North Carolina is a state located on the Atlantic Seaboard in the southern region of the United States of America.
The capital is Raleigh. North Carolina was one of the original Thirteen Colonies, originally known as Carolina, and the home of the first English colony in the Americas.
On 20 May 1861, it became one of the last Confederate states to secede from the Union, and was readmitted on 4 July 1868.
It was also the location of the first successful manned powered heavier-than-air flight, by the Wright brothers, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk in 1903.
Today, it is a fast-growing state with an increasingly diverse economy and population. As of 1 July 2007, the population estimate is 9,061,032 (a 12% increase since 1 April 2000).
North Carolina has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to almost 6,700 feet (2,042 m) in the mountains.
The climate in the coastal and Piedmont regions of eastern and central North Carolina is similar to other southern states such as Georgia and South Carolina, while the climate in the western mountains is closer to that found in New England or the upper Midwest.
While the coastal plains, especially the tidewater areas, are strongly influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, the western, mountainous part of the state is more than 300 miles (500 km) from the coast, resulting in considerably less maritime influence.
As such, the climate of the state ranges from a warm, humid subtropical climate near the coast to a humid continental climate in the mountains. Most of the state falls in the humid subtropical zone.
Geography
North Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the east.
The United States Census Bureau classifies North Carolina as a southern state in the subcategory of being one of the South Atlantic States.
North Carolina topographic map
North Carolina topographic map
North Carolina consists of three main geographic sections: the coastal plain, which occupies the eastern 45% of the state; the Piedmont region, which contains the middle 35%; and the Appalachian Mountains and foothills.
The extreme eastern section of the state contains The Outer Banks, a string of sandy, narrow islands which form a barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and inland waterways.
The Outer Banks form two sounds—Albemarle Sound in the north and Pamlico Sound in the south.
They are the two largest landlocked sounds in the United States. Immediately inland, the coastal plain is relatively flat, with rich soils ideal for growing tobacco, soybeans, melons, and cotton.
The coastal plain is North Carolina's most rural section, with few large towns or cities. Agriculture remains an important industry. The major rivers of this section, the Neuse River, Tar River, Pamlico River, and the Cape Fear River, tend to be slow-moving and wide.
The coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the "fall line", a line which marks the elevation at which waterfalls first appear on streams and rivers. The Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the state's most urbanized and densely populated section - all five of the state's largest cities are located in the Piedmont.
It consists of gently rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. A number of small, isolated, and deeply eroded mountain ranges and peaks are located in the Piedmont, including the Sauratown Mountains, Pilot Mountain, the Uwharrie Mountains, Crowder's Mountain, King's Pinnacle, the Brushy Mountains, and the South Mountains.
The Piedmont ranges from about 300–400 feet (90–120 m) elevation in the east to over 1,000 feet (300 m) in the west.
Due to the rapid population growth of the Piedmont, many of the farms and much of the rural countryside in this region is being replaced by suburbanization - shopping centers, housing developments, and large corporate office parks. Agriculture is steadily declining in importance in this region.
The major rivers of the Piedmont, such as the Yadkin and Catawba, tend to be fast-flowing, shallow, and narrow.
The western section of the state is part of the Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Appalachians located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, Great Balsam Mountains, Pisgah Mountains, and the Black Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest in the Eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet (2,037 m).
It is the highest point east of the Mississippi River. Although agriculture remains important, tourism has become the dominant industry in the mountains. One agricultural pursuit which has prospered and grown in recent decades is the growing and selling of Christmas Trees. Due to the higher altitude in the mountains, the climate often differs starkly from the rest of the state.
Winters in western North Carolina typically feature significant snowfall and subfreezing temperatures more akin to a midwestern state than a southern one.
North Carolina has 17 major river basins. Five of the state's river basins - the Hiwassee, Little Tennessee, French Broad, Watauga and New - are part of the Mississippi River Basin, which drains to the Gulf of Mexico.
All the others flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins, 11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the state's borders - the Cape Fear, Neuse, White Oak and Tar-Pamlico.
