grew prosperous during the antebellum period. It was a rural county, focused on tobacco and corn cultivation. Two navigable rivers, the Chowan and Meherrin, connected the county to Virginia. Residents used the rivers to send their produce downstream and also receive goods from southside Virginia. Where bridges were not an option, they used ferries. One of the last cable ferries in North Carolina, Parker’s Ferry over the Meherrin River, was still operational as of 2020.

The county’s wealth was produced using the work of enslaved and free African Americans. Hertford County had the ninth largest percentage of slaves in the state according to the 1860 Hergesheimer map compiled by Edwin Hergesheimer using information from the 1860 census to show the distribution of the enslaved population of the southern states. That proportion, 53%, was more than every other county north of the Albemarle Sound, except for Bertie at 58.6% and Chowan at 55.5%.

The county’s wealth enabled the construction of stately homes throughout Hertford, most notably in the town of Murfreesboro. Several of these homes still stand today, including Melrose built in 1805 and the Freeman House built in 1810. Murfreesboro grew along with the county seat of Winton, incorporated in 1766.

The courthouse in Winton was burned in 1862 and rebuilt in 1875. That historic structure was torn down in 1955 and replaced with the modernist building currently located on Justice Drive.

One of the most well-known institutions in the county, Chowan University, began during the antebellum period. It started as Chowan Baptist Female Institute in 1848 and became coeducational in 1931.

The hallmark of the school in the antebellum period and today is the McDowell Columns building. Catherine Bishir and Michael T. Southern, in “A Guide to the Historic Architecture of North Carolina,” described the Columns building as a massive one whose size is emphasized by eight fluted columns and a sizable cupola on top.

The Civil War devastated Hertford County more than many other counties in the Albemarle region. Winton became the first town in North Carolina to be burned by the Union.

In February 1862, Union troops under Ambrose Burnside led an expedition to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad and, after facing stiff resistance from the town, set it ablaze. According to the North Carolina Highway Historic Marker Program, the act was controversial and set a precedent for later examples of “total war” throughout the next three years.

Following the war, Hertford County had to change its economic model. Slavery was over. There were few financial resources and no sizable towns. As in much of the Albemarle region, tobacco was no longer profitable. The county responded by turning to peanut cultivation and truck farming throughout its rural areas. Residents also embraced industry more than surrounding counties such as Gates or Bertie.

The town of Ahoskie, incorporated in 1893, became a site of industry for the county. Ahoskie grew up as a stop on the Norfolk and Carolina Railroad. It housed a basket factory and a sawmill that employed 100 employees in the early 1900s as noted in the historic register nomination for the Ahoskie Historic District.

The 20th century in Hertford County was defined by a shift in growth toward Ahoskie. This town currently has about 4,800 residents, more than any town north of the Albemarle Sound except Elizabeth City. Murfreesboro also grew along with Chowan College.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw many famous residents of the county and its college.

Notable people from Hertford County include diplomat John H. Wheeler, tennis pioneer Julian Myrick, and Richard Gatling, inventor of the Gatling gun, who was born in the small town of Como.

As for Chowan University, the most famous alumnus of the college is Nate McMillan, longtime NBA player and coach of the Atlanta Hawks.

There was also Donald Strehle Whitehead, an Idaho lieutenant governor who became briefly famous for seeing a UFO in 1947.

Hertford County’s earlier shift toward industry has made it more economically resilient than some of its neighbors to the east. It still has industry in the form of steel, aluminum and plastic factories as reported by the Ahoskie Chamber of Commerce website.

The county’s position on the border with Virginia has brought it close to the growing Suffolk area. Hertford County also has the potential to grow with Chowan University, with the placement of a university being a major indicator of small-town success in the 21st century. As author Alana Semuels wrote in The Atlantic in 2017, “college campuses and educational institutions can bolster the economies of small towns that otherwise would be struggling.” 

In many ways, Hertford County is well poised to use its land and university to help continue the mix of agricultural and small-town growth that has characterized it for the past two centuries.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Gates County is yet another fascinating county that emerged from the original Albemarle settlements.

Its rural character, plantation history and natural beauty make it similar to other northeastern counties such as Chowan, Pasquotank and Camden.

Gates also has had to adapt to the decline of agriculture and find its place on the outskirts of metropolitan Virginia like all the northeastern counties. But Gates has a number of famous residents, plantation homes and a state park that makes it a worthy subject.

The area that is now Gates County was originally the home of the Chowanoke Native Americans. The Chowanoke were a sizable group whom Europeans eventually forced onto a reservation, which was dissolved by 1821. After the journey of John Pory down the Chowan River in 1622, Europeans began to settle in the area. Traders bought Native American land and were followed by farmers who grew corn and tobacco. During much of the 17th century, the current county made up the northwestern frontier of North Carolina.

Gates County was formed in 1779 and was named after Revolutionary War general Horatio Gates. According to David Leroy Corbitt, author of “The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663-1943,” the county was formed from the northeastern section of Hertford County and the northern sections of Chowan and Perquimans counties.

The county’s soil and proximity to the markets of Virginia made it a center for tobacco cultivation in the antebellum period. Planters built sizable homes such as Buckland in 1795 and Elmwood Plantation in 1822.

They also constructed mills that ground corn and powered saws to process the county’s sizable lumber stands. One of these mills created the landscape that later became Merchants Millpond State Park, one of only two state parks in North Carolina in the Albemarle region.

