North Carolina, besides being a wonderful place for a vacation, is a cross-section of America—a state of magnificent variety with three distinctive regions: the coast, the heartland, and the mountains. Its elevation ranges from sea level to 6,684 feet atop Mount Mitchell in the Black Mountain Range of the Appalachians. It has descendants of English, German, Scottish, Irish, and African immigrants. It has Quakers, Moravians, Episcopalians, and Calvinists. It produces two-thirds of our flue-cured tobacco, as well as cotton, peanuts, and vegetables on its farms. Fabrics, furniture, and many other products are made in its factories. It also has one of the finest state university systems in the nation with campuses at Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, Asheville, and Wilmington.

In 1585, the first English settlement was unsuccessfully started on Roanoke Island. Another attempt at settlement was made in 1587—but the colony disappeared, leaving only the crudely scratched word "CROATOAN" on a tree—perhaps referring to the Croatan Indians who may have killed the colonists or absorbed them into their own culture, leaving behind one of history's great mysteries. Here, in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Cherokees lived before the government drove them westward to Oklahoma over the Trail of Tears, on which one-third of them died. Descendants of many members of this tribe, who hid in the inaccessible rocky coves and forests, still live here. Some "mountain people," isolated, independent, still singing songs dating back to Elizabethan England, also live here. Few North Carolinians owned slaves, very few owned many, and, early on, the state accepted free blacks (in 1860 there were 30,463) as a part of the community.

Citizens take pride in being called "Tar Heels." During the Civil War, North Carolinians returning from the front were taunted by a troop from another state who had "retreated" a good deal earlier. The Carolinians declared that Jefferson Davis had decided to bring up all the tar from North Carolina to use on the heels of the other regiment to make them "stick better in the next fight." General Lee, hearing of the incident, said, "God bless the Tar Heel boys."

Individualist and democratic from the beginning, this state refused to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights had been added. In 1860 its western citizens strongly supported the Union. It did not join the Confederate States of America until after Fort Sumter had been fired upon and Lincoln had called for volunteers. Its independence was then challenged, and it furnished one-fifth of the soldiers of the Southern armies even though its population was only one-ninth of the Confederacy's. Eighty-four engagements (most of them small) were fought on its soil. Jealous of its rights, North Carolina resisted the authority of Confederate Army officers from Virginia and loudly protested many of the policies of Jefferson Davis, but its 125,000 men fought furiously, and 40,000 of them died for what they believed was right. For years after the Civil War, North Carolina was a poverty-stricken state, although it suffered less from the inroads of carpetbaggers than many of its neighbors did.

The state seems designed for vacationers. Beautiful mountains and flowering plants, lake and ocean swimming and boating, hunting and fishing, superb golf courses, old towns, festivals, pageantry, and parks are a few of the state's many attractions.