About 18,000 years ago, when continental glaciers held much of the world's ocean water, sea levels were almost 400 feet lower than they are today. North Carolina's coastline was 50 to 75 miles east of its present location. At that time, the region's principal rivers-- the Neuse, Tar, Currituck, and Chowan-- flowed across the continental shelf and emptied into the Atlantic Ocean.

When the sinking sea reached its lowest level and winds began carrying sediment from the west, a high ridge of sand dunes formed on the easternmost edge of the mainland. As glaciers began to melt, causing the sea level to rise, the land's vast forests and marshes slowly retreated from the rising waters. In their wake, they left huge river deltas pooled into sounds, and ultimately the Outer Banks was sculpted.

Sea levels continued rising over the next few thousand years, but the barrier islands that paralleled Carolina's coast remained above the tides. An unusual combination of winds, waves, and weather enabled the Outer Banks to maintain its elevation and to remain intact.

Today, the islands' eastern edges still move backward, responding to rising waters. The land builds up on the western side and creeps farther west, slowly narrowing the sound waters separating the barrier islands from the mainland.

Ocean levels rise about 1 foot every 100 years. The shoreline moves west about 50 to 200 feet per century along most of North Carolina's coast. Although these figures aren't startling, in areas of Hatteras Island the Atlantic reclaims about 14 feet of beach every year.

Geologists refer to the Outer Banks and similar land forms as "barrier islands" because they block high-energy ocean waves and storm surges, thus protecting the coastal mainland. Barrier islands are common to many parts of the world, and many share similar characteristics, yet no two systems are alike. Winds, weather, and waves from individual structures. Ever- shifting inlets from the sounds to sea can open new channels to the ocean one century, or close off primary passageways the next.

If you travel from one area of the Outer Banks to another, you'll soon realize that even along this small stretch of sand there is a vast variety of topography, flora, and temperatures (see our Natural Wonders chapter). Sixteenth-century paintings, drawings, and maps created by explorer Gov. John White reveal this same diversity. Even more important, they provide valuable documentation suggesting what the land was like, and when compared with today's geological maps, they illustrate the transformations that have occurred since the first English explorers arrived here.

Jutting far into the ocean near the warm, circulating waters of the Gulf Stream, the Outer Banks was the first North American land reached by English explorers. A group of colonists dispatched by Sir Walter Raleigh set up the first English settlement on North American soil in 1587. But Native Americans inhabited these barrier islands long before white men and women arrived.

Historians believe humans have been living in the area that now encompasses North Carolina for more than 10,000 years. Three thousand years ago, people came to the Outer Banks to hunt, fish, and live off the land. The Carolina Algonkian culture, a confederation of 75,000 people divided into distinct tribes, spread across 6,000 square miles of northeastern North Carolina.

Archaeologists believe that as many as 5,000 Native Americans may have inhabited the southern end of Hatteras Island from 1000 to 1700. These Native Americans, known as the Croatan, formed the only island kingdom of the Algonkians. Isolation provided protection and the exclusive use of the island's seemingly limitless resources. For more than 800 years, the Croatan lived comfortably in what is now known as Buxton Woods Maritime Forest at Cape Hatteras. Contact with Europeans proved fateful, however. Disease, famine, and cultural demise eliminated all traces of the Croatan by the 1770s.

Early ventures to America's Atlantic Seaboard proved dangerous and difficult for European explorers because of the high winds, seething surf, and shifting sandbars. In 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian in the service of France, plied the waters off the Outer Banks in an unsuccessful search for the Northwest Passage. To Verrazano, the barrier islands looked like an isthmus and the sounds behind them an endless sea. According to historian David Stick, the explorer reported to the French king that these silvery salt waters must certainly be the "Oriental sea . . . the one without doubt which goes about the extremity of India, China, and Cathay." This misconception-- that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated by only the skinny strip of sand we now call the Outer Banks-- was held by some Europeans for more than 150 years.

About 60 years after Verrazano's visit, two English boats arrived along the Outer Banks, searching for a navigable inlet and a place to anchor away from the ocean. The captains, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, had been dispatched by Sir Walter Raleigh to explore the New World's coast. They were hoping to find a suitable site for an English settlement.