The wealth of Gates County planters came at the expense of the county’s sizable enslaved population. According to the 1860 Hergesheimer map, 48.3% of Gates County’s population was enslaved in that year, the 18th highest total in the state. The Hergesheimer map shows the distribution of the slave population of the southern United States.

Along with a large number of slaves, Gates County also had a robust free African American population, partly because of the county’s border location. In his history of free African Americans in North Carolina, John Hope Franklin noted that “In the counties bordering on Virginia and South Carolina were to be found a large number of free Negroes whose very presence in these areas bespoke the more liberal treatment of free Negroes in North Carolina than in the neighboring states.”

The 1860 census counted 361 free African Americans in Gates County. They were significant members of the community and held a wide variety of professions such as carpenters, blacksmiths and coopers. But free African Americans also held a precarious place in North Carolina society. Their activities were restricted, they had few legal rights, and were constantly viewed with distrust by white society.

Gates County escaped the Civil War with little war-related damage. The county’s rural location was not strategic to the war aims of either the Union or the Confederacy, and so it avoided major battles or raids. But following the war, the county had to rebuild its economy.

Peanut cultivation flourished in the county along with truck farming of fruits and vegetables and livestock. Gatesville, originally incorporated in 1830, served as the only sizable community in the county. The hallmark of the town was and is the Gates County Courthouse, built in 1836 and enlarged in 1904, which became known for its Greek Revival details and cast-iron railing as noted by Catherine W. Cockshutt in her nomination of the building for the National Register of Historic Places.

Gates County also played a role in Reconstruction. African Americans and white Republicans reshaped county government and filled numerous political offices. One of the county’s residents, John Wallace, left the county for Florida and served as a Republican state senator and representative. He later became known to historians for a controversial book which, according to historian James C. Clark, in “was critical of his fellow blacks and Radical Republicans, and frequently complimentary of white conservation (conservative) Democrats.” The true authorship of the book remains in question.

African Americans in North Carolina were disenfranchised following the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900. They still played a role in the economy and society of Gates County, however. A prominent example of this engagement was the establishment of Rosenwald Schools, centers of African American education across the South funded by Sears President Julius Rosenwald. Gates County was home to seven Rosenwald Schools according to a 1930 report from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Two are still standing, most notably the Reid’s Grove School, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 20th century, Gates County was home to a number of prominent North Carolinians. Thad Eure (1899-1993), born in the southern part of the county, was the North Carolina Secretary of State for 53 years and holds the title of longest-tenured elected office holder in American history.

Herman Riddick was an influential African American football coach at what later became North Carolina Central University, coaching for twenty seasons according to Central’s Athletics Hall of Fame website.

Calvin Earl, famed African American singer and educator on spirituals, is also from Gatesville.

Today, Gates County is a rural curiosity on the border with Virginia. It is the second-smallest county by population in the Albemarle region behind Camden County, and its only town, Gatesville, has fewer than 400 people. The county is removed from whatever traffic may be associated with interstate construction on U.S. 17 or the mid-Currituck bridge. But Gates County has room for growth, nonetheless.

Merchants Millpond attracts a young visitor base with its trails and paddling opportunities. As noted in Indian Country Today, the Chowanoke Native Americans have started purchasing land in the county and hope to open a cultural center. There is also the possibility of development from Hampton Roads, with Suffolk, population 90,000, only about 10 miles away from the county’s northern border.

Like the counties to its east, Gates County will have to tackle the question of whether it will become a satellite of southeast Virginia or will continue the rural character that has defined it for centuries.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Currituck County is arguably better known than all of the other Albemarle counties. But it is not known for its 17^th century settlers or its roots of American Quakerism like other nearby counties.

Instead, Currituck County contains a stretch of the Outer Banks, a region of sand and surf visited by over 1 million people each year. But Currituck County’s history is more than beach homes and recreation. It is a county of agriculture, political leadership, and stories of intriguing people who lived on both sides of Currituck Sound.

The best way to understand the history of this unique county is by its two geographic halves. The western half of Currituck County, stretching from North River to Currituck Sound and the Virginia border, was settled around 1650 as part of the Virginian migration to the Albemarle region. According to David Leroy Corbitt, Currituck started out as one of the original precincts of Albemarle County before becoming a county of its own in 1739.

One of the earliest settlers was Thomas Jarvis, who originally lived in Perquimans County near leaders such as George Durant and Nathaniel Batts. Jarvis eventually served on the governor’s council and as deputy governor of North Carolina. Before his death in 1694, Jarvis moved to his plantation on Whites Island in Currituck County, now known as Church Island east of Coinjock. 

The Jarvis family ended up being one of the most influential in the county’s history. Samuel Jarvis was a longtime political leader in the county who fought in the Revolution according to David Stick. Thomas Jordan Jarvis served as governor of North Carolina and helped to found what later became East Carolina University.

Agriculture has dominated the history and economy of Currituck County’s western half. Early wheat and tobacco culture was supplemented by logging and shingle production from the trees in the county’s swamps. These pursuits, like nearly all agricultural processes in eastern North Carolina at this time, used slaves. According to the Hergesheimer map of 1860, Currituck’s population was 35% enslaved, which was the lowest total in the Albemarle yet higher than 45 other North Carolina counties.

