559 markers in the database — showing 481–540.
Raleigh, NC
Founded in 1845 under Governor John Motley Morehead, this state school gave visually impaired North Carolinians a place to learn in an era when such children were often left without instruction. It was one of the antebellum South's pioneering special-education institutions. Its working campus stood a few blocks south of this marker.
Halifax, NC
On April 12, 1776, North Carolina's Provincial Congress meeting at Halifax authorized its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence — the first official action by an entire colony calling for a break with Britain. Adopted nearly three months before the Declaration of Independence, the Halifax Resolves put North Carolina at the leading edge of the independence movement. The date still appears on the state flag and seal.
Norlina, NC
Norlina grew up around the railroad in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a junction town in North Carolina's Warren County where the comings and goings of trains set the rhythm of daily life. In towns like this, an inn was more than a place to sleep — it was where travelers, drummers, and railroad crews ate, swapped news, and waited out connections. The Landmark Inn carries that tradition of small-town Southern hospitality, the kind of building that anchored a community's Main Street and gave a face to the town for anyone passing through.
Concord, NC
The Trading Path was a colonial overland route that took shape in the 1600s, carrying traders and goods south from the Virginia settlements toward the Catawba and Waxhaw peoples of the Carolina Piedmont. Much of it followed far older Indigenous trails. This artery of deerskins, cloth, and manufactured wares helped open the backcountry to European settlement, and it passed near this spot.
Waxhaw, NC
Beginning in the seventeenth century, the Trading Path ran from Petersburg, Virginia, deep into the Carolina backcountry to reach the Waxhaw people. Traders drove packhorses along the route, exchanging European goods for deerskins and building the earliest commercial ties between colony and Native nations. The path passed nearby, threading through country that would soon fill with settlers.
Charlotte, NC
The Trading Path, dating from the 1600s, linked Petersburg, Virginia, to the Catawba people of the Carolina Piedmont. Along it moved traders, packhorses, and the goods that bound Native nations to distant colonial markets. Following routes long used by Indigenous travelers, the path passed nearby and helped funnel settlers into the region.
Edgecombe County, NC
Thelonious Monk, one of the most original composers in American music and a founding architect of bebop, was born about a mile south of this marker before his family moved north to New York. His angular piano style and compositions like "'Round Midnight" (1944) reshaped modern jazz. The marker anchors a global musical legend to his eastern North Carolina roots.
Edenton, NC
Thomas C. Manning (1825–1887) began his career teaching at Edenton Academy before moving to Louisiana, where he served as that state's Confederate adjutant general from 1863 to 1865. After the war he became chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court and later U.S. Minister to Mexico. This marker notes the North Carolina home where his remarkable public life began.
Edenton, NC
Thomas Child served as attorney-general of the North Carolina colony from 1745 to 1761 and acted as secretary to Lord Granville, the proprietor whose vast district covered the colony's northern half. Child led a faction that clashed sharply with royal Governor Arthur Dobbs in the turbulent politics of the mid-eighteenth century. His home stood two blocks south of this marker in colonial Edenton, a hub of provincial government.
Shelby, NC
Thomas Dixon Jr. (1864-1946) was a North Carolina minister, politician, and best-selling author whose novel The Clansman became the basis for D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. A cinematic landmark, the film was also a notorious glorification of the Ku Klux Klan that inflamed racial hatred. His grave lies 1,500 feet north.
Greenville, NC
Thomas J. Jarvis served as governor of North Carolina from 1879 to 1885, later representing the nation as minister to Brazil and briefly serving in the United States Senate. A leading figure in the state's post-Reconstruction politics, he was long associated with the cause of public education. His home stands three blocks south and his grave one block west of this marker.
Raleigh, NC
Thomas R. Jernigan spent some thirty years as an American diplomat and negotiator in China, also serving as consul in both Japan and China. A lawyer, editor, and author, he brought a Carolinian's eye to the affairs of the far Pacific. His home stood two blocks east of here.
