Rain or Shine,
Adventure Awaits

A Fort Built to Guard the Inlet

Construction began in 1826 and wrapped up eight years later in 1834, part of the Third System of coastal fortifications the country built after the War of 1812 to defend its major harbors. Fort Macon's job was Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina's only deepwater port at the time, and it's named for Nathaniel Macon, the state's long-serving U.S. senator. What went up is a five-sided fort of brick and stone, 26 vaulted casemate rooms behind walls four and a half feet thick.

The fort saw its only real battle during the Civil War. North Carolina militia seized it in April 1861; Union forces took it back a year later after an eleven-hour bombardment in the Battle of Fort Macon, and the pockmarks from that shelling are still visible in the brick today. The Army kept a caretaker on site on and off into the early 1900s, reactivated the fort briefly during World War Two, then sold the whole thing to the state for one dollar in 1924. It opened as North Carolina's first state park in 1936, and it's been one of the most visited ever since.

The Fort & Museum

Self-guided tours run daily through the casemates and up onto the ramparts, and the small visitor-center museum has a short history video, Civil War-era artifacts, and exhibits on the fort's construction and the coast beyond it. Ranger-led tours and cannon or musket demonstrations run seasonally. Plan on 45 minutes to an hour for the fort itself, more if you linger.

Diamond City, and What Came After

From the early 1700s until 1899, the eastern end of Shackleford Banks was home to Diamond City, a whaling and fishing village of a few hundred people, named for the diamond pattern painted on the nearby Cape Lookout Lighthouse. Then, on August 17, 1899, a Category 3 hurricane known as San Ciriaco swept over the island, wrecking homes, ruining the wells, and salting the gardens. By 1902 the last residents had gone, many hauling their actual houses across the sound to Harkers Island, Salter Path, and the Promise Land neighborhood of Morehead City. Diamond City is remembered today as the only community in North America never rebuilt after a hurricane.

What's left is wild. More than 100 free-roaming "Banker" horses call the island home, believed to descend from old Colonial Spanish stock, though the popular legend of them swimming ashore from a shipwreck is more folklore than confirmed fact. The herd has been federally protected since 1998 and is co-managed by the National Park Service and the nonprofit Foundation for Shackleford Horses. Staying at least 50 feet away, about a school bus length, isn't a suggestion; it's federal law, both for your safety and theirs.