Roanoke Island Festival Park

The first English settlers landed on Roanoke Island in 1585, and their story — including the colony that simply vanished — still has no clean ending. Roanoke Island Festival Park, a 27-acre site in Manteo, holds what the record does: a representative 16th-century sailing ship, a settlement site, an American Indian Town interpreting coastal Algonquian history, and an adventure museum covering more than 400 years of Outer Banks history. Costumed interpreters work the grounds. The mystery doesn't resolve here, but it starts to feel like a real question.