Ocracoke Historic District

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.