Fort Macon’s 398-acre state park, located on the eastern tip of Bogue Banks in Carteret County, is one of North Carolina’s most visited sites. Built in 1826-1834, Fort Macon State Park’s attractions include: guided tours, reenactments of key historical moments, nature trails and programs, and a museum featuring exhibits and audiovisual displays. Fort Macon’s new Coastal Education Visitor Center is slated to break ground sometime in the summer of 2007 and the new 19,600-square-foot structure will serve as a center for coastal education and will house a new museum as well as a library and a conference room to conduct workshops.
The Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection at J.Y Joyner Library has a number of resources about historical Fort Macon and its role in North Carolina’s coastal defenses. Paul Branch’s Fort Macon (1999) provides a well-written and comprehensive examination of Fort Macon’s history, beginning with the establishment of Port Beaufort in the eighteenth century and the need to protect the harbor from marauding pirates, privateers, and threatening foreign countries. Fort Macon is illustrated with engravings of battle scenes, maps, and photographs.
An essay about United States Army surgeon and renowned ornithologist Elliot Coues (pronounced “Cows”) appears in A Historian’s Coast (2000) by David Cecelski. Coues was assigned to Fort Macon from February 1869 to November 1870. Though Coues resented the assignment, feeling that he was exiled far from the Smithsonian Institute and other centers for the study of natural history, he nonetheless took advantage of the opportunity to study coastal flora and fauna. His extensive and detailed findings were published in 1871, in the Proceedings of Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, in a series of articles entitled “Notes on the Natural History of Fort Macon, N. C., and Vicinity.” Coues’s survey of plant and animal life was considered to be one of the most thorough studies ever conducted of the southeastern region of North Carolina at that time.
Articles about Fort Macon and its historical and tourist attractions are abstracted in the North Carolina Periodical Index located at: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/scope.cfm. Using the “Search the Index” function and typing “Fort Macon” in the search field will provide a variety of articles written in North Carolina magazines during recent years.
The North Carolina Collection also has a collection of historical maps which offer unique views and information of Fort Macon during the nineteenth century. These nautical U.S. Coast Survey charts of Beaufort Harbor date from 1850 to 1889 and clearly depict the five-sided figure of Fort Macon as well as noting tide and sailing directions. It’s interesting to note that the hydrography charted on several of the maps was done under the command of Lieut. J.N. Maffitt, a well-known blockade runner during the Civil War.
Much more information about Fort Macon is available in the North Carolina Collection located on the third floor of East Carolina University’s Joyner Library. Area residents, as well as the ECU community, are encouraged to use the resources in the North Carolina Collection. For regular and holiday hours, call 252.328.6601 or visit the Web site at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/ncc/index.cfm.
Susan Butler is a staff member in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection.
