North Carolina Travel

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In 1584 two explorers returning to England from the New World told Sir Walter Raleigh about a remarkable land: “the most plentiful, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world.” Such superlatives were more apt than these early visitors knew, for this land — known today as North Carolina — claims the loftiest mountain east of the Mississippi (6,684-foot Mount Mitchell), the longest chain of barrier islands (the Outer Banks), the highest sand dune (140-foot Jockey’s Ridge), and the greatest natural diversity in the East (in this one state are more kinds of trees than in all of Europe).

North Carolina is also a land of many firsts: the first three attempts to colonize America, the first birth of an English child on American soil, the first American gold rush, the country’s first school of forestry, and the first successful airplane flight. And, in 1776, North Carolina was the first colony to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from Great Britain.