Roanoke Island NC and the Outer Banks: Historic Sites, Museums, and Cultural Attractions

The Attractions of Island Life

By Aaron Tuell on
Oct. 19, 2020

You made it here—congratulations. An amazing Outer Banks vacation is about to begin. Once you have settled in, take time to explore more than the beaches and fresh seafood. The area’s historic and cultural attractions add another layer to your trip and give every member of your group something memorable to enjoy.

North Carolina is currently under Phase 3 reopening rules and regulations which are the closest return to normal we’ve had since the start of COVID-19 safety measures this spring. The attractions below are organized by island and include favorite things to see and do at each location. Every site has added safety measures, which can be reviewed through its respective website and listing.

Roanoke Island

Island Farm

For a change of pace from the beach, trade sand for grass at Island Farm, a living history farm with roots set down in the 1800’s. Staff demonstrate the work and routines involved in maintaining an Outer Banks family homestead in earlier times. Visitors can see oxen, sheep and chickens, reconstructed buildings, a period-furnished home, and a working garden. Depending on when you arrive, you may also watch apples being pressed into cider or food being baked on the hearth.

Tip: On Tuesdays and Thursdays, visitors can meet two wild ponies from the Outer Banks herd that now live on Roanoke Island. Wednesdays give children the opportunity to work with the Manteo blacksmith, using an anvil to create a small keepsake.

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

Roanoke Island has been central to American history since the English arrived in 1584. Two early attempts to establish a foothold took place here: an outpost of men and soldiers in 1585, followed by a colony of families in 1587. The complicated relationship between those settlers and the native Algonkian Indians, along with the colony’s eventual disappearance, is presented in The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama.

The island also has a lesser-known connection to the Civil War as the location of one of the first Freedmen’s Colonies established by the Federal government. The community offered protection to runaway slaves and African American’s freed from bondage by military action. At the Lindsay Warren Visitor Center, visitors can also learn about Reginald Fessenden, an early pioneer of radio and wireless communication who conducted experiments nearby.

Tip: Leave the car behind for a walk beneath the loblolly pines and coastal oaks on Roanoke Island’s wooded north end. Sidewalks extend from the visitor center, while the Thomas Harriot woods trail offers a more secluded route. The loop runs for about a third-mile and reaches a quiet sandy beach on the Roanoke Sound.

Elizabethan Gardens

Elizabethan Gardens offers a cool, shaded place to slow down. This ten and a half acre garden is filled with fragrant flowers, herbs and shrubs, with something blooming in every season. Visitors follow paths past Italian Renaissance statues that are centuries old, dozens of species of camelias, and ancient live oaks.

Watch for the statue of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America on August 18, 1587. Before arriving at its current home, the marble figure survived a shipwreck, a building fire and onetime censorship. Children can visit the play area outside Discovery Cottage and the Butterfly House, while the trails and Great Lawn give the whole family room to explore and relax.

Tip: One oak is believed to have been a seedling when Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony arrived in America well over four centuries ago. See whether you can locate it.

Roanoke Island Festival Park

Across the Manteo town waterfront and marina, Roanoke Island Festival Park recreates the sights and sounds of an English colony taking shape. Cross the flag lined bridge to travel four centuries into the past. At the park, visitors can see how the first English colonists from 1585 built homes, worked iron in the blacksmith’s shop, and shaped wood on the lathe.

A representative Algonkian native camp offers a view of life before European arrival. Above deck on Elizabeth II, a representation 16th century sailing vessel, visitors can imagine the ships Sir Walter Raleigh’s colonists used to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Indoors, the Roanoke Adventure Museum includes hands-on activities such as hauling cargo with rope pulleys and posing in colonists clothes for photographs. Exhibits explore life on the OBX across the decades.

Tip: A raised wooden plank path begins near the parking lot and follows the salt marsh, canal and wetlands around the small islet that houses the park. The shallows are a good place to look for baby crabs, minnows and shrimp, and the area also includes kayak access.

Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse

The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse on the Manteo waterfront is a highlight for lighthouse enthusiasts. The structure is a replica of the 1877 screwpile lighthouse of the same name, representing the beacons that once marked North Carolina’s inland rivers and channels into the mid-1900’s. Rather than flashing, this lighthouse shines a constant steady beam through a real Fresnel lens.

Nearby, the Washington Creef Boathouse presents early commercial fishing and boatbuilding methods. Visitors can also see the Ella View historic shad boat, an example of North Carolina’s state watercraft.

Pea Island Cookhouse Museum at Collins Park

The Freedman's Colony near Fort Raleigh was one of the early Civil War communities created for escaped former slaves. After the war, newly emancipated and free African American families sought work and built new homes on the Outer Banks. Several Black men from Roanoke Island joined the US Life-Saving Service, the organization now known as the US Coast Guard.

In the late 1870's, the nation's only all-Black station became part of the American story through acts of bravery that saved sailors and passengers from shipwrecks and torpedoed Allied vessels through two World Wars. The original station no longer stands, but its cookhouse—where the men ate and cared for survivors—was restored and moved to Manteo. Many descendents of these Life-Savers still live in the area.

A statue of Richard Etheridge stands in the central turnabout of Collins Park. Born a slave at the homestead now known as Island Farm, Etheridge later fought for the Union as a Buffaloe Soldier before returning home to captain the Pea Island station. The cookhouse offers special programming, which can be arranged through the town of Manteo. Under the on-site boat shed, visitors can see the wooden rescue vessel used by these lifesavers.

North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island

The North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island is open again, with daily visitor numbers limited. Guests must go online to their website and reserve a specific time.

Inside and outside, visitors can watch native river otters, see a giant snapping turtle tank and a white alligator, and explore a pretend turtle hospital. At the hospital, children use computer screens to diagnose and treat rubber sea turtles before releasing them. The sting ray touch tank can be enjoyed from behind the glass or up close. In the massive Graveyard of the Atlantic tank, sand tiger sharks move through the water as visitors watch from the other side of the glass.

Tip: A working sea turtle rehabilitation center exhibit explains common ailments among the different turtle species that visit the Outer Banks. For a more otherworldly stop, visit the jellyfish room, where eerie lighting surrounds ghostly jellies.

Roanoke Island Maritime Museum

Roanoke Island Maritime Museum opened in Manteo in 1998. It occupies the George Washington Creef Boathouse along the downtown waterfront.

The Boathouse honors George Washington Creef, a local builder who developed the Shad boat in the 1870’s. Creef combined traditional split-log methods with plank-on-frame construction to create a work boat suited to the rapidly- changing weather and waters of the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. Coastal fisherman valued these boats, whose construction ended in the 1930’s. Their durability means some are still on the water, even though they are nearly 100 years old. The Shad boat was designated as the State Boat of North Carolina in 1987.

The museum displays several small watercraft connected to the area’s maritime heritage, including Ella, an 1883 Creef Shad boat, a clipper yawl boat, a 1960 era hydroplane, and other small boats.

The Maritime Museum also operates as a working boat shop. Volunteers and staff restore small craft, design exhibits and build new boats. The Elizabeth II, a replica of the ships said to have brought the famous Lost Colony to Roanoke Island in 1587, was constructed here. Several restored traditional sailing watercrafts, including the Elizabeth II, remain on the waters of Shallowbag Bay in front of the Museum.

In 2001, volunteers built Eight Optimist Prams for the Youth Sailing Program coordinated by the Museum. Volunteers and staff completed a replica 25-foot Shad boat in 2002 using funds from a grant provided by the Percy and Elizabeth Meekins Trust. The replica supports the museum's educational and interpretive programs. The Friends of the Museum, a non-profit support group, help to secure the classes offered by the Museum and the Outer Banks Sailing program.

