Mystery 1 of 15
1. What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke?
In 1587, a group of English settlers established a colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. Governor John White soon sailed back to England for supplies, expecting to return relatively quickly.
War with Spain delayed him. When White finally reached Roanoke again in 1590, the settlement was deserted.
There were no bodies and no obvious signs of a battle. The buildings had been dismantled rather than simply abandoned. The letters “CRO” had been carved into a tree, while the word “CROATOAN” appeared on a wooden post.
That clue was particularly important. Croatoan was the name associated with a nearby island and Indigenous community. White had also arranged for the colonists to leave a specific mark if they had been forced to move under dangerous circumstances. He found no such mark.
That has led many historians to suspect that at least some of the colonists relocated and eventually joined Indigenous communities. Later reports from the Jamestown era also fueled stories about surviving English settlers living farther inland.
Why It Is Still a Mystery
No piece of evidence has established what happened to the entire colony. They may have split into groups, assimilated into different communities, died from disease, been killed, or experienced several of those outcomes. “CROATOAN” gave searchers a direction, but it never gave history a final answer.
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