In transportation, Currituck County benefitted from one of North Carolina’s few antebellum canals. The Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, completed in 1857 as noted in Alexander Crosby Brown’s book, connected the Albemarle Sound with Norfolk by way of a channel cut through Currituck County at the town of Coinjock. There was also a port in Currituck County for a time, but it was always of negligible size and ceased to function when Currituck Inlet closed up in the 18^th century.

Like Camden County to the west, there are no incorporated towns in Currituck County. The largest communities in the western half are Moyock, Grandy, and Coinjock. Currituck is a small community on Currituck Sound that contains the historic jail and the 19^th century courthouse, a sizable brick structure described by Ruth Little-Stokes as having notable neoclassical details.

One of North Carolina’s few remaining Rosenwald schools, which are schools built for African Americans in the early 20th century, is currently being restored nearby. Currituck also contains a ferry to Knotts Island, a historic island in Currituck Sound that contains a wildlife refuge and a vineyard.

The eastern half of Currituck County has a much different history dominated by tourism and the shifting nature of the Outer Banks. Known as Currituck Banks, this section used to be an island until Currituck Inlet at the northern edge closed up in the 19^th century. Until the formation of Dare County in 1870, Currituck County’s eastern section originally stretched down to the area of present-day Kitty Hawk; the current border, a line north of Duck, used to be the now-filled Caffey’s Inlet. 

The first European to visit the area may have been Giovanni De Verazzano, who explored parts of the Outer Banks in 1524. Early settlers were few and far between. William Byrd discussed two of them in a tale relayed by David Stick in his “History of the Outer Banks.” The residents described by Byrd were hermits who lived in a hut, “subsisted chiefly upon Oysters,” and wore no clothing except for their beards and hair.

In the mid-19th century, Currituck Banks began to attract wealthy visitors. Motivated by stories of massive flocks of geese, the first shooting club opened in the area in 1874. It was followed in 1922 by the Whalehead Club, an ornate lodge occupying 35 acres of what was then undisturbed marsh.

One of North Carolina’s famed lighthouses, the Currituck Beach Light, was built in 1875 in the community of Corolla. It is tied for the second-tallest lighthouse in North Carolina with the Bodie Island Light and can be climbed several months out of the year.

By the 1920s, eastern Currituck County started to open up to tourists from across the country. Tourism was facilitated by the Good Roads Movement and a number of essential bridges, most notably the Baum Bridge in 1928 and the Wright Memorial Bridge in 1930. Visitors enjoyed the white sand beaches, hunting grounds, and the wild horses in Corolla.

Eventually, Carova Beach became a secluded tourist destination. It is notable for being only accessible by boat or by driving on the beach. As Kip Tabb wrote in a 2017 article on development at the beach, “Although traffic has been increasing, the lack of infrastructure and paved roads has kept visitation modest by comparison to other parts of the Outer Banks.”

The differences between eastern and western Currituck County are stark. Eastern Currituck County’s population swells in the summer months to about 50,000 people, more than double the year-round population of the entire county. Tourists are limited in the western half while comprising nearly the entire economy of the eastern half.

The vacationers and tourists on Currituck Banks include some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia owned a house in Corolla, and Bill Gates was rumored in 2021 to have once rented one. In contrast, western Currituck County, which is the home of the majority of Currituck’s 1,377 African Americans, is rural, isolated and mostly free from celebrity sightings.

These disparate situations between the two halves will only continue to grow. The western half will likely be bolstered by the mid-Currituck bridge and the growth of Elizabeth City and Hampton Roads. This section of Currituck County may become either a stop on the way to the Outer Banks or a distant bedroom community for Chesapeake and Suffolk, Virginia.

The eastern half, on the other hand, will continue to attract tourists but is cut off from Virginia by False Cape State Park, which does not allow vehicular access from North Carolina. These differing paths and experiences give Currituck County its character and make it one of the most remarkable counties in all of North Carolina.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

The Albemarle region is known for its historical legacy, beautiful natural areas and quaint architecture. It is also mostly a quiet, rural area with small towns and limited economic activity.

The quietest, most rural county in the region by far is Camden County. It is known not for its buildings or major historic events but for its canal and its swamp.

While it does not have the tourist sites of Edenton or the industry of Elizabeth City, Camden County is still a fascinating part of North Carolina’s oldest region.

Camden County was part of the Albemarle, the first area permanently settled by the English in North Carolina. Its earliest settlers came south from Virginia and purchased land from the Yeopim Native Americans.

The county was originally the eastern part of Pasquotank County. The state legislature formed Camden County in 1777 because of the “width of Pasquotank River, and the Difficulty of passing the same, especially in boisterous weather,” which prevented some residents from reaching the courthouse easily.

As noted by David Leroy Corbitt, Camden County’s general boundaries were the Pasquotank River to the west, the North River to the east, and the Virginia border.

One sizable house still remains from this early period, Milford, near the county seat of Camden. Milford was constructed in 1746 by John Ivey, a local planter mentioned in William Byrd’s “History of the Dividing Line.” It is one of the largest pre-1750 houses in the state, made of brick with two stories. Milford is known for its rare, gable design pattern, which, according to H.G. Jones, was only found in one other colonial house in the South.

Like the Old Brick House in Elizabeth City and the Cupola House in Edenton, Milford was definitely a mansion during its day. The vast majority of colonists in Camden County lived in much simpler dwellings, at first log cabins and then one-story plank houses.