Climate
The geographical divisions of North Carolina are useful when discussing the climate of the state.
The coastal plain is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean which keeps temperatures mild in winter and moderate in the summer.
Daytime high temperatures on the coast average less than 89 °F (31.6 °C) during the summer. In the winter, the coast has the mildest temperatures in the state, with daytime temperatures rarely dropping below 40 °F (4.4 °C); the average daytime winter temperature in the coastal plain is usually in the mid-60's.
Temperatures in the coastal plain rarely drop below freezing even at night.
The coastal plain usually receives only one inch (2.5 cm) of snow and/or ice annually, and in some years there may be no snow or ice at all.
The Atlantic Ocean has less influence on the Piedmont region, and as a result the Piedmont has hotter summers and colder winters than the coast. Daytime highs in the Piedmont usually average over 90 °F (32.2 °C) in the summer.
While it is not common for temperatures to reach over 100 °F (37.8 °C) in North Carolina, when it happens, the highest temperatures are to be found in the lower areas of the Piedmont, especially around the city of Fayetteville.
Additionally, the weaker influence of the Atlantic Ocean means that temperatures in the Piedmont often fluctuate more widely than the coast.
In the winter, the Piedmont is much less mild than the coast, with daytime temperatures that are usually in the mid 50's, and temperatures often drop below freezing at night.
The region averages from 3-5 inches of snowfall annually in the Charlotte area to 6-8 inches in the Raleigh-Durham area.
The Piedmont is especially notorious for sleet and freezing rain. It can be heavy enough in some storms to snarl traffic and collapse trees and power lines.
Annual precipitation and humidity is lower in the Piedmont than either the mountains or the coast, but even at its lowest, the precipitation is a generous 40 in (102 cm) per year.
The Appalachian Mountains are the coolest area of the state, with daytime temperatures averaging in the low 40's and upper 30's for highs in the winter and often falling into the teens (−9 °C) or lower in winter nights. Relatively cool summers have temperatures rarely rising above 80 °F (26.7 °C).
Snowfall in the mountains is usually 14–20 in (36–51 cm) per year, but it is often greater in the higher elevations. For example, during the Blizzard of 1993 more than 50 inches (130 cm) of snow fell on Mount Mitchell.
Severe weather is not a rare event in North Carolina. On average, the state receives a direct hit from a hurricane once a decade. Tropical storms arrive every 3 or 4 years.
In some years several hurricanes or tropical storms can directly hit the state or brush across the coastal areas. Only Florida and Louisiana are hit by hurricanes more often.
On average, North Carolina has 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year, with some storms becoming severe enough to produce hail and damaging winds.
Although many people believe that hurricanes only menace coastal areas, the rare hurricane which moves inland quickly enough can cause severe damage. In 1989 Hurricane Hugo caused heavy damage in Charlotte and even as far inland as the Blue Ridge Mountains in the northwestern part of the state. North Carolina averages less than 20 tornadoes per year.
Many of these are produced by hurricanes or tropical storms along the coastal plain. Tornadoes from thunderstorms are a risk, especially in the Piedmont region of central North Carolina.
History
Native Americans, The Lost Colony and Permanent Settlement
North Carolina was originally inhabited by many different native peoples, including the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Cheraw, Pamlico, Meherrin, Coree, Machapunga, Cape Fear Indians, Waxhaw, Saponi, Tutelo, Waccamaw, Coharie, and Catawba.
In 1584, Elizabeth I, granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present-day North Carolina (then Virginia).
Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, both ending in failure. It was the second American territory the British attempted to colonize.
The demise of one, the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island, remains one of the great mysteries of American history. Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in North America, was born in North Carolina. Dare County is named for her.
As early as 1650, colonists from the Virginia colony moved into the area of Albemarle Sound. By 1663, Charles II granted a charter to establish a new colony on the North American continent which generally established its borders. He named it Carolina in honor of his father Charles I.
By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions.
In 1710, due to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony began to split into North Carolina and South Carolina. The latter became a crown colony in 1729.
