Discover Manteo’s History on a Guided Walking Tour

By Caroline Makepeace on Jan. 26, 2022

The Outer Banks is a place marked by American firsts. Alongside First in Flight and First National Seashore, the region claims the first Light of Freedom, first English Colony, the first English born child in the New World, and the first hang gliding school in the USA.

A guided walk through historic Manteo revealed these stories and many more. The attractive coastal town sits along Shallowbag Bay on the eastern Side of Roanoke Island.

Downtown Manteo, pronounced Man-ee-o, consists of several streets gathered around the historic courthouse. The compact arrangement recalls Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry, a community that, in the show, was organized much the same way.

Mayberry and its residents drew heavily from the people and life of Manteo. Andy Griffith, a native North Carolinian, moved there in 1947 to work as a soldier in The Lost Colony. Manteo soon became his home of the heart, and he was ultimately buried in a grave on his waterfront property.

Our guide, retired Police Chief Francis D’Ambra, was a personal friend of Andy’s and has many stories for devoted fans of the actor and the show.

Because we’re Gen X and younger, our knowledge of Andy Griffith was limited. Chief instead emphasized the 400+ year history of firsts and the Land of New Beginnings that gives Manteo and the surrounding barrier islands their distinctive character.

Chief has led the 90-minute Original Manteo Walking Tour since 2003. He paused the walks while concentrating on his work as Chief, then returned to them full-time after retiring as police chief.

His enthusiasm for the past is unmistakable. Chief has said that, had he not entered the police force, he would have become a history professor. Tours are limited to 25 people and are designed primarily for adults, yet our 10 year old Savannah became so absorbed in the stories that she asked part-way through whether she could write a blog post about the experience.

A Land of New Beginnings

The walk began at the town’s central rotunda, the former location of the Old Tranquil Inn. A magnificent magnolia tree still grows there, having stood through visits from President Franklin Roosevelt and Orvill and Wilbur Wright.

Across the street stands the new Tranquil Inn, formerly the site of the other hotel in town, the Roanoke Inn. Richard Gere and Diane Lane stayed there during the filming of Nights of the Rodanthe. Chief shared historical photographs from his album, offering a glimpse of Manteo in earlier years.

This was also where we explored Roanoke Island’s beginnings: the island’s original Algonquin inhabitants, followed by the arrival and mysterious disappearance of the first English colonists sent as part of Sir Walter Raleigh’s mission to settle the New World.

Fort Raleigh Historic Site, on the northern part of the island, preserves the original setting connected with this story. In summer, The Lost Colony, the oldest outdoor drama in the USA, brings the events to the stage.

From there, we continued toward the waterfront and the bridge leading across the water to the 25 acre Roanoke Island Festival Park. At one of the park’s piers sat Elizabeth II, a replica of the 1587 wooden, square-rigged sailing vessel that carried the colonists across the Atlantic. The 69ft ship transported about 115 people on what was a “Journey of the Dead.”

In the warmer months, visitors to the park can see how the early Algonquin people lived, visit a reproduction of an English settlement, and board the vessel.

Roanoke Island Festival Park also includes walking trails and hosts concerts, festivals and weddings. Locals know the island as Ice Plant Island because it was the location of the first commercial ice plant in the world, another Manteo first.

A Tumultuous and Treacherous Land

Leaving the waterfront, we followed Queen Elizabeth Ave toward George Washington Creef Park. Along the way, Chief explained how severe weather, pirates, and rum runners influenced the area’s landscape and culture.

The stories of residents and visitors were compelling, but so was the lesson in the Outer Banks’ ecological variety.

The barrier-island chain surrounds the largest embayed estuary in the world. Pamlico Sound stretches nearly 100 miles from north to south and reaches more than 25 miles across at certain points.

The sound averages only 6-8 feet in depth, creating spawning grounds that attract enormous amounts of wildlife. Porpoises, shrimp, abundant fish, bull and tiger sharks, manatees and alligators can all be found in or around these waters.

Sound beaches, saltwater marshes, and maritime forest patches along the sound’s edges form distinct ecosystems and provide excellent wildlife habitat.

Chief describes the warm, shallow waters as a “Suck Zone.” When hurricanes enter the gulf stream, they can be drawn toward North Carolina.

During hurricanes, Chief and many other locals have watched Pamlico Sound water surge westward, exposing sandbars before rushing back several hours later. The returning water can spill through village streets and yards and even carry away vehicles, including Chief’s car.

Chief has endured 28 tropical systems, among them four major hurricanes, without being swept out of Manteo. At George Washington Creef Park, we stood beneath the Manteo Weather station, established in 1904 by the Weather Bureau under the direction of Alpheus W. Drinkwater.

Flags communicated changing winds, approaching storms, rainy weather, gale force winds, and flood tides to mariners. The station served not only as a national weather-warning point but also as the telegram tower from which Alpheus announced that man has flown in Kitty Hawk. It was also the first location where a radio signal was transferred over water.

Learning About First in Flight

Given the area’s unpredictable natural environment, it seems fitting that its inhabitants developed a similarly untamed reputation.