After Hurricane Isabel in September of 2003, extensive repairs and renovations helped preserve a piece of local history. The Maritime Museum is located at 104 Fernando Street in downtown Manteo. Currently, the museum is operating at 50% capacity in order to adhere to Phase 2.5 of the NC Governor's Safer at Home Order. Call (252) 475-1750 for details about educational programs, activities and special events.

Hatteras Island

Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station

Veterans and military-history enthusiasts will appreciate Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, one of the few remaining American sites devoted to the US Life-Saving Service, the predecessor of the US Coast Guard. Before orange-and-white helicopters and ships could quickly reach vessels in trouble, lifesavers from the 1870’s through the early 1900’s faced the elements with wooden boats, oars, courage and determination.

Call ahead to learn when live demonstrations will show how the breeches buoy device worked. Fired from a cannon toward a distressed vessel, the device helped bring passengers to safety. The property includes original buildings from 1874 and 1908, as well as a period home furnished to illustrate family life during that era.

Tip: Surfboat 1046 is preserved on the site. During World War I in 1918, the men of Chicamacomico rowed through fuel burning on the ocean’s surface to rescue the crew of a torpedoed tanker. The boat, associated with one of the most awarded and documented lifesaving rescues, has been beautifully restored.

The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum

The museum takes its name from the thousands of vessels lost to weather and war along these islands. Its exhibits place Outer Banks maritime history and culture at the center.

Visitors can learn about piracy along the OBX in the 1700’s, including the activities of Blackbeard, who used this area as a favored retreat. Exhibits also explain the beginnings of recreational charter fishing on this coast, when travelers from across the East Coast came to the Gulf Stream to pursue marlin and sailfish. In Hatteras, generations of men and women have brought seafood from the ocean and sound to local communities, a tradition reflected in the shrimp and sushi tuna served in the area.

The original Cape Hatteras lens is displayed in the lobby in conservation, alongside artifacts from German submarines that once threatened the North Carolina coast.

Tip: Look for the large marker in the parking lot commemorating the Hotel de Afrique, an early safe refuge for runaway slaves in the south during the American Civil War. The site was once located near the present-day museum. The first Union military victory of the conflict occurred at Fort Hatteras in August of 1861.

Northern Beaches

Wright Brothers National Memorial

North Carolina license plates say First in Flight because Wilbur and Orville Wright, who were from Ohio, solved the engineering problem of manned, controlled flight near Kitty Hawk, NC. Over four years of visits to the Outer Banks, from 1900-1903, they used the area as their testing ground and secret lab.

The memorial’s most visible feature is a 90-foot grassy hill topped by a 60-foot granite monument. The hill is actually a giant sand dune that once resembled Jockey’s Ridge. It was covered with grass when the monument commemorating the first powered flight on December 17, 1903 was built. That initial flight lasted only 12 seconds and went 120 feet. Visitors can walk along the flight line, climb “Big Kill Devil Hill” for expansive views, and see a priceless replica of the Wrights’ flying machine and artifacts from their workshop inside the visitors center.

Tip: On the rear side of the park, a life-size outdoor statue depicts the Wright’s Flyer and the men of the US Life-Saving Service who helped the brothers move equipment while they tested kites, gliders and the plane. It is a favorite spot for photographs.

Jockey’s Ridge State Park

Jockey’s Ridge State Park is a remarkable natural landscape and The largest sand dune on the East Coast. Children can run, roll and play across the dunes, while two self-guided trails lead through the 426-acre park for visitors who want to explore farther.

Wildlife here includes the elusive red fox, raccoons, lizards and toads. Visitors seeking adventure can take lessons at the on-site hang gliding school, with no experience necessary. At dusk, the dunes provide a prime view of the sunset over the Roanoke Sound. Visitors with mobility issues can call ahead and request transportation to the top of the dunes in one of the park rangers’ ATV’s. Benches beneath the trees also make picnicking easy.

Tip: Bring a plastic snow sled, boogie board or another smooth-bottomed object for sand boarding. The equipment works best on a steep face with firm sand.