From the upper porch of her house, a young Bayard Wootten could watch New Bern wake and stir, come and go, and fade with the light on the nearby Neuse River. This vantage point defined her work as a photographer: The first woman to take aerial photos, Wootten was also skilled at capturing the down-to-earth in her home state. Her portraits from the 1920s and ’30s, of potters and weavers, farmers and soldiers, mothers and children, showcase the dignity of everyday life. Her landscapes — a cotton field, a mountain homestead, a foot-printed dune — are both familiar and mysterious. Toward the end of her life, Wootten returned to the house where she grew up, and when she died there in 1959, she left a trove of some 600,000 photographs.
Little-Known Fun Fact: While living at this house, Wootten designed the first Pepsi-Cola logo for a neighbor, the pharmacist who invented the drink.
North Carolina is known for many things, but nothing more important this week than the qualities of endurance, resilience, and hope.
By day, this adventure park in the Triad is a fall festival to die for. By night, the undead come alive for Halloween tricks. Welcome to one man’s vision of year-round merrymaking.
North Carolina’s border dances across the mountains as it traces four different states. Life here can be more remote, but good neighbors are never far away.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stands out among America’s national parks: Unfurling across six Appalachian mountain chains, it connects dozens of rural communities and binds together generations of families through shared memories.
