Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

Fort Raleigh National Historic Site marks the
site of England’s mysterious “Lost Colony.” Many people mistakenly
believe that Jamestown was the first English colony in what is now the United
States, but the real site of the first colony was Roanoke Island, a place
shrouded in mystery.

©Colin McNamara
Fort Raleigh National Historic Site marks the location of the first
English colony in what is now the United States.

In the late 1500s, England tried settling North America.
The first colony, at Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North
Carolina, failed. In 1587, more than one hundred men, women, and children tried
to start another colony on the island, under the leadership of John White. Later
that year, Virginia Dare, White’s granddaughter and the first English child
born in the New World, arrived. The colonists had settled in and planted crops,
but White was afraid they would soon run out of provisions, so he returned to
England. By the time he got back to Roanoke, in 1590, nothing was left of the
colony. The only clue to the colonists’ fate was a single word carved on a
tree — Croatoan — the Indian name for the nearby island of Hatteras.

Before White
sailed for England, the colonists had agreed that if they had to leave the
fort, they would carve a Maltese cross above the name of their destination. No
cross was carved on the tree. White returned to England in 1591 without
discovering the whereabouts of his family and the other colonists.

Archaeologists began excavating the site in the 1940s, but no graves, signs of
a massacre, or other clues have surfaced to solve the mystery of the Lost
Colony. Today, Fort Raleigh’s landscape is similar to what the colonists found
when they landed here more than 400 years ago. The quiet, wooded site includes
cedar, oak, holly, and other trees that may have been used by the colonists to
build boats, houses, or furniture. A nature trail winds through the 150-acre
site, and a small earthen fort has been constructed the same way the original
one was — by digging a moat and throwing the earth inward to form its walls.

The
fort is square with two pointed bastions on two sides and an octagonal bastion
on the third. Historians think houses would have been built near the road
leading from the fort entrance. In addition to the original moat, excavations
have turned up many artifacts, including a wrought-iron sickle, an Indian pipe,
and metal counters used in accounting.

A recent dig revealed what appears to be
the remains of America’s first scientific laboratory: pieces of smelted lead,
pottery, crucible, charcoal, and distilling apparatus used in metallurgy. Artifacts
are displayed at the visitor center, which also includes exhibits on the
colonists and Elizabethan life, plus copies of John White’s watercolors. The
Lost Colony presents the story of the Roanoke each summer through a combination
of drama, music, and dance.

Near Fort Raleigh, the
Garden Club of North Carolina created the Elizabethan Gardens as a memorial to
the first colonists. The sixteenth-century formal gardens resemble those that
graced the English estates of the wealthy backers of the colony.

The gardens
cover more than ten acres and include an antique statuary and other garden
ornaments dating to the sixteenth century, a replica Tudor gate house, and a
beautiful display of native and imported plants.

Fort
Raleigh National Historic Site Information

Address: 1401 National Park Dr., Manteo, NC
Telephone: 252/473-5772
Hours
of Operation: Open daily 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. September through May except Christmas; open daily 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. June through August
Admission:
Free