 Return to Table of Contents More About: Photo(s) On This Page Photo 1 ~ Photo 2 Related Site(s) Camden Windmills ~ Locations of 19th-Century Windmills along the North Carolina coast. If you would like to order the book |
The Outer Banks and coastal North Carolina were devoid of the
running water that powered gristmills in the Piedmont and mountain
regions of the state. Instead, maritime communities turned to
the most obvious natural resource at hand: wind.
Windmills dotted the landscape of coastal North Carolina from the late
Eighteenth-century until the twentieth. Eighteenth-century mills are
documented at Nixonton in Pasquotank County (Old Windmill Point);
Swansboro, Marshallburg, and Beaufort in Carteret County; and on
Portsmouth Island. The short-lived lightering island at Shell Castle
inside Ocracoke Inlet had a mill for pumping water. Other mills were
built at Ocracoke, Hatteras, Bodie Island, and Roanoke Island.
Union soldiers were surprised at the number of windmills along the Outer Banks when they visited the state in 1861 with the Union invasion force. Charles Johnson, a young Swede who landed at Hatteras with Hawkins' Zouaves, had these impressions of Hatteras Island: "Everything on the Island seems to be devoid of paint -dwellings, barns and windmills, of which latter there are a greater number than I supposed were in existence in the whole country." Another Union volunteer from Massachusetts, Edwin Champney, sketched
the Hatteras mill, along with other images of the island, during his tour of
duty in 1861. |
