{"nrhp_refnum":"90001465","name":"Ocracoke Historic District","other_names":["See Also:Ocracoke Light Station"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"SW tip of Ocracoke Island, around Silver Lake","address_restricted":false,"city":"Ocracoke","county":"Hyde County","state":"NC","lat":35.113847666000055,"lon":-75.9838243411626,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-09-28","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Exploration/Settlement","Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Ocracoke Historic District is a village district on Ocracoke Island in Hyde County, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks, centered on Silver Lake Harbor. It contains a mix of traditional frame houses, a 1823 lighthouse, a 1942 Coast Guard Station and related outbuildings and cemeteries.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the district is North Carolina's only surviving, inhabited Outer Banks island settlement to retain much of its historic character. Its traditional frame houses, cisterns, picket fences and family homesteads are presented as a distinctive local building tradition, and the village's isolation until 1959 is presented as the basis for its social-history significance.","narrative":"Ocracoke village, on Ocracoke Island off the North Carolina coast, is a settlement of small frame houses set in sandy clearings among dense native vegetation, reached by footpaths rather than named streets. The district's contributing resources were built between 1823 and 1959 and include the 1823 lighthouse, the oldest light still in use on the North Carolina coast, along with the 1942 Coast Guard Station and roughly forty-six primary buildings from 1940 to 1959. The houses follow local traditions, including small scale, brick cisterns, picket fences and family graveyards. Some were reportedly built from timbers salvaged from shipwrecks, such as the Spencer Bungalow of 1937. The district is listed for its social history as the last surviving island community on the Outer Banks, and for its architecture, which continued traditional building practices into the 1950s.","period_of_significance":"1823-1959","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Vernacular late Victorian, Colonial Revival, late Shingle Style, Bungalow/Craftsman","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":null,"vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:41.903161-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/12/7209/47720912/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NC/90001465.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001465/8340accc54-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001465/8340accc54-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 2.0","author":"aaron wolpert","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocracoke_13_(8152880532).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">aaron wolpert</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ocracoke_13_(8152880532).jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/47720912","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocracoke_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q19987366"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/north-carolina/hyde-county/ocracoke-historic-district-90001465/"}