Chief told us about Buffalo City, once the largest town in the Outer Banks region. The logging boomtown was valued for its cedar, cypress and juniper and became the moonshine capital of the world, including throughout Prohibition.

Once the demand declined and the trees had disappeared, Buffalo City became a ghost town. Its former area is now protected within Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, considered one of the best places on the Eastern seaboard to see birds, black bear, and red wolves.

Outer Banks folklore says that locally produced rum, made with sugar from the Caribbean, was so powerful that it was described as strong enough to kill the devil. That tale is associated with the name Kill Devil Hills.

Another explanation connects the name with barrels of rum from one of the more than 2,000 shipwrecks along the Outer Banks shoreline. The wrecks helped earn the coast the nickname The Graveyard of the Atlantic.

A further legend tells of pirates, perhaps Blackbeard, luring ships toward shore on moonless nights. A horse carrying a lantern around its neck would be led through the dunes, drawing vessels onto the shallow shoals. This story is linked to the name of another popular Outer Banks beach town, Nags Head.

Inside Manteo’s Lost Colony Brewery, the stories are reflected in Nags Head IPA and Kill Devil Scotch Ale.

Outer Banks Distilling in Manteo offers another connection to the rum tradition. It is the first legal distillery on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and produces its own small-batch Kill Devil Rum.

With pirates, violent weather, and dangerous shores, the region once earned a reputation as the Wild West of the East. Chief also shared a more humorous example of island oddity: his chickens can behave unsteadily after nibbling on scuppernong from the tree in his yard.

The scuppernong, also called the Mother Vine, produces white muscadine grapes. Their high sugar content can cause the fruit to begin fermenting while still on the vine. It is rare, but unusual events seem especially possible on Roanoke Island.

A 400-year-old scuppernong grapevine from the muscadine family continues to grow in Manteo, North Carolina. It is thought to be the oldest cultivated vine in the USA, possibly the world, giving the Outer Banks First in Grapes in the USA.

A Land of Light and Freedom

Among the favorite pieces of local folklore is the story of Bodie Island Lighthouse, pronounced Body. We visited it the following evening at sunset, and it remains a must-not miss Outer Banks experience.

One tradition says the lighthouse took its name from bodies washed ashore from the Graveyard of the Atlantic. A less dramatic explanation attributes the name to an original land owner.

Near Bodie island Lighthouse, former slave Captain Richard Etheradge became keeper of the Pea Island Live-Saving station in 1880. That station eventually contributed to the beginnings of the US Coast Guard.

We heard this history while standing at the foot of the boardwalk leading to Manteo’s own lighthouse, The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse. The small white building, topped by a red shingled roof, stands over the water.

Unlike taller coastal lighthouses, it does not rise above the surrounding landscape. It is a river lighthouse and the only one in Dare County. The present structure reproduces the original lighthouse built in 1877 at the southern entrance of the Croatan Sound in Wanchese, where it helped sailors and local fishermen navigate into port.

Chief used the lighthouse’s beam to introduce the story of the First Light of Freedom.

Following the Union’s first military victory of the Civil War at Fort Hatteras in August 1861, escaped slaves began arriving on Roanoke Island under the protection of the army.

The island became a safe haven. In 1863, a Freedmen’s Colony was established to educate and train formerly enslaved African Americans so they could take part in free and independent communities. It was the first community of its kind in North Carolina and eventually included 3,500 formerly enslaved black Americans.

At Fort Raleigh Historic Site, the First Light of Freedom Memorial recognizes the Freedmans site as part of the National Underground Railroad Network.

Chief’s stories, whether firmly documented or rooted in local possibility, brought the Outer Banks vividly to life. The tour ended at the place he calls the Line of Freedom, where a cross honoring the American Revolution and the Americans who fought against British tyranny stands.

One arm of the cross aligns with the lighthouse, representing Black Americans who fought to end slavery. Another points across the water toward Elizabeth II, the vessel that carried the original colonists seeking freedom from religious persecution.

At this final stop, Chief recounted meeting Buzz Aldrin during the 100 year anniversary of the First In Flight. Buzz described seeing Mother Earth from the moon without boundary lines and delivered a message about ending tribal conflict and recognizing that we all come from HERE.

Nearly every part of American history seems to have unfolded on or near this small island between the Outer Banks barrier islands and the mainland of North Carolina. Roanoke Island continues to embody the idea that the impossible can become possible.

Voices From the Walking Tour

The source page includes reflections from the tour experience and stories shared by Francis D’Ambra, with recurring themes of Manteo’s layered history, its American firsts, the community’s relationship with Andy Griffith, and the unusual combination of folklore, weather, ecology, and freedom history that defines Roanoke Island.

Author

Caroline Makepeace

Caroline Makepeace co-founded two successful online publications: This is Raleigh, a platform for exploring the best of Wake County, and YTravelBlog, one of the world’s most influential travel blogs. Travel has been the central focus of her life since 1997. She has lived in 5 countries, traveled to over 60, spent 7 years traveling full time with her two daughters, and worked as a full-time professional travel blogger since 2010. The Outer Banks is one of her favorite vacation destinations from Raleigh.