Adventure Museum

Tour the Adventure Museum 

If you wonder about what happened on the Outer Banks after the Roanoke Voyages, discover 400 years of Outer Banks history in the interactive Roanoke Adventure Museum. Guests amble through the museum at whatever pace they like on a self-guided tour through the historical developments of Roanoke Island and the area at large. Children enjoy playing dress up with costumes from the 16th century while grown ups gaze at portraits of England’s first explorers. Everyone learns about 16th century navigation when they site the North Star with an astrolabe or plot a course with a cross staff. Land in 16th century North America and discover the culture of indigenous people who lived on Roanoke Island. Read quotes from Thomas Hariot's journal, and view a miniature version of a longhouse. Read about the Lost Colony—including a list of names of the settlers from England—and about the birth of North Carolina. Move on through the museum and ahead in time to the 18th century when pirates trolled the coast of the Outer Banks. Listen to Stumpy the Pirate as he jokes about the infamous Blackbeard down in Ocracoke. Learn about another “lost colony” on Roanoke Island—the Freedmen’s Colony. Imagine what it must have been like to participate in the Battle of Roanoke Island during the Civil War. Study a map of shipwrecks that go back in history through generations and give this stretch of the Atlantic Coast its notorious nickname, “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” View a shad boat that designer George Washington Creef built in 1887 and volunteers and staff from the Roanoke Island Maritime Museum restored over a century later. Find out about the boatbuilding, hunting, and fishing traditions of the Outer Banks, and encounter the beginnings of the tourism industry that made the islands what they are today.