Asheville, NC
This Asheville house is the boyhood home immortalized as the boardinghouse in Thomas Wolfe's autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel. So closely did Wolfe draw on the people and rooms of his real Blue Ridge upbringing that the book caused a local uproar upon publication. Recognized as a National Historic Landmark, the house preserves the world that shaped one of America's most distinctive literary voices.
Pender County, NC
A self-made patriot from North Carolina's Cape Fear region, Timothy Bloodworth rose to serve in the first U.S. Congress and later in the U.S. Senate from 1795 to 1801. He is best remembered as a leading Antifederalist who fought against ratifying the new U.S. Constitution in 1788 and 1789, fearing it handed too much power to a distant central government. His stance placed him at the heart of the great debate over how the young nation should be governed.
Moore County, NC
In February 1776, as North Carolina's Loyalists rallied to the Crown, area Tories gathered at Alexander Morrison's home in the Cross Hill community before marching toward the coast. Their advance ended at the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, where Patriot militia routed the Loyalist force in one of the Revolution's first Southern victories.
New Bern, NC
Completed in 1770, Tryon Palace served as the colonial capitol and residence of North Carolina's royal governors, and then as the first state capitol until 1794. Its lavish construction, funded by taxes, stirred backcountry resentment that fed the Regulator movement. The building burned in 1798 and was meticulously reconstructed in the 1950s.
Gaston County, NC
In the tense summer of 1775, as news of Lexington and Concord rippled south, the citizens of Tryon County in the western Carolina backcountry gathered to put their defiance in writing. Their resolves pledged resistance to what they called British tyranny and affirmed their rights as free people — one of a wave of local declarations that swept North Carolina that year, well before the Continental Congress declared independence. Signed here in August 1775, the Tryon Resolves joined kindred documents like the Mecklenburg and Tryon-area resolutions in giving the Revolution its grassroots voice in the Piedmont.
Bryson City, NC
Tsali was a Cherokee man who resisted the forced removal of his people in 1838, escaping into the mountains from the U.S. troops rounding up the Cherokee for the Trail of Tears. He was captured and executed nearby. His act of defiance became legend, later dramatized in the outdoor drama Unto These Hills.
Carthage, NC
Founded by Thomas B. Tyson and W. T. Jones, the Tyson & Jones buggy factory made Carthage a Southern center of horse-drawn vehicle manufacturing. From the 1850s into the 1920s the firm sold buggies across the South, turning out as many as 3,000 a year at its peak before the automobile ended the trade.
Lincolnton, NC
This building began as the Pleasant Retreat Academy, chartered in 1813 during an era when private academies were the backbone of American secondary education. Over the generations it also served the community as a public library and museum before being preserved as the U.D.C. Memorial Hall. It stands one block east.
Fayetteville, NC
Authorized by Congress in 1836, the U.S. Arsenal at Fayetteville was seized by the Confederacy in 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War and became an important Southern munitions site. In March 1865, General Sherman's army destroyed it during the march that helped end the war, leaving ruins that still stand nearby. The arsenal's arc traces the whole span of the sectional conflict.
Hyde County, NC
On this rise—still called Loop Shack Hill—the U.S. Navy ran the Advanced Amphibious Training Base at Ocracoke from December 1943 to January 1946. Here it trained the Beach Jumpers, special units that used sound, lights, and pyrotechnics to stage diversionary 'phantom' landings meant to deceive the enemy during World War II.
New Bern, NC
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico was based at New Bern for four decades, from 1907 until 1947, patrolling the sounds and rivers of eastern North Carolina. In an age before highways and modern navigation aids, such cutters enforced maritime law, aided vessels in distress, and served through two world wars. Her long posting made her a fixture of the working waterfront on the Neuse and Trent rivers.
Plymouth, NC
The main line of Union defenses during the Battle of Plymouth ran across the road at this point from April 17 to 20, 1864. Dug earthworks like these, bristling with artillery, were meant to hold the river town against any land approach. They were ultimately overrun when Confederate forces pressed the assault on all sides.
