North Carolina

On December 17, 1903, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, changed the world on a windy strip of sand in North Carolina. Orville Wright flew a homemade airplane for 12 seconds over the dunes at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk. It covered just 120 feet.

The brothers made three more flights that day. The longest went 852 feet in 59 seconds. Only five people watched it happen. In 1969, Neil Armstrong carried a piece of that plane to the moon.

Cherokee, Tuscarora, Catawba, and other Native peoples lived across this land for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. In 1587, English settlers landed on Roanoke Island to start a colony. Their leader sailed home for supplies and didn't return for three years.

When he got back, everyone had vanished. The only clue was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a post. Nobody has ever solved the mystery.

Permanent English settlement came in the mid-1600s. Colonists took Tuscarora lands and enslaved their people, leading to the Tuscarora War of 1711. After heavy losses, most Tuscarora survivors moved north to join the Haudenosaunee in New York.

North Carolina was the first colony to formally call for independence from Britain, passing the Halifax Resolves in April 1776. The state was also one of the last to join the Confederacy in 1861, but once in, it lost more soldiers than any other Southern state.

On February 1, 1960, four Black college students sat down at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro and refused to leave. Within days, sit-ins spread across the state and the country, sparking a wave of protests that energized the civil rights movement.

You can stand where the Wright Brothers launched at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. Walk the grounds of the Lost Colony site on Roanoke Island, or visit the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, built inside the original Woolworth's building.

In the mountains, tour the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the largest private home in America, or hike the Blue Ridge Parkway as it winds through the Appalachians.