Camden County’s economy has always been defined by the Great Dismal Swamp, which makes up its upper half. The swamp is one of the largest on the eastern seaboard, comprising more than 100,000 acres in North Carolina and Virginia.

Byrd’s expedition was one of the first European groups to encounter and cross the swamp. Byrd wrote that the swamp did not contain most of the fanciful creatures that locals told stories about, but that it “had one Beauty, however, that delighted the Eye, tho’ at the Expense of all the other Senses: the Moisture of the Soil preserves a continual Verdure, and makes every Plant an Evergreen, but at the same time the foul Damps ascend without ceasing, corrupt the Air, and render it unfit for Respiration.”

As its edges were settled in the 18th and 19th centuries, the swamp became a source of shingle production. It was also a home for runaway enslaved people from North Carolina and Virginia.

They formed self-sufficient maroon communities, sometimes interacting with whites near the canals and edges of the swamp and often staying entirely away from white society.

Recent scholarship has unearthed several of their communities and has started to understand the extent of African American settlement in the region, according to a 2016 Smithsonian Magazine profile.

The early 19th century was a prosperous period for Camden County. It was the site of the Port of Camden up to the 1820s. By 1860, the county’s enslaved population was 42% of its total population, the 27th highest total in the state according to the Hergesheimer map. Many of these slaves worked in shingle production or on small farms growing foodstuffs such as corn and wheat, an 1860 census document states.

The Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which opened in 1805 and was widened in 1829 with the use of slave labor, passed through the county. The canal connected the Albemarle region with Norfolk and the Chesapeake Bay.

One of the few sizable communities in Camden County grew up along the canal.

South Mills was formed in the 1830s and named after mills that used water from a canal spillway for power. It was the site of a Civil War battle in 1862, where Confederates prevented a Union attempt to destroy the Great Dismal Swamp Canal’s locks, a 2012 Virginian-Pilot article explains.

The only other community with any size in Camden County is the county seat of Camden. Established as Jonesborough in 1792 according to the North Carolina Gazetteer, it is located on the Pasquotank River.

Two early public buildings remain in Camden from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Camden County Courthouse is an 1847 Greek Revival structure with four columns and a sizable porch. There is also the Camden County Jail, a brick building completed in 1910 that now houses offices and a museum.

Camden County remained one of the smallest and most lightly populated counties in North Carolina throughout the 19th and 20th century. In 1900, its population was only 5,474, a paltry total that made it less populated than 16 of the state’s towns. But a number of remarkable individuals still hailed from the swampy northeast county, many of whom were African American.

Julian Williams escaped from slavery to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War, while Moses Grandy purchased his freedom in the 1820s, wrote a narrative of his life, and later became an influential abolitionist.

Later on, Mary Elliott Hill, 1907-1969, born in South Mills, became a notable chemist who published dozens of papers and formulated processes important in plastic production.

Today, Camden County remains one of the most rural, sparsely populated counties in the state. It has the fifth smallest population in the state and still no incorporated towns.

But these circumstances may change in the next decade or so. Elizabeth City continues to grow on Camden County’s western border. There is a chance that its growth will jump the Pasquotank River and turn Camden into a bedroom community.

In addition, a new highway-widening project of US 17 and the proposed mid-Currituck bridge could bring thousands of travelers every year through Camden County on their way to the Outer Banks.

Time will tell if Camden County will become a waypoint for tourists or if it will retain the rural character that has defined it for the past three centuries.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

In an area defined by small towns and miles of contiguous farmland, Pasquotank County is by far the most developed county in the Albemarle Region.

Its county seat, Elizabeth City, is home to restaurants, shopping and the kinds of big-box stores that are ubiquitous in cities like Greenville or Rocky Mount. But Elizabeth City was not always the center of the region or even the center of Pasquotank County. It took many decades, civil unrest and a citywide rebuilding to make Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County the regional anchor that they are today. 

Pasquotank County was an original county of the Albemarle region. According to historian David Leroy Corbitt, the county began as Pasquotank Precinct of Albemarle County in 1668. Its original boundaries were the Virginia border to the north, Albemarle Sound to the south, the North River to the east, and Little River to the west. The northeast section of Pasquotank County became Camden County in 1777. Early settlers, including Nathaniel Batts and George Durant, purchased land from Native Americans and started moving in within a decade of the precinct’s formation. Pasquotank became its own county in 1739. The first town was not Elizabeth City but Nixonton, which was established in 1758 on the Little River.

Pasquotank County was in many ways the political center of the Colony. The first assembly in the Colony was known as the Grand Assembly and met in Pasquotank County in 1665. This and other early meetings set up the Colonial government, which centered around the governor and his council along with an assembly of elected representatives.

The first governor of North Carolina, William Drummond, served the Colony from Pasquotank. According to author and Pasquotank native Bland Simpson, Drummond was a decent governor whose power was undermined by Virginia’s William Berkeley. After his term in office, Drummond moved to Virginia, became a follower of Nathaniel Bacon against Berkeley, and was executed when Bacon’s Rebellion failed in 1677.