Asheville, NC
The University of North Carolina at Asheville traces its roots to 1927, when it opened as a junior college; it became Asheville-Biltmore College in 1936 and moved to this site in 1961. In 1969 it joined the University of North Carolina system as a full campus. Its growth mirrors the twentieth-century expansion of public higher education across the state.
Chapel Hill, NC
Chartered in 1789 under the mandate of North Carolina's 1776 constitution, the University of North Carolina opened its doors in 1795 — the first state university in the nation to admit students. Its founding gave concrete form to the revolutionary generation's belief that a republic required public higher education.
Hyde County, NC
During the War of 1812, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Mercury patrolled the waters around Ocracoke Inlet, a vital gateway into North Carolina's sounds and the port of New Bern. In 1813, as a British squadron menaced the coast, the small cutter slipped past the enemy offshore to carry warning inland.
New Hanover County, NC
Launched on June 13, 1940, the battleship USS North Carolina (BB-55) became one of the most decorated American warships of World War II, serving throughout the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Decommissioned in 1947, she was saved from scrapping by a statewide campaign and berthed here as a memorial in 1961. Today she honors the state's World War II veterans.
Watauga County, NC
In 1842, deep in the Blue Ridge mountains of western North Carolina, Episcopal Bishop Levi Silliman Ives founded a mission at Valle Crucis — Latin for 'vale of the cross.' It was an ambitious effort to plant a religious and educational community among remote mountain settlements, and though the original order faltered, Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire revived the work in 1895. The mission endured to become one of the lasting institutions of the Carolina high country.
Statesville, NC
Now a historical museum, this house served as the temporary home of North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance in April 1865, after General William T. Sherman's forces captured Raleigh in the closing days of the Civil War. With the Confederate government collapsing, the wartime governor took refuge here in Statesville. The house stands about 350 yards southwest.
Catawba, NC
The Veterans Garden of Honor in Catawba, North Carolina, is a community memorial dedicated in 2015 to honor local men and women who served in the armed forces. Like thousands of veterans memorials in towns across America, it gathers the sacrifice of many generations of service into a single place of remembrance and gratitude. Its dedication reflects a small town's enduring commitment to those who wore the uniform.
Pitt County, NC
At the height of the Cold War, this quiet stretch of eastern North Carolina became a powerful voice reaching across the world. From 1963 to 1989, a transmitting station near Greenville relayed Voice of America broadcasts to Europe, Africa, and Latin America, beaming American news and culture past the Iron Curtain. Fields of towering antennas turned rural Pitt County into a node in the global information war.
Tarboro, NC
William Dorsey Pender graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1854 and rose to become one of the Confederacy's youngest major generals. He was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and died at age 29. Pender is buried four blocks east of this marker in Tarboro.
Tarboro, NC
William L. Saunders wore many hats in 19th-century North Carolina: Confederate colonel, historian who edited the monumental "Colonial Records of North Carolina," and secretary of state from 1879 to 1891. His scholarly editing preserved the documentary record of the colony's earliest history. His grave lies four blocks east of this marker in Tarboro.
Elizabeth City, NC
W. O. Saunders was a writer and outspoken editorialist who ran his newspaper, The Independent, in Elizabeth City from 1908 to 1937. Known for a combative editorial voice, he championed causes and worked to promote his corner of northeastern North Carolina. His newspaper office stood about fifty yards east of this marker.
Concord, NC
W. R. Odell was a leading textile manufacturer in the Cabarrus County mill country and served in the state senate from 1905 to 1907. He built his career during the Piedmont's great cotton-mill boom, when the region became the heart of Southern textile manufacturing. Known as a friend of education, he lived a block west of this marker.
