The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse looks more like a red-roofed coastal cottage than a lighthouse, but its shining light has long aided Roanoke Island sailors and fishermen. Over the years, several lighthouses by that name have been stationed around the island. The current one in Manteo is a replica of an 1877 version that once stood in Wanchese. In 2004, decades after that lighthouse was decommissioned, the town of Manteo completed construction on the replica, paying tribute to a key part of Roanoke Island’s history.
104 Fernando Street
(252) 475-1750
photograph by Emily Chaplin and Chris Council
Established in 1867, the Roanoke River Lighthouse was once part of a string of beacons that guided travel to and from the thriving port of Plymouth, aiding the trade of everything from brandy to bacon. “There’s a good chance you would never be out of sight of one of these little river lighthouses,” Willie Drye, president of the Washington County Waterways Commission, says of the Roanoke River route from Plymouth to New Bern. A modern replica, built in 2003, sits about seven miles down the road from where the original lighthouse looked out on Albemarle Sound.
206 West Water Street
(252) 217-2204
Photography courtesy of Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077), North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, UNC Chapel Hill
The Price’s Creek Lighthouse was built in the late 1840s as one of eight beacons stationed along the Cape Fear River. Today, Price’s Creek is the only one still standing. At about 20 feet tall and made entirely of brick, it paints a starkly different picture than the towering lighthouses that dot the Outer Banks, but it played a crucial role in guiding ships to the port of Wilmington. “It’s the last river beacon on what was the most important river in North Carolina,” says John Moseley, who manages the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport. “There’s nothing else like it in the state.” Although the lighthouse is no longer accessible to the public, visitors aboard the ferry between Southport and Fort Fisher can still spot the structure from the river.
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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.
