Fort Raleigh National Historic Site

Information about the Lost Colony, the Civil War, Virginia Dare as well as thoughtful explorations into cultural conflict in this area and women's role in the 1587 Lost Colony.

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• How Do You Lose a Colony Myth and history about the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
• Lesson plan: Writing a Ghost Story/ Mystery Building upon the students' knowledge base of Blackbeard the Pirate, the numerous shipwrecks off of the N.C. coast, myths, and legends of the Carolinas, and/or The Lost Colony, students will write a ghost story or mystery narrative of their own.
• In search for the Lost Colony No one knows what happened to the "Lost Colonists" of Roanoke Island -- but that has only made their story more interesting. Over the past 400 years, historians, archaeologists, storytellers, and outright liars have developed a number of theories about the vanished settlers.
• Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony: Fact and legend In 1587, a group of British citizens set up a colony on Roanoke Island in hopes of establishing the first permanent English settlement in the New World. The colony's governor sailed to England and returned three years later to find the rest of the colonists had vanished. Myths and legends have arisen attempting to explain the mystery of the Lost Colony. In one legend, the governor's granddaughter is transformed into a white doe by a jealous Indian witch-doctor.
• Fort Raleigh and the Lost Colony England's first two settlements in the New World differed in character and purpose: The first short-lived colony, inhabited entirely by men, was set up as a stake in the newly discovered Americas and a base of privateering against French and Spanish shipping. The second was intended as a permanent colony and was settled by men, women and children. Their disappearance is a mystery that remains unsolved nearly 400 years later.

Related pages

• The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony: During the Civil War, former slaves freed by the Union army and African Americans who escaped to Union lines were given a village on Roanoke Island.
• Tannenbaum Historic Park: Students can explore the past through the historic buildings and artifacts found at Greensboro's Historic Tannenbaum Park.
• Paul Green's The Lost Colony: On the Fourth of July, 1937, a new form of American drama was born on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, as a part of the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first English settlers in North America.

Related topics

• Learn more about Civil War, Colonies, Dare County, North Carolina, Roanoke, Virginia Dare, historic sites, and history.

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Come visit the National Park Service’s Fort Raleigh National Historic Site. You will find information about the Lost Colony, the Civil War, Virginia Dare as well as thoughtful explorations into cultural conflict in this area and women’s role in the 1587 Lost Colony

Fort Raleigh offers a unique educational program for students. For information on visiting this historic site, please call the Lindsay Warren Visitor Center at (252) 473-5772. There is no admission fee.

Educators will find Roanoke Revisited Heritage Education Program resources to use in conjunction with a field trip or in studying the Lost Colony in the classroom. Units include Elizabethan Expansion, Exploration of Roanoke Island, 1584, Ralegh’s First Colony, 1585 - 1586, John White’s Watercolors, The Lost Colony of 1587, Links With Jamestown and New England, Search for the “Cittie Of Ralegh”, and more.

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