Shortly after Drummond left office, the people of Pasquotank rose up to evict another questionable governor. Culpeper’s Rebellion occurred when Gov. Thomas Miller arrested popular local citizen George Durant for opposing a new law meant to enforce customs duties. In his history of the rebellion, Hugh F. Rankin noted that its spark was a set of remonstrances written by John Culpeper in which he accused Miller of numerous crimes in the name of the “Pasquatanckians.” A local mob broke Durant out of jail and filled the jail instead with the governor and several of his deputies. North Carolina went several years without an accepted governor before the Lords Proprietor, then owners of the Colony, sent one to the Colonists’ liking.

During the time of Culpeper’s Rebellion, Colonial life was simple. Most settlers were farmers or traders. They grew corn, wheat and tobacco. Some were Quakers converted during the earlier visit by George Fox and William Edmundson, but most were Anglicans who did not regularly attend church services. The wealthiest citizens mingled often with the poorest and lived in modest brick houses. As Hugh F. Rankin wrote of the 17th century Albemarle region, “The business of hacking a home out of the wilderness was far too difficult to permit the delicacies of elegant living.” The most exciting regular occurrence was court, where citizens met to drink, socialize, and air their grievances large and small.

No buildings survive in Pasquotank County from this early period of the Colony. But one house, the Old Brick House in Elizabeth City, remains from the 1750s. It was built by Robert Murden, a local militia and assembly member. The house, rare for its twin brick chimneys and considerable size, has an elegantly designed interior and an elaborate carved mantel. H.G. Jones noted that because of their lavish interiors, the Old Brick House and Edenton’s Cupola House “were likely considered mansions in comparison to standard residences of the region.”

The late Colonial period was one of stagnation for much of Pasquotank County. As the 1700s progressed, the population center of the Colony shifted, first to Edenton and then to the Neuse and Cape Fear River regions. But Pasquotank gained renewed relevance in the 1790s with the founding of Elizabeth City at the narrows of the Pasquotank River. Likely named after either a local tavern keeper or a county in Virginia, Elizabeth City soon became a prosperous port. It was located a few miles from the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which was completed in 1805 and greatly facilitated water transportation between North Carolina and Virginia.

Elizabeth City finally surpassed Edenton by 1880 to become the largest town in the Albemarle region. Elizabeth City also had one of the largest free African American populations in the state. According to John Hope Franklin, Pasquotank County had more than 900 free African Americans in 1830, many of whom came across the Virginia border and lived in Elizabeth City.

The Civil War devastated Elizabeth City. Parts of the city were burned in 1862 and rebuilt over the next few decades. This rebuilding included the present-day Neoclassical courthouse, constructed on East Main Street in 1881 and 1882. The end of slavery enabled Pasquotank County to find new sources of economic prosperity. Agriculture continued to be prominent, but there was a renewed focus on industry. By the 1880s, there was a wide variety of businesses such as a cotton mill, grist mills, and a soda bottling establishment. Some of these buildings, in addition to an iron works dating from the 1890s, survive.

Elizabeth City also embraced higher education. Elizabeth City State University was founded in 1891 as the State Colored Normal School at Elizabeth City. It solely trained African American teachers at first but later expanded its scope. The university is now the only school in North Carolina that offers a four-year degree in aviation science. Alumni include athletes such as American Basketball Association star Mike Gale and NFL standout Everett McIver, a Dallas Cowboy who was once famously stabbed with a pair of scissors by Hall of Famer Michael Irvin. A more recent graduate, Omari Salisbury, became nationally known in 2020 for his role as videographer for social justice movements, for which he received a profile in the Seattle Times.

The College of the Albemarle, which opened in 1960 and is now located 3 miles north of Elizabeth City State University, is the other major institution of higher education in Pasquotank County. It currently serves as the primary community college for the Albemarle region and boasts one of the state’s largest health care programs, according to EdNC.

Today, Elizabeth City remains the economic center of Pasquotank County. The other communities in the county are comparatively small. Weeksville is unincorporated and long ago lost its claim to fame: a lighter-than-air airship hangar once operated by the Navy and private companies. Nixonton also remains as an unincorporated community, having lost its town status long ago according to the North Carolina Gazetteer. Most of the county still subsists on agriculture. Large fields of corn and soybeans stretch along U.S. 17. Even though Pasquotank is the 89th largest county in the state by area, it is seventh in the state in corn production according to official statistics.

But even Elizabeth City may not be the main determinant of Pasquotank County’s trajectory over the next few decades. The Hampton Roads region of Virginia continues to encroach into North Carolina. Elizabeth City is only 47 miles from Norfolk and is already part of the same metropolitan area as defined by the Census. It remains to be seen whether Elizabeth City will continue its centuries-long tradition of centrality to the Albemarle region or if it will be another outpost for the growing urban sprawl of southeast Virginia.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

The Albemarle region is home to Colonial North Carolina’s original four counties. Of these four, two contain prominent historic towns, Pasquotank and Chowan, and one, Currituck, is now an Outer Banks destination. In some ways, Perquimans may be the odd county out.

It was not the home of a center for higher learning like Elizabeth City or Blackbeard’s friend in government. But its small size did not prevent Perquimans County from having an exceptional impact on the history of North Carolina’s religion, sports or culture.

Perquimans County was one of the original precincts of Albemarle County, the first county established by the Lords Proprietor of North Carolina in 1663. In his history of North Carolina counties, David Leroy Corbitt traced the precinct’s origins as early as 1668 and noted the county’s boundaries: the Little River to the east, Yeopim River to the west, and the Virginia border. The northern section was later taken to form Camden and Gates counties.