The explorers finally found an entrance through the islands, well north of Cape Hatteras, probably at the present-day Ginguite Creek in northern Kitty Hawk. Traversing the inlet, they sailed south through the sounds to Roanoke Island. There, they disembarked, met the natives, and marveled at the abundant wildlife and cedar trees. Of their successful expedition they told Raleigh about the riches they discovered and the kindness with which the Native Americans had received them.

During the next three years, at least 40 English ships visited the Outer Banks, more than 100 English soldiers spent almost a year on Roanoke Island, and Great Britain began to gain a foothold on the continent, much to the dismay of Spanish sailors and fortune-seekers.

In May of 1587 three English ships commanded by naturalist John White set sail for the Outer Banks with Sir Walter Raleigh's (thus Queen Elizabeth's) backing. Earlier explorers had dubbed the land "Virginia," in honor of the virgin queen Elizabeth. This first expedition to include women and children arrived at Roanoke Island on July 22. Colonists worked quickly to repair the cottages and military quarters left by the earlier English inhabitants. They rebuilt a fort the soldiers had abandoned on the north end of the island and made plans for a permanent settlement. Less than a month later, the first English child was born on American soil. Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Gov. John White, was born on August 18, a date still celebrated with feasts and festivities at Fort Raleigh.

One week after his granddaughter was baptized, John White left her and 110 other colonists on the Outer Banks while he returned to England for food, supplies, and additional recruits for the Roanoke Island colony. A war with Spain, meanwhile, broke out. When White was again ready to set sail for the Outer Banks the following spring, Queen Elizabeth refused to let any large ships leave England, except to engage in battles. White did not return to the American settlement until three years later, in 1590. By then, the settlement had disappeared.

The houses were destroyed or deserted. White's own sea chests had been dug from their shallow hiding places in the sand, broken open, and their contents raided. His daughter, granddaughter, and all the other English colonists had vanished-- leaving no trace except for two cryptic carvings in the bark of Roanoke Island trees. "CRO" was scratched into the trunk of one tree near the bank of the Roanoke Sound. "CROATOAN" was etched into another, near the deteriorating fort. White thought these mysterious messages meant the settlers had fled south to live with the friendly Croatan Indians on Hatteras Island.

If you're interested in learning more about the history of the area, read The Outer Banks of North Carolina by David Stick (University of North Carolina Press, 1958).

The abandoned settlement site showed no signs of a struggle, no blood or human remains. Some believe that the colonists were killed by natives or carried away in a skirmish. Others think they were lost at sea, trying to sail home to England. Still others believe they skirted west across the sounds and began exploring the Carolina mainland. Or perhaps they headed to other areas of the Outer Banks, their footprints erased in the blowing sands.

Historians have debated the "Lost Colony's" fate for more than 400 years. Archaeologists continue to scour Roanoke Island's eastern edges, scouting for clues to "history's greatest mystery." Scholars from across the country gather to discuss the strange disappearance and still speculate where the colony may have traveled.

Erosion from Hurricane Emily in 1993 unearthed remnants of a Croatan Indian civilization in Buxton. Phelps's team uncovered artifacts that could prove that some members of Sir Walter Raleigh's "Lost Colony" migrated south to Hatteras Island from the Fort Raleigh area. The discovery of lead bullets, fragments of European pottery and brass, and copper coins indicate a mingling of the Croatan and English cultures.

Each summer, for more than 60 years, actors have re-created the unsolved mystery in America's longest-running outdoor drama, The Lost Colony, held at the settlement site in Waterside Theatre (see our Attractions chapter for more information about the play).

A century passed before English explorers again attempted to establish settlements along the Outer Banks. Throughout this time, however, European ships continued to explore the Atlantic Seaboard, searching for gold and conquerable land. Scores of these sailing vessels wrecked in storms and on dangerous shoals east of the barrier islands. Spanish mustangs, some say, swam ashore from sinking ships; descendants of these wild horses roam in the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge. Others are corralled in a National Park Service pen on Ocracoke Island.

Although the Outer Banks beaches had few permanent European settlers until the early 1700s, small colonies sprouted up across the Virginia coast and what is now the Carolina coast in the late 1600s. The barrier islands' inlets, with their ever-shifting sands, blocked deep-draft ships from sailing into safe harbors, but smaller vessels, fit for navigating the shallow sounds, transported goods from the Outer Banks to the mainland. People passed through these strips of sand long before settling here.

