State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Conservation Movement: Water Conservation
The conservation movement in North Carolina began with methods of maintaining the timber supply and restrictions on wasteful colonial hunting practices. Some eighteenth-century North Carolinians noted the effects of wasteful practices...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Concervation Movement: Programs and Initiatives
A phenomenal growth of land trusts or conservancies, similar in focus to the Nature Conservancy began to occur statewide beginning in the mid-1980s. For instance, the Triangle Land Conservancy was established in 1983 to support native...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Fontana Dam
Fontana Dam, the largest dam of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) system, is located on the Little Tennessee River in Graham County. Completed in 1945, it is a gravity-type concrete structure 480 feet high, 2,365 feet long, and 376...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Outer Banks
The Outer Banks are a chain of barrier islands that skirt the coast of North Carolina from the Virginia border to Cape Lookout through Currituck, Dare, Hyde, and Carteret Counties. More than 175 miles long, they are separated as much as...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Population: Change
Census population estimates for 2009 indicate that North Carolina continues to be one of the fastest-growing US states. Between the 2000 Census and July 1, 2009, the state's population grew by 16.5%, compared with the US growth rate of...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Transportation Improvements in the 1920s
When World War I ended in 1918 and the troops came home, folks felt optimistic about the future and eager to get on with their lives. This optimism led to an extraordinary decade that brought major changes in the way citizens traveled by...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Telegraph
The telegraph was an electronic means for the rapid and reliable transmission of coded information over extended distances. In time it was also perfected to interpret and print the electronic symbols into readable text. By 1848 a...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Telephones
Telephones began to appear in North Carolina beginning in 1879, three years after Alexander Graham Bell's new invention had first been introduced at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. On 10 March of that year, a telephone was...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: German Settlers
German settlers first came to what is now North Carolina as part of the second expedition sent to the Roanoke area by Sir Walter Raleigh in the 1580s. The largest influx of German people to North Carolina, however, occurred in the...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Logging
For more than four centuries, North Carolinians have benefited from the commercial use of the state's timber resources. As early as the seventeenth century, the Carolina colony's rich forests gave rise to a lucrative naval stores...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: General Demographics
The most dramatic change in North Carolina's demographic history post-colonization has been the rapid change in its ethnic composition. For many decades the state has been characterized by a population that was dominated by whites and a...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Windmills
Windmills were so common along the North Carolina coast at the time of the Civil War that Charles F. Johnson, a Union soldier stationed on Hatteras Island, later wrote that there were "a greater number than I supposed were in existence...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Oil
Geologists for many years have recognized that North Carolina is "dry hole country" with almost no potential for hydrocarbon reserves. Despite this fact, several individuals and companies have drilled for oil within the borders of the...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Coal
Coal in North Carolina is limited to two belts of Triassic sediment: the sporadic Dan River belt and the larger Deep River belt, which runs along the Deep River in Lee, Moore, and Chatham Counties. Read on to learn about the uses and...
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Edenton North Carolina: Homepage
Read the story of the quaint town of Edenton, North Carolina, the first permanent settlement and former capital of the state.
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Historical Highlights of North Carolina
A brief, concise history of North Carolina spanning from the time of the first European contact to the the twentieth century.
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Dismal Swamp Canal
Dismal Swamp Canal, believed to be the oldest existing excavated waterway in America, runs generally north and south for 22 miles between Deep Creek, Va., and South Mills, N.C. The canal connects the Elizabeth and Pasquotank Rivers,...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Latinos
Latinos, also referred to as Hispanics, lived in North Carolina in relatively small numbers until the 1980s, when many people of Mexican and Central American descent began coming to the state in search of seasonal farm work. By the end...
State Library of North Carolina
N Cpedia: Gold Mining in the Uwharries
In the early decades of the 1800s, the southern Piedmont's gold mines attracted prospectors, investors, and miners. Tar Heel gold had first been found in 1799 on John Reed's farm in Cabarrus County, several miles west of the Uwharrie...