The Perquimans River bisects the county.

Perquimans County was settled in the 1660s by men and women from Virginia migrating south, including early Colonial leader George Durant. They were at first sold land by the Yeopim Native Americans who lived in the area. After this earliest English settlement, the county received one of its first notable visitors in 1672, one who would influence the development of the county for centuries.

George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, introduced the major tenets of the religion in England in the 1640s. He then felt called to visit adherents to his religion living in the Americas. From Virginia, he arrived in North Carolina in 1672 and wrote in his journal that the journey involved no established roads and was “full of cruel bogs and swamps; so that we were commonly wet to the knees, and lay abroad at nights in the woods by a fire.”

During this visit, supported by his follower William Edmundson, Fox converted a number of Perquimans County residents.

Quakerism’s tenets greatly affected the development of Perquimans County. Quakers believed in purchasing land from Native Americans, as opposed to taking it by force, meaning that they did not immediately acquire the most fertile lands. Such lands were the best for tobacco production, so the Quakers focused on wheat and corn in the early years of the county. The Quakers, guided by their views on the equality of all people, also started to fight against slavery in the late 1700s. Many Perquimans County residents advocated against slavery and freed their slaves in a process known as manumission. According to historian Stephen B. Weeks, one of the most notable Quaker opponents of slavery in the county was Barnaby Nixon, who became known for both his views on slavery and his vegetarianism.

The Quakers were eventually displaced by pro-slavery settlers who hungered for the fertile land of the Albemarle Region. By 1860, Edwin Hergesheimer’s map showed that 52.1% of Perquimans County residents were enslaved, the second highest total in the Albemarle region.

Fifty years after the first Colonial settlement, descendants of the first settlers built one of the most famous Colonial houses in the state. The Newbold-White House is usually accepted as North Carolina’s oldest brick house. It was built around 1730 on land at one time associated with the famous Blount family, although historian Tom Parramore believed it may have been built even earlier.

The house changed hands multiple times until it was purchased by the Perquimans County Restoration Association in 1973, when the county began to return it to its former appearance. The Newbold-White House can be visited and toured today. It is an exceptional, publicly accessible relic from the earliest period of the Colony.

The county’s small population meant it developed differently from its neighbor to the east, Chowan County. While Edenton was settled quickly and became a prosperous town, Perquimans County did not have an incorporated town for decades. The county court met at private homes for several decades. Perquimans County’s first recognized town, Hertford, was settled in 1701, according to the “North Carolina Gazetteer,” but not incorporated until 1758.

Hertford became known for its stately homes and for its swing-span “S bridge.” Until its disassembly earlier this year, it was one of the few remaining S-shaped bridges in the country. The Perquimans County Courthouse, built in 1824, is one of the oldest extant structures in the county and is a fine example of Federal-style architecture.

Perquimans County remained small throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Its population decreased from 9,466 to 9,178 between 1880 and 1960. But there were still a number of notable people who called the tiny county home. Arguably the most famous was Jim “Catfish” Hunter, a Major League Baseball pitcher with the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees. Hunter won more than 200 games in his illness-shortened career, pitched a perfect game, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.

Catfish became known for his laid-back attitude and country witticisms. Once, in reference to his teammate Reggie Jackson, he famously said, “The difference between God and Reggie Jackson is that God doesn’t think he’s Reggie Jackson.”

A close competitor in fame was Wolfman Jack, the famous midcentury radio DJ and a resident of Perquimans County later in his life. Born Robert Weston Smith in Brooklyn in 1938, the Wolfman was known for his distinctive gravelly voice. He was a mainstay of early rock-and-roll radio from his perch at several American-Mexican border stations in the 1960s. His 1995 New York Times obituary noted that his famous voice had given him “something of a cult following as one of America’s best-known radio personalities.”

Wolfman Jack’s fame led to several commemorative songs and a spot in George Lucas’s 1973 film “American Graffiti.” Although he lived in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, when he died in 1995, Wolfman Jack was buried in Belvidere, where he had moved nine years earlier to live with his wife’s family.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have brought a number of opportunities to Perquimans County. Albemarle Plantation is a planned community on the Albemarle Sound that opened in 1990. As noted in the Perquimans Weekly, Albemarle Plantation is home to 475 families and provides a golf course as well as a marina for residents.

There is also a military facility, the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity, located on Harvey’s Point between the Albemarle Sound and the Perquimans River. The county continues to be mostly rural, although it is an attractive bedroom community for commuters from Elizabeth City.

While most of the Quakers left in the 19th century because of their opposition to slavery, there are still two Quaker meetings left in the county. The Quaker heritage remains and serves as one of the many factors that make Perquimans County a unique part of North Carolina’s original Albemarle region.

This is the first in a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Every elementary school student in North Carolina is taught the story of the Lost Colony. That 16th century settlement on Roanoke Island was indeed the first sustained English settlement in North America, but it has earned its moniker for a reason.

The colony was lost within five years of its settlement. Today’s state of North Carolina instead emerged from a much less famous area. The Albemarle Settlements, of which Chowan County comprised the western section, were the true beginning of this state. Chowan County reflects this long historical heritage and is today as closely connected to the past as any county in the state.

