The Cape Lookout National Seashore
is wild and tranquil.

It's a national treasure and serves as a sanctuary to endangered wildlife.
The lighthouse remains one of NC's architectural treasures

The Cape Lookout National Seashore is made up of three islands- North Core Banks, South Core Banks and
Shackleford Banks. These islands -- a slim sliver of isolated land, barely 700 yards wide, with uninhabited beaches, sand dunes, wild-ponies, a maritime forest, a few sea turtles,
numerous species of birds and little vegetation -stretch 56 miles-from Ocracoke Inlet to Beaufort Inlet.

Karen Duggan of the National Park Service says, "This seashore is a national treasure and serves as a sanctuary to many of our endangered wildlife. It's the northernmost habitat for the loggerhead turtle and the southernmost habitat for the piping plover, which can be found here year-round."

These islands have a lot of history dating back to 1590, when it appeared on maps as "promontorium tremendum." To sea captains, who had to navigate these treacherous waters around Cape Lookout, that is what it was, a "horrible headland."

Behind the barrier islands of Cape Lookout in Pamlico Sound are several anchorages. Blackbeard often dropped anchor here to wait for prey. The British used it as an anchorage during the Revolutionary War, the U.S. Navy anchored ships here in both World Wars, and German U-boats used it to avoid detection and to watch for enemy ships to stalk in WW II.