Ocracoke Inlet, between Ocracoke and Portsmouth Islands, was the busiest North Carolina waterway during much of the colonial period. The inlet was a vital yet delicate link in the trade network, and it was deeper than most other area egresses. Navigational improvements to the inlet began as early as 1715, when the British government made it an official port of entry. Pilot houses were established at Ocracoke to dock the small transport boats and to temporarily house goods headed inland. Commercial traffic increased along this Outer Banks waterway for many years.

Countless inlets from sea to sound have opened and closed since the barrier islands first formed, many due to hurricanes and nor'easters. More than two dozen inlets appear in the historical record and on maps dating from 1585, but only six inlets currently are open between Morehead City and the Virginia border. Studies of geographic formations and soil deposits indicate that almost 50 percent of the Outer Banks has been covered by inlets at some point. Attempts to control the inlets have proven costly and, for the most part, have failed. In the late spring of 2003, the long battle over constructing jetties in an attempt to stabilize Oregon Inlet ended when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Departments of the Interior and Commerce announced they would not proceed with construction. This news was met with much dismay by the sportfishing and commercial fishing industries that travel the unstable Oregon Inlet. Many lives have been lost along the most dangerous passageway to the sea on the East Coast, and many of the fleet felt the jetties were the only way to protect their livelihood. The inlet is the only access to the sea between Hampton Roads and Hatteras, a 200-mile distance.

The first land grant made by the British government in North Carolina was what is now Colington Island, a small spit of land surrounded by the Currituck, Albemarle, and Roanoke Sounds between Kill Devil Hills and the mainland. Sir John Colleton, for whom the island is named, set up a plantation on the island's sloping sand hills in 1664. His agents planted corn, built barns and houses, and carried cattle across by boat to graze on the scrubby marsh grasses. According to historians, Colleton's plantation was the beginning of the barrier islands' first permanent English settlement.

Over the next several decades, stockmen and farmers set up small grazing stocks and gardens on the sheltered sound side of the Outer Banks. Runaways, outlaws, and entrepreneurs also arrived in small numbers, stealing away in the isolated forests, living off the fresh fish and abundant waterfowl, and running high-priced hunting parties through the intricate bogs and creeks. Inhabitants also engaged in salvaging: When a shipwrecked vessel floated onto shore, local residents quickly appropriated the wood off the boat, loosened sails from the masts, and scavenged anything of value that was left on board. If victims were still struggling ashore, the locals helped them, even setting up makeshift hospitals in their humble homes.

The inaccessibility of the barrier islands and the wealth of goods that passed through the ports made the Outer Banks a prime target for plundering pirates. The most infamous of all high seas henchmen was Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, whose raucous crew set up shop on the south end of Ocracoke Island. After waylaying ships and stealing valuable cargo for more than two years, Blackbeard was captured and beheaded by a British naval captain in 1718, in a slough off Ocracoke.

Settlement and sparse development continued through the early 1700s, and by 1722 almost all of the Outer Banks was secured by private ownership. Large tracts of land, often in parcels with 2,000 acres or more, were deeded to noblemen, investors, and cattle ranchers. Some New England whalers also relocated to the barrier islands after British noblemen encouraged such industry. The whaling industry supplied blubber, oil, and bones to overseas markets. The huge marine mammals were harpooned offshore from boats or merely harvested on the sand after dying and drifting into the shallow surf.

Although small settlements and scores of fish camps were scattered from Hatteras Village almost to the Virginia line, Ocracoke and the next island south, Portsmouth, remained the most bustling areas of the Outer Banks through the middle of the 18th century. British officials enlisted government-paid pilots to operate transfer stations at Ocracoke Inlet and carry goods across the sounds to the mainland. A small town of sorts sprang up, as inhabitants finally established some steady occupation and were assured of regular wages.

In 1757 the barrier islands' first tavern opened amidst a sparse string of wooden warehouses and cottages on Portsmouth Island. About 11 years later, a minister made the first recorded religious visit to the Outer Banks when he baptized 27 children in the sea just south of the tavern. Today, a Methodist church and a few National Park Service-supervised cottages are all that remain on Portsmouth Island (see our Day Trips chapter).