Travel Barrier Islands
Dawn at Bodie Island lighthouse along North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
The Outer Banks North Carolina’s playground by the sea
58 I N S I G H T April 29–May 5, 2022
VIRGINIA Corolla
NORTH CAROLINA
Nags Head
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Ocracoke
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isitors have been exclaiming for a very long time about the area where northeastern North Carolina meets the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, what we today call the Outer Banks received its first known rave reviews more than 400 years ago, in 1584. That’s when Sir Walter Raleigh sent two explorers to check out the sounds and estuaries alongside what is today North Carolina’s playground by the sea. The reports they brought back to England about the wonders of the New World caused Queen Elizabeth I to commission Raleigh to establish in this area in 1587 the first English settlement in America, two decades before Jamestown and three decades before Plymouth. It was a disaster that to this day remains a mystery. Every one of the roughly 120 men, women, and children whom Raleigh sent—he
himself never set foot in North America—vanished without a trace. Their deserted settlement site showed no signs of any trouble. Conflicting theories about what happened still abound. Nowadays, one of the many interesting and fun things to do during a visit to North Carolina’s Outer Banks area is to take in a well-done stage production about this 4-century-old unsolved mystery of the disappearance of that first English settlement in the New World. “The Lost Colony” is written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green. This may well have been an unlucky place for those Englishmen who attempted to establish a colony here, but nowadays, most of the visitors who come here each year probably consider themselves lucky to have discovered such a splendid vacation spot. What we call the Outer Banks is a string of sandy barrier islands that stretches for more than 130 miles along the Atlantic coastline of North Carolina.
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By Fred J. Eckert
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The water frontage surrounding the Outer Banks exceeds 900 miles.
