Images of Fort Raleigh National Historic Site – Eastern North Carolina, taken in August 2022.

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site protects the site of the first English settlers in the New World and memorializes the island as a Freedmen’s Colony or safe haven for slaves during the Civil War.

Leaving England in 1584 for the New World, two ships landed on Roanoke Island to explore the area. A second expedition landed here the next year to set up a formal outpost to include the building of an earthen fort. In 1587 117 colonists bound for the Chesapeake Bay area stopped here and, already weary from their overseas trip, refused to go any further. This group built a colony by repairing the old fort and dwellings. It was in 1857 that Virginia Dare, the first child of English parents, was born in America. Shortly thereafter, with food becoming scarce, the colony governor, John White, returned to England for supplies. Upon his return almost two years later he found the colony abandoned. To this day what happened to the people of the settlement on the North shore of Roanoke Island is still not known forever labelling them as “The Lost Colony”.