North Carolina
State in E USA; nicknamed Tar Heel State/Old North State
Area:
136,400 sq km/52,650 sq mi
Capital:
Raleigh
Towns and Cities:
Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem
Physical:
Great Smoky Mountain national park; Blue Ridge Mountains, with Blowing
Rock (1,200 m/4,000 ft); Cape Hatteras national seashore, with marshland
and sandy beaches; Cape Lookout national seashore
Features:
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, 63 m/208 ft, the tallest in the USA; the
Piedmont; Ocracoke Island, with Ocracoke Lighthouse (1823); Fort Raleigh
national historic site, Roanoke Island, site of the first English colony,
1587; Edenton, with the Cupola House and Gardens (about 1725), Chowan
County Courthouse (1767), and St Paul's Church; Tryon Palace, New Bern
(the Colonial capitol, dating from the 1770s); USS North Carolina Battleship
Memorial, Wilmington; Biltmore Estate Gardens, Asheville, the 1890s
home of George Vanderbilt, a 225-room French Renaissance style chateau
designed by Richard Morris Hunt, with gardens landscaped by Frederick
Law Olmsted; the Wright Brothers national memorial, Kill Devil Hills,
the site of Wilbur and Orville Wright's first powered flight from the
sand dunes at Kitty Hawk; Carl Sandburg home national historic site;
University of North Carolina (the Chapel Hill campus, founded 1795,
was the first state university in the USA); Duke University
Industries:
Tobacco, corn, soya beans, livestock, poultry, textiles, clothing,
cigarettes, furniture, chemicals, machinery; tourism
Population:
(1995) 7,195,100
Famous people:
Billy Graham, O Henry, Jesse Jackson, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe
History:
After England's Roanoke Island colony was unsuccessful 1585 and 1587,
permanent settlement was made 1663; it was one of the original
13 states 1789. Walter Raleigh sent out 108 colonists from Plymouth,
England, 1585 under his cousin Richard Grenville, who established
the first English settlement in the New World on Roanoke Island;
the survivors were taken home by Francis Drake 1586. Further attempts
failed here, since the settlers were found to have disappeared.
In the Civil War, North Carolina was the last state to join the
Confederacy but provided more troops than any other Southern state.
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