Outside a mid-century modern ranch house on the northeast side of Roanoke Island, a dense network of vines commands the front yard, its filigree of young leaves bouncing in the breeze. In some spots, delicate buds have developed into firm, green grapes — nowhere near the juicy scuppernongs they’ll ripen into as the summer progresses. These vines, all offshoots attached to the same herculean system, blanket the entire south side of the yard as though unfurled from a bolt of scraggly, stemmy fabric. The canopy hangs about five feet off the ground, supported by a massive arbor made of black locust wood, which used to grow plentifully on the coast.

Toward the edge of the lot, a wooden sign faces Mother Vineyard Road, its big yellow letters reading “WELCOME | MOTHER VINE.” Duck your head, step underneath the arbor, and discover sizable vines funneling in tightly woven tangles. Venture deeper in, and the view of the nearby house and road become obscured by a veil of brown and green.

Said to be the oldest cultivated grapevine in North America, the Mother Vine twists, tangles, and grows on in Manteo. photograph by Chris Hannant

John Wilson cofounded Outer Banks Conservationists in 1980 and is now working to transfer the Mother Vine, his childhood homeplace, and the surrounding property to OBC’s care. photograph by Chris Hannant

For all we don’t know about the Mother Vine — her exact age or who originally cultivated her — there’s one thing we do know: The vine that English colonists encountered 400 years ago is not the same Mother Vine you see today. Her shape changes over the decades; old roots die, and new ones take their place. “She’s done this all on her own,” John Wilson says, gesturing to the sprawling vine that he calls “Old Girl.”

Wilson does know the Old Girl well. His dad built his childhood home next to the Mother Vine in 1957. He grew up playing under the arbor and picking grapes that he sold to passing tourists. It wasn’t a lot of tourists, he admits, maybe five or six a day and sometimes none. “I’d be out there with my bicycle and my card table, trying to sell grapes. My mother was probably on the phone with the neighbors, saying, ‘Please come buy some grapes from John,’” he says, laughing.

Wilson insists that the Mother Vine’s story is not about him. “My time is this big,” he says, holding his hands a bread loaf’s length apart. “My father had 60-some years with the vine.” Wilson inherited the Old Girl from his parents, Jack and Estelle, when they passed in 2018. He’s in the process of transferring its ownership to Outer Banks Conservationists (OBC), the nonprofit that preserves and manages the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla and Island Farm, a 19th-century living-history farm on Roanoke Island.

Clockwise from left: Beginning in the mid-1950s, Jack and Estelle Wilson (pictured in 2014) shared many decades together as caretakers of the Mother Vine, which was part of Mother Vineyard (pictured in 1930 and 1944). photograph by Chris Hannant, Historical Photos Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina, North Carolina Museum of History

It was Jack and Estelle’s wish that the Mother Vine remain available to the public for future generations. There’s also a personal connection: Wilson and his partner, Bill Parker, founded OBC in 1980, and Wilson is currently the board chair. The properties they’ve saved over the years all have ties to the Wilson family: Estelle’s grandfather was a lightkeeper for the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, so she spent summers at the compound in historic Corolla Village. Jack was a descendant of the Etheridges, the longtime Roanoke Island family that established Island Farm. At one time, the Mother Vine and its surrounding Mother Vineyard were part of the farm.

Now, the vine is the final piece that will complete the trinity. “Mother Vine was part of the Etheridges’ family property,” Wilson says. He and the organization “keep trying to get more of the land back to our little farm.”

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For much of the 20th century, Mother Vineyard Road was mostly unpaved with just a few houses. Other grapevines — believed to be descendants of the Mother Vine — made up the Mother Vineyard and stretched for acres, creating a divide between the road and a sandy beach where children would bike to play in the shallow sound waters, their dogs trailing close behind.

“Mom loved seeing the kids come up on their bikes. She’d invite them in,” Wilson recalls. “As Mother Vineyard became more and more developed, it upset her to see neighbors put up ‘No Trespassing’ signs, stopping access to the water. She wanted it to always be welcoming.”

At Estelle’s urging, John and Jack bought a parcel of Mother Vineyard near the beach and transferred it to OBC in 2018. “It’s in Mom’s will that she wanted it to be for dogs and children and bicycles in perpetuity,” Wilson says. “We don’t have any public lands at Mother Vineyard attached to Roanoke Sound, and my mom wanted at least one little piece of land that was.”

Estelle and Jack took their roles as the Mother Vine’s stewards seriously. In addition to maintaining the property for decades, they revived the Old Girl from a deadly poisoning in 2010 that caught the attention of everyone from NC State and NPR to the Los Angeles Times. In the last 15 years of their lives, they discussed its future extensively. “It was just Mom and Dad and Billy and me talking about the future of Mother Vine and what could be done,” Wilson remembers.

They didn’t want it to be cut down; they didn’t want the land to be overly developed. When determining who could assume care of the vine and protect the surrounding land for future generations, the choice was simple: “Our joint decision was that it should be transferred to Outer Banks Conservationists to be available for the public to view and take pictures of it forever,” Wilson says.

Ladd Bayliss, executive director of Outer Banks Conservationists. photograph by Chris Hannant

For OBC, the partnership was mutual: “It’s a natural responsibility for OBC to assume based on the conservation work we’re already doing, because [the Mother Vine] does need to be looked after and cared for,” Executive Director Ladd Bayliss says. The full transfer will include the Wilson family’s house, so a dedicated staff member can live on-site and look after the vine.

By protecting the Mother Vine, the Wilsons’ legacy is preserving a piece of old Roanoke Island. As a boy, Jack learned from his grandfather that the gnarled vine that once belonged to their farm was the oldest cultivated grapevine in North America. As a girl, Estelle would walk from downtown Manteo past the Mother Vineyard to Fort Raleigh, where she played a flower girl in the inaugural production of The Lost Colony. This was a time when Andy Griffith’s house was one of the only ones on Roanoke Sound between the Mother Vine and Fort Raleigh. Look at the North End of Roanoke Island today, and you wouldn’t recognize it — a bulwark along the sound protects miles of homes and jetties and docks.

Thanks to Estelle’s wishes, however, there will always be a lot that welcomes passersby to marvel at the massive vine and stoop under its arbor. There will always be a place that invites visitors to stroll behind the house with a child or dog or bicycle in tow. When they do, they’ll take in the view where the yard meets Roanoke Sound — a view that has cultivated interest for 400 years.