Geography and Industry

From long, thin barrier islands in the east to the tallest mountains east of the Mississippi River to the west, North Carolina is home to a wide range of climates and terrains. Because of such barrier islands as Ocracoke and such famous capes as Cape Fear, Cape Lookout, and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina has a lot of large bays called “sounds.” The most important of these are Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, and they attract boaters, water-skiers, and fishing enthusiasts the year round. If you plan to visit North Carolina's shores, try to see places such as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk.

West of the barrier islands and the sounds lies the tidewater area. It is flat, humid, and riddled with swamps. Several large rivers run through it, including the Tar, Neuse, Cape Fear, and Roanoke rivers.

Farther west of the tidewater area is the Piedmont: rolling hills that are excellent farmland. The Piedmont rises at first gradually, then more steeply into the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are as rugged as any mountains east of the Rockies! The scenery is so breathtaking, and the climate is so mild, that western North Carolina is visited by campers and hikers year-round. North Carolina has four large national forests as well The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the Appalachian Trail passes through western North Carolina, so there are plenty of places to camp, fish, or hike.

Like its neighbor Virginia, North Carolina produces a lot of tobacco, a cash crop with a long history in the state. In fact, North Carolina is the leading producer of tobacco in the world. Since smoking cigarettes in this country has declined over the past few years, farmers in North Carolina have begun to grow other crops in greater numbers. Sweet potatoes, peanuts, corn, and soybeans have been grown in North Carolina for a long time, and now they are beginning to replace tobacco in fields throughout the state.

History

Before European exploration and settlement, the largest tribes in what is now North Carolina were the Tuscarora in the central part of the state and the Cherokee in the mountain valleys of the western part of the state. The Tuscarora eventually went to war with the English colonists. The result was a disaster. After the Tuscaroras lost their fight with the colonists of North Carolina, they were forced to move all the way to western New York, where their cousins the Iroquois welcomed them as the sixth nation in their confederacy.

The Cherokees handled the advancing frontier very differently. They adopted European clothes, language, and many other customs, including their farming practices. (The Cherokees will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4.)

You know from reading about Virginia earlier in this chapter that Jamestown was the first English settlement in North America. But, it wasn't the first English settlement in the New World. It was just the first permanent one! The first English colony in what is now the United States was not at Plymouth or Jamestown. It was Roanoke Colony, in what is now North Carolina.

Because it was so far away from England, Roanoke was difficult to establish, and it was hard to keep the colony supplied with food and even fresh water. This was a big problem. An expedition intended to resupply Roanoke found the colony deserted and its occupants gone without a trace and with no sign of a struggle! It seemed like the colonists had just disappeared. Carved into the post of one of the colony's houses was a single word: CROATOAN, (which is a slight misspelling of the name of a local Indian tribe, the Croatan). Whether this was a clue about what happened to the colonists of Roanoke, no one knows for certain.

It was another sixty years before settlers from the Virginia colony moved south and began to successfully establish homes in what was then called the Carolinas (after the Latin name of the English king Charles I). The Carolina colonies were officially separated into North and South Carolina in 1712, the same year that the Tuscarora War broke out.

In 1861 North Carolina joined eleven other southern slave states (states where slavery was legal at the time) in seceding from the Union and establishing the Confederate States of America. Aside from having most of its ports captured by the blockading Union Navy, North Carolina saw little fighting during the civil war that followed secession.

In late April of 1865, the last Confederate army still in the field surrendered to Union forces in North Carolina. This occurred more than two weeks after General Robert E. Lee's main army surrendered at Appomattox in Virginia.