North Carolina's Coastal Region Facts

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Three hundred miles of sea and sunshine await on the Atlantic coastline of North Carolina. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pirates and shipwrecks were notorious here., In the 1800s, Civil War soldiers commandeered the lighthouses and stately mansions that pepper the coast.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is one of 10 lighthouses operating on North Carolina's coast and the tallest in America at 208 feet. The candy-cane-striped structure projects light more than 20 miles out over the once-precarious Diamond Shoals.

One of America's most baffling mysteries occurred near what is now Manteo. In the 1580s, a group of colonists sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh suddenly and mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Their whereabouts remain a mystery today.

The oldest town in North Carolina is Bath, incorporated in 1705.

The tallest natural sand dune on the East Coast is Jockey's Ridge at Nags Head, which stands 110-140 feet, depending on winds.

Man's first successful powered flight was made by Orville and Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills in Kitty Hawk.

Founded in the 1970s, Duplin Winery was one of the first wineries in North Carolina after Prohibition. It is still operating today at Rose Hill with a 1,000,000-gallon tank capacity. It is one of the largest wineries in the South.

Scuba divers are increasingly drawn to the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" off the NC coast, where the remains of more than 2,000 ships have settled to the ocean floor over the centuries.

North Carolina is home to three aquariums - offering workshops, educational trips and displays of live marine life - located in Manteo, Kure Beach and Pine Knoll Shores.

New Bern is the second-oldest town in the state and was the first state capital. Royal Governor William Tryon made this seaport capital of the colony of North Carolina in 1770. After the Revolutionary War, New Bern became the capitol of the independent state of North Carolina.

New Bern is the birthplace of Pepsi-Cola.

The only area in which the carnivorous Venus Flytrap lives indigenously is within a 100-mile radius of Wilmington.

The Gulf Stream makes its closest approach to land off the coast of North Carolina. This warm water current helps to make this one of the best fishing spots on the Atlantic Seaboard.

The 152,000-acre Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeast North Carolina is one of the last remaining strongholds for black bear on the East Coast and has successfully restored red wolves to the area through a captive breeding program. The refuge conducts Red Wolf Howling Safaris to listen to the "music" of the wolves.