Morganton, NC
Waightstill Avery served as North Carolina's first attorney general from 1777 to 1779 and sat in the provincial congresses that steered the colony toward independence, also taking the field as a colonel during the Revolution. His home, "Swan Ponds," stood a few miles southwest of present-day Morganton in the Catawba Valley frontier.
Charlotte, NC
In May 1765 backcountry settlers, angry over disputed land titles, attacked a surveying party near this spot in what became known as the 'War of Sugar Creek.' The clash grew from deep tensions between frontier farmers and distant colonial authorities over property and fair dealing. Those same grievances soon swelled into the wider Regulator movement.
Concord, NC
Warren Clay Coleman (1849–1904), born into slavery, rose to become a prosperous Concord merchant and entrepreneur. In 1897 he founded what is recognized as the nation's first textile mill owned and operated by African Americans, running it until his death in 1904. The mill building stands about 350 yards north.
Buncombe County, NC
Warren Wilson College began in 1894 as the Asheville Farm School, founded by the Presbyterian Church to educate mountain boys through a combination of study and manual labor. It grew into a four-year college in 1966 and remains known for its work-study ethos. The campus lies about a mile and a half east of this marker.
Fayetteville, NC
Warren Winslow rose quickly through North Carolina politics, serving as acting governor in 1854 and then in Congress through the secession crisis. As the state joined the Confederacy in 1861, he helped negotiate the transfer of the U.S. Arsenal at Fayetteville into Southern hands—an act that would make the town a Confederate manufacturing center. He died in 1862, early in the war he had helped bring to his doorstep.
High Point, NC
Laid out and named in 1850, Washington Street grew into the beating heart of High Point's African American community. Through the long decades of segregation, its blocks filled with Black-owned businesses, churches, doctors' offices, theaters, and gathering places—a self-sustaining commercial and cultural district built when Jim Crow shut Black residents out of the white downtown. By 1960 it stretched across a broad swath of the city, a point of pride and independence forged in the face of discrimination.
Craven County, NC
On April 20, 1791, President George Washington passed through this area during his grand tour of the southern states, lodging at the nearby home of Col. John Allen. Washington undertook the journey to see the young nation firsthand and to bind its far-flung citizens to the new federal government. His detailed travel diaries record stops like this one along the route.
Halifax, NC
In the spring of 1791, President George Washington undertook a grand tour of the Southern states to strengthen unity in the young nation, and on April 16-17 he stopped in the historic town of Halifax. Crowds turned out to greet the president, who recorded his travels in his diary. The visit tied this Roanoke River town to the nation's first chief executive.
Caswell County, NC
In the spring of 1791, President George Washington set out on a grand tour of the Southern states, determined to see the young republic with his own eyes and be seen by its citizens. His last overnight stop in North Carolina, on June 3, was at the home of Dudley Gatewood in what is now Caswell County. Such stops knit the fragile new nation together, putting the flesh-and-blood president in front of far-flung Americans.
Salisbury, NC
In the spring of 1791, President George Washington set out on a grand tour of the southern states, determined to see the young nation for himself and to knit its scattered communities to the new federal government. On May 30–31 he stopped at Salisbury, then a bustling crossroads town of the Carolina backcountry. Local citizens turned out to greet the first president as he made his careful, unifying circuit through the region.
Charlotte, NC
WBT radio, established in 1922, ranks among the oldest broadcast stations in the South and long carried live country music into homes across the Carolinas. Its television sibling, WBTV, signed on in July 1949 as the region's early foray into the new medium. Both broadcast from studios at this location until 1955.
Edenton, NC
Weapemeoc was the principal town of the Weapemeoc people, an Algonquian nation whose homeland lay along the sounds of what is now northeastern North Carolina. When Ralph Lane and his colonists from the 1585–86 Roanoke expedition ranged through the region, they encountered this thriving Indigenous community near present-day Edenton. The marker recalls a Native world that long predated and briefly overlapped with England's first attempts at American settlement.
