Wanchese, North Carolina

Wanchese occupies the southern end of Roanoke Island, a few miles down NC-345 from Manteo, and reads as a working village rather than a vacation destination — there's little in the way of lodging or shops, and that's the point. Named for Chief Wanchese, a Roanoke Island leader who sailed to England with the first Roanoke expedition in 1584 and returned deeply skeptical of English intentions, it has functioned as a fishing community for far longer than written history covers: archaeological digs at the Tillett Site here have turned up evidence of fishing settlements dating back roughly 1,100 years, and artifacts as old as 8000 BC.

The Outer Banks' Commercial Fishing Center

Wanchese is the working harbor of the Outer Banks, home to the Wanchese Seafood Industrial Park, established in 1981, along with the boatyards that have built and repaired the region's fishing fleet since the 1940s. Fish houses including Wanchese Fish Company, founded in 1936, and Etheridge Seafood still process the day's catch dockside much as they always have.

A Real Working Village

Visitors come to Wanchese to watch boats unload, buy fresh seafood straight off the dock, or tour a working boatbuilder's yard — not for beach access, which sits several miles away across the island. It's the clearest look on the Outer Banks at the commercial fishing industry that shaped the region long before tourism did.