One could argue that John Pory, not John White, is the true founder of the North Carolina Colony. Pory, a professor, explorer and politician living in Virginia, traveled down the Chowan River in 1622 and, according to a Virginia chronicle from 1622, wrote of “a very fruitfull and pleasant Countrey, full of rivers, wherein are two harvests in one yeere.”

After his report, some Virginians moved south in search of fresh tobacco lands. Pory’s journey predated the 1629 grant from King Charles I that gave Carolina or “Carolana” as it was called at first) its name. Many Virginians settled along the river that Pory traveled. In 1664, enough settlers had moved into the area that Albemarle County was formed to provide some semblance of government. The western edge of that county, Shaftesbury Precinct, became Chowan Precinct in 1685 and Chowan County in 1739.

The center of Chowan County was Edenton, one of the earliest towns in North Carolina. It was named after Charles Eden, a governor more famous today for his friendship with pirates than his governance. Bill Hand noted in the New Bern Sun Journal that “some historians suggest that Eden was getting a percentage from the pirate; at any rate, after Blackbeard’s death a lot of his loot turned up in a barn owned by colony secretary Tobias Knight.”

One of Eden’s rivals, Edward Moseley, was arrested for publicly insinuating the governor was receiving Blackbeard’s stolen treasures. When Blackbeard was finally killed in North Carolina waters, it was not by Eden’s militia but by troops from Virginia.

In its early years, Edenton barely earned the designation of town. William Byrd II, a leading Virginia planter and the founder of Richmond, stayed near Edenton when he helped survey the Virginia-North Carolina Colonial boundary in 1728. Byrd wrote in his “History of the Dividing Line” that the town had between 40 and 50 houses and that he knew of no other place of European settlement where “there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of public worship of any sect or religion whatsoever.” To Byrd, the people of Edenton had no ambition and regarded having a brick chimney on one’s home as a sign of extravagance.

This state of affairs did not last. Over time, Edenton became a center for some of the colony’s most respected citizens. These included early Supreme Court Justice James Iredell and governors James Iredell Jr. and Samuel Johnson. North Carolina’s governor resided in Edenton while it was the Colonial capital from 1722 to 1743. The town contained some of the most elegant buildings in the colony. Several of them, such as the Chowan County Courthouse built in 1767, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church built 1736-1766, are still standing and can be visited today. Edenton’s 300-year-old courthouse green still survives in the middle of town.

A pivotal moment in women’s and Colonial history happened in Edenton in 1774. Spurred on by the hated tax on tea and similar events across the Colonies, the so-called Edenton Tea Party was held in that year. A group of women, led by Penelope Barker, signed a document pledging to boycott the purchase of English tea and cloth until England stopped its practice of taxation without representation.

According to Sandra Lancaster of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the letter was “one of the earliest organized women’s political actions in United States history.” It also prompted ridicule in London. Phillip Dawe drew and had printed a cartoon portraying the women as masculine, lecherous and decidedly unladylike. A statue of a teapot commemorating the event can be found atop a cannon near the county courthouse.

Throughout the Revolutionary and early Republic periods, Chowan County’s considerable wealth was built on shipping and local plantations, with much of its territory outside of the town limits comprising sprawling tobacco plantations. The town of Edenton also centered around slavery.

The 1860 slavery distribution map, created by Edwin Hergesheimer, showed that the county had the state’s seventh-highest proportion of slaves to free persons. One of the most famous of these enslaved persons was Harriet Jacobs. After years of torment from her owner, Jacobs escaped and spent several more years in Edenton hiding in an attic before making her way north. Harriet Jacobs’s 1861book, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” became one of the most famous antebellum slave narratives, and she spent the remainder of her life in the North fighting for abolition and later for social reform. Free African Americans also called the town home. They could secure jobs as ship pilots or working on the docks. Harriet Jacobs noted that some of these free men and women helped her, her brother John Jacobs, and others escape to freedom by ship.

Chowan County’s fortunes declined in the 19th century. As David Leroy Corbitt noted in his authoritative history of North Carolina counties, Chowan lost its prosperous top half with the formation of Gates County in 1779. Edenton’s harbor was greatly affected by the closing of Roanoke Inlet after a 1795 hurricane.

The town was then occupied by federal troops early in the Civil War. Following the end of slavery, Edenton survived by turning to industry, most notably at the cotton mill that still stands at the end of King Street and the peanut mill on Church Street.

Following the Civil War, with the decline of plantation agriculture, the entire Albemarle region suffered economic hardship that continued throughout much of the 20th century. Edenton only reversed this decline by embracing its history. One of the earliest historic preservation efforts in North Carolina occurred in 1918, 40 years before the rebuilding of Tryon Palace. Women in Edenton formed an association to rehabilitate the Cupola House built 1756-58, one of North Carolina’s oldest homes.

For the next century, affiliated groups such as the Edenton State Historic Site and the Edenton Woman’s Club restored dozens of structures and helped found numerous inns and bed-and-breakfast inns. State funding and tourism revenues have resulted in a vibrant downtown with museums, house tours and a trolley tour.

This history caught the imagination of one of North Carolina’s most notable novelists. Inglis Fletcher, who owned a historic plantation in Chowan County, wrote a dozen books set in historical North Carolina and Edenton. These included “Men of Albemarle” in 1942, and “Roanoke Hundred” in1948. There was also “Lusty Wind of Carolina” in1944, the tale of a bondsman and the daughter of a Huguenot weaver who fall in love, help establish the Colony, and fight pirates. The books are all fictional but filled with historical facts as well as cameos from historical figures. 