Colonial Period and Revolutionary War
The first permanent European settlers of North Carolina were British colonists who migrated south from Virginia, following a rapid growth of the colony and the subsequent shortage of available farmland.
Nathaniel Batts was documented as one of the first of these Virginian migrants.
He settled south of the Chowan River and east of the Great Dismal Swamp in 1655.
By 1663, this northeastern area of the Province of Carolina, known as the Albemarle Settlements, was undergoing full-scale British settlement.
During the same period, the English monarch Charles II gave the province to the Lords Proprietors, a group of noblemen who had helped restore Charles to the throne in 1660.
The new province of "Carolina" was named in honor and memory of King Charles I (Latin: Carolus). In 1712, North Carolina became a separate colony.
With the exception of the Earl Granville holdings, it became a royal colony seventeen years later.
Differences in the settlement patterns of eastern and western North Carolina, or the Low country and uplands, affected the political, economic, and social life of the state from the eighteenth until the twentieth century.
The Tidewater in eastern North Carolina was settled chiefly by immigrants from England and Highland Scotland. The upcountry of western North Carolina was settled chiefly by Scots-Irish and German Protestants, the so-called "cohee".
Arriving during the mid-to-late 18th century, the Scots-Irish were the largest immigrant group from the British Isles before the Revolution.
During the Revolutionary War, the English and Highland Scots of eastern North Carolina tended to remain loyal to the British Crown, because of longstanding business and personal connections with Great Britain.
The Scots-Irish and German settlers of western North Carolina tended to favor American independence from Britain.
Most of the English colonists arrived as indentured servants, hiring themselves out as laborers for a fixed period to pay for their passage. In the early years the line between indentured servants and African slaves or laborers was fluid.
Some Africans were allowed to earn their freedom before slavery became a lifelong status.
Most of the free colored families formed in North Carolina before the Revolution were descended from relationships or marriages between free white women and enslaved African or African-American men.
As the flow of indentured laborers to the colony decreased with improving economic conditions in Great Britain, more slaves were imported.
The economy's growth and prosperity was based on slave labor, devoted first to the production of tobacco.
On April 12, 1776, the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence from the British crown, through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress.
The dates of both of these independence-related events are memorialized on the state flag and state seal.
Throughout the Revolutionary War, fierce guerilla warfare erupted between bands of pro-independence and pro-British colonists.
In some cases the war was also an excuse to settle private grudges and rivalries.
A major American victory in the war took place at King's Pinnacle along the North Carolina-South Carolina border.
On October 7, 1780 a force of 1000 mountain men from western North Carolina (including what is today the State of Tennessee) overwhelmed a force of some 1000 British troops led by Major Patrick Ferguson. Most of the British soldiers in this battle were Carolinians who had remained loyal to the British Crown (they were called "Tories").
The American victory at Kings Mountain gave the advantage to colonists who favored American independence.
It prevented the British Army from recruiting new soldiers from the Tories.
The road to Yorktown and America's independence from Great Britain led through North Carolina.
As the British Army moved north from victories in Charleston and Camden, South Carolina, the Southern Division of the Continental Army and local militia prepared to meet them.
Following General Daniel Morgan's victory over the British Cavalry Commander Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, southern commander Nathanael Greene led British Lord Charles Cornwallis across the heartland of North Carolina, and away from Cornwallis's base of supply in Charleston, North Carolina.
This campaign is known as "The Race to the Dan" or "The Race for the River."
Generals Greene and Cornwallis finally met at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in present-day Greensboro on March 15, 1781.
Although the British troops held the field at the end of the battle, their casualties at the hands of the numerically superior American Army were crippling. Following this "Pyhrric victory", Cornwallis chose to move to the Virginia coastline to get reinforcements, and to allow the British Navy to protect his battered army.
This decision would result in Cornwallis's eventual defeat at Yorktown, Virginia later in 1781.
The Patriots' victory there guaranteed American independence.
Antebellum Period
On November 21, 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the Constitution. In 1840, it completed the state capitol building in Raleigh, still standing today.
Unlike many other Southern states, North Carolina never developed a dominant slaveholding aristocracy, and middle-class yeomen tended to control the state government.
