Bogue Banks - Points of Interest

Points of Interest

The Emerald Isle Coast Guard Station is located on the western end of Bogue Banks; Fort Macon State Park, located on the eastern end, beyond Atlantic Beach, saw action during the Civil War; there the ornithologist and naturalist Elliott Coues spent two years, 1869–70, as US Army surgeon, taking the opportunity to study the sea birds, marsh birds and shore birds that nested there, noting lynx and mink, "describing a coastal world scarcely touched by commercial fishing, much less by the unrestrained tourism and real-estate development of today". Today, with some of the highest sand dunes on the East Coast, it is North Carolina's most visited state park. The North Carolina Aquarium, one of three, is located in Pine Knoll Shores in the middle of the island. Surrounding the aquarium is the Theodore Roosevelt Natural Area, a 265-acre (1.07 km2) maritime forest owned, maintained and protected by the state. It is one of the few remaining maritime forests on North Carolina's barrier islands. A historic marker stands at the corner of N.C. 58 and Roosevelt Boulevard (at mile marker 7), noting the spot of the first landing of Europeans on the North Carolina coast. Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator in the service of France, explored the state's coast from Cape Fear to Kitty Hawk in 1524. His voyage along the coast marked the first recorded European contact with what is now North Carolina.