Today, Chowan County retains the North-South dynamic that has defined it since the early 18th century. Its northern areas are rural and have changed little in the past hundred years. The exception is the growing seaside community of Arrowhead Beach. Other northern communities, such as Rockyhock and the amusingly named Sign Pine, remain little more than crossroads.

The southern section of the county, comprising Edenton, has become a vibrant, bustling community dedicated to tourism and history. Edenton now has a bookstore and approximately two dozen restaurants. Its former mill buildings have new tenants, including a fitness center and a museum. Chowan County has found a way forward by embracing both its natural wealth and the appeal of the past. It has become one of the Inner Banks’ most notable success stories.

Coastal Review is now featuring the historical analysis of author Eric Medlin.

From the Croatan and Roanoke tribes to the Sir Walter Raleigh expeditions, the region has attracted peoples interested in its crisp beaches and myriad of waterways. Many men and women have attempted to tell the history of this region since the 17th century. But one, David Stick (1919-2009), rises above the rest in the eyes of both historians and many of the region’s inhabitants.

Stick was not just a talented writer and researcher. He was a local businessman, a supporter of the economic and environmental well-being of the coast, and in many ways the platonic ideal of a local historian.

David Stick was born in 1919 in New Jersey. His father, Frank Stick, was an outdoor photographer and illustrator who was lured to the Outer Banks’ lush scenery and real estate opportunities. Frank became a successful developer, lobbied for the creation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and eventually illustrated some of his son’s books.

David began his career following his father’s love of the ocean. After a stint at the University of North Carolina and in the military, he returned to the Outer Banks and became a real estate broker. He did not stop with houses and land, however. Stick developed a new town, Southern Shores, where he served as mayor and worked on the town’s distinctive flat-roof homes.

Over the years, he diversified his holdings beyond real property. In a 1985 retrospective, William S. Powell named a handful of Stick’s many interests: “a land company, a contracting firm, a motor lodge, a craft shop, a bookshop, and a publisher of maps.”

Stick’s success in business allowed him to pursue his love of his adopted region. He began to collect materials about the Outer Banks, a collection that later served as the basis for the Outer Banks History Center. Stick served on planning boards and in governmental positions where he could act as a booster for the region.

As county commissioner, Stick began to update the county’s antiquated government structure. Stick also began to write history, with his first book, “Fabulous Dare: The Story of Dare County, Past and Present,” being published in 1949. History became his most important legacy. Stick ended up writing 13 books and going on numerous media tours sharing his love of coastal North Carolina.

In many ways, the trajectory of Stick’s life matched the plan for local historians set out by Albert Ray Newsome, secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission. In the 1928 Biennial Report of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Newsome wrote that he wanted each county to have a historian and for that historian to be rooted in the local community. They were not doctoral students who pored over archives for months or years to complete a dense monograph on a local county or town.

Instead, Newsome intended these men and women to be locals who knew the people and environment of their communities from decades of lived experience. They would immerse themselves in a county, learn all there was to know, and then write down what they had learned for both the local community and the outside world.

Stick fit Newsome’s mold perfectly. He was not just a businessman of the Outer Banks but a lifelong resident and enthusiast. In a 1987 speech, Stick reminisced about his life as a newspaper reporter and diver on the Outer Banks. He found shipwrecks, speared fish, and sailed throughout the islands. Stick eventually retired in Kitty Hawk and moved to a house where, during breaks in writing, he could “look down on my dock and the little boathouse at the end, and gaze — often for long periods, when I really should be writing — at the broad expanse of Kitty Hawk Bay stretching south and west to the horizon …”

Even though he was not born in the region, he was as much of a local as many other residents, most of whom were themselves transplants by the 1960s and 1970s.

But Stick went far beyond many of his local contemporaries and antecedents. In a word, his history was good. Stick’s work won national acclaim. His first UNC Press book, “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” published in 1952, received positive reviews from the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker. A reviewer in the Journal of Southern History proclaimed it an excellent work that was “written in an interesting and nearly fictional style which causes the reader to feel the terror of the shipwrecked as well as the determination and sometimes helpless feeling of the lifesaving personnel.”

Six years later, “The Outer Banks in North Carolina, 1584-1958” was lauded in the North Carolina Historical Review as “an excellent addition to the growing literature on the history of the Tar Heel state.”

Each of Stick’s books were meticulously researched, with “Graveyard of the Atlantic” containing six pages of references and a list of over 600 individual shipwrecks off the coast of North Carolina. Stick’s books sold nearly a quarter of a million copies during his lifetime, a remarkable achievement for a local historian, and nearly all of them are still in print. In 1987, Stick became the second local historian to win the North Caroliniana Society Award, one of the highest lifetime achievement honors for a North Carolinian involved in history.

Stick’s approach to historical writing is currently endangered. Pressure on the publishing industry has led to fewer books written for small, local audiences. Their work falls outside the rigorous, competitive nature of academic publishing and the wide audience of popular publishers.

Stick’s life and legacy, both of his books and his many business projects, were dedicated to preserving and telling the story of his adopted coastal home. We hope that legacy will push more historians to follow in his footsteps and reverse the current downward trend of local history.