Blackbeard made his last anchorage here, and Ocracoke has been difficult to reach ever since. No bridge crosses to the island — you come by ferry, across Pamlico Sound or through Hatteras Inlet, or you don't come at all. The free NCDOT ferry from Hatteras Village drops you at the inlet, and from there it's 13 miles of Cape Hatteras National Seashore on both sides before you reach the village. Population 797. Most of the island remains seashore. What the village kept is itself — including a dialect old enough to have its own name, the "Hoi Toider" accent, still audible among older residents though fading in the younger ones. The Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum, housed in a moved structure that once belonged to the first keeper of the Coast Guard Station, holds what the community chose to save.