Most of North Carolina's slaveowners and large plantations were located in the eastern Tidewater.
Western North Carolinians tended to be non-slaveowning subsistence farmers. In mid-century, the state's rural and commercial areas were connected by the construction of a 129–mile (208 km) wooden plank road, known as a "farmer' railroad," from Fayetteville in the east to Bethania (northwest of Winston-Salem).
On October 25, 1836 construction began on the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad to connect the port city of Wilmington with the state capital of Raleigh. In 1849 the North Carolina Railroad was created by act of the legislature to extend that railroad west to Greensboro, High Point, and Charlotte.
During the Civil War the Wilmington-to-Raleigh stretch of the railroad would be vital to the Confederate war effort; supplies shipped into Wilmington would be moved by rail through Raleigh to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
During the antebellum period North Carolina was an overwhelmingly rural state, even by Southern standards. In 1860 only one North Carolina town, the port city of Wilmington, had a population of more than 10,000.
Raleigh, the state capital, had barely more than 5,000 residents.
While slaveholding was less concentrated than in some Southern states, according to the 1860 census, 33% of the population of 992,622 were enslaved African Americans. They lived and worked chiefly on plantations in the eastern Tidewater. In addition, 30,463 free blacks lived in the state.
They were also concentrated in the eastern coastal plain, especially around ports such as Wilmington and New Bern. Free African Americans had been allowed to vote until 1835.
Civil War
In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state with about one-third slaves, a smaller proportion than many Southern states.
It refused to join the Confederacy until President Abraham Lincoln called on it to invade its sister-state, South Carolina. The state was the site of few battles, but it provided at least 125,000 troops to the Confederacy— far more than any other state.
Approximately 40,000 of those troops never returned home, dying of disease, battlefield wounds, and privation. Elected in 1862, Governor Zebulon Baird Vance tried to maintain state autonomy against Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond.
Even after secession, some North Carolinians refused to support the Confederacy. This was particularly true of non-slave-owning farmers in the state's mountains and western Piedmont region.
Some of these farmers remained neutral during the war, while some covertly supported the Union cause during the conflict. Even so, Confederate troops from all parts of North Carolina served in virtually all the major battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy's most famous army.
The largest battle fought in North Carolina was at Bentonville, which was a futile attempt by Confederate General Joseph Johnston to slow Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's advance through the Carolinas in the spring of 1865.
In April 1865 Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Bennett Place, in what is today Durham, North Carolina.
This was the last major Confederate Army to surrender.
North Carolina's port city of Wilmington was the last Confederate port to fall to the Union. It fell in the spring of 1865 after the nearby Second Battle of Fort Fisher.
The first Confederate soldier to be killed in the Civil War was Private Henry Wyatt, a North Carolinian. He was killed in the Battle of Big Bethel in June 1861.
At the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, the 26th North Carolina Regiment participated in Pickett/Pettigrew's Charge and advanced the farthest into the Northern lines of any Confederate regiment.
At Appomattox Court House in Virginia in April 1865, the 75th North Carolina Regiment, a cavalry unit, fired the last shots of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War.
For many years, North Carolinians proudly boasted that they had been "First at Bethel, Farthest at Gettysburg, and Last at Appomattox."
Economy
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the state's 2006 total gross state product was $375 billion. Its 2005 per capita personal income was $31,029, 36th in the nation.
North Carolina's agricultural outputs include poultry and eggs, tobacco, hogs, milk, nursery stock, cattle, sweet potatoes, and soybeans.
However, North Carolina has recently been affected by offshoring and industrial growth in countries like China; one in five manufacturing jobs in the state has been lost to overseas competition.
There has been a distinct difference in the economic growth of North Carolina's urban and rural areas.
While large cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh, Cary, and others have experienced rapid population and economic growth over the last thirty years, many of the state's small towns have suffered from loss of jobs and population.
Most of North Carolina's small towns historically developed around textile and furniture factories. As these factories closed and moved to low-wage markets in Asia and Latin America, the small towns that depended upon them have suffered.