Edgecombe County, NC
Westray Battle Boyce Long led the Women's Army Corps in the immediate aftermath of World War II, directing the branch from 1945 to 1947 as the military demobilized and reckoned with the permanent place of women in its ranks. Her Legion of Merit recognized service in the North African theater in 1943–1944, when the WAC first proved itself close to the front. This roadside marker points to her grave a short distance south.
Lenoir County, NC
This congregation traces its roots to about 1760, when it was organized as a Free Will Baptist church on the eastern North Carolina frontier, and it has been affiliated with the Disciples of Christ since 1843. Part of the present church building dates to 1858. It stands about a mile northwest of the marker, a witness to more than two and a half centuries of rural worship.
Halifax County, NC
Whitaker's Chapel began as an Anglican congregation in 1740, planted in the colonial backcountry before American independence, and later became Methodist. In 1828 it hosted the first annual conference of the Methodist Protestant Church, a reform-minded body that broke away in pursuit of more democratic, lay-inclusive church governance. The structure standing today is the third to occupy the site.
Lincolnton, NC
William A. Hoke (1851-1925) rose through the North Carolina courts to serve two decades as an associate justice and one year as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, after thirteen years as a superior court judge. His birthplace stood on this site.
Windsor, NC
Born in this corner of colonial North Carolina, William Blount rose to sit in the Continental Congress and to sign the United States Constitution in 1787. President Washington named him governor of the Territory South of the River Ohio, and Blount went on to become one of Tennessee's first U.S. senators as the young nation pushed west. His career bridges the Revolutionary founding and the opening of the trans-Appalachian frontier.
Raleigh, NC
William Boylan was a leading figure in early-19th-century Raleigh, serving as president of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad and the State Bank while publishing the newspaper Minerva from 1803 to 1810. His interests spanned finance, transportation, and the press in the young state capital. His home stood a few blocks southwest of here.
Orange County, NC
In the mid-18th century, much of North Carolina's backcountry was still being mapped and parceled out from the vast Granville District, the surviving proprietary land grant of the Earl Granville. William Churton was the surveyor who charted that country, laying out lands, towns, and roads as settlers pushed inland. In 1749 he helped carry the disputed North Carolina–Virginia boundary some ninety miles farther west, fixing a line that shaped both colonies.
Charlotte, NC
In the summer of 1898, the Spanish-American War carried American soldiers to the hills outside Santiago de Cuba, where the fighting on July 1 around San Juan Heights became the war's defining land battle. William Ewen Shipp, a North Carolina–born West Point graduate serving as a first lieutenant with the 10th Cavalry—one of the celebrated regiments of Black 'Buffalo Soldiers' led by white officers—was killed that day as his men pressed the assault. This monument in his home city of Charlotte gathers his short life into a single elegant image, calling him 'the very straightest plant' amongst a grove.
New Bern, NC
William Gaston served as a justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1833 to 1844 and was a leading lawmaker of the early republic. A Roman Catholic in an era of legal disabilities against them, he championed religious liberty for the state's Catholics. He also wrote the words to "The Old North State," later adopted as the official state song.
Monroe, NC
William Henry Belk opened his first small store in Monroe on May 29, 1888, launching what would become one of the South's great department store chains. A merchant, philanthropist, and devout Presbyterian layman, Belk built a retail empire while giving generously to churches, schools, and hospitals across the region.
Hillsborough, NC
William Hooper made his home in Hillsborough, and from this town helped launch a nation. One of North Carolina's three signers of the Declaration of Independence, he pledged his name to the break with Britain in 1776. His house still stands just to the west, and he was buried only steps away, tying this ground directly to the founding generation.
Duplin County, NC
Appointed North Carolina's stamp master in 1765, William Houston resigned his post under pressure from a public demonstration in Wilmington, one of the colony's fierce protests against the Stamp Act. A physician who practiced at Sarecta, four miles east, he became an unlikely figure in the colonial resistance to British taxation. His retreat helped ensure the hated stamps were never distributed in the colony.