Ocracoke Map
Ocracoke is a village located at the southern end of Ocracoke Island, located entirely within Hyde County, North Carolina. The population was 769 as of the 2000 census. It is also the location of Blackbeard's death.
The Ocracoke area made headlines during the Independence Day weekend in July 2009 when a truck carrying fireworks exploded, eventually killing three, and injuring several more.
The Outer Banks area was occasionally visited by Algonquian-speaking Native Americans, but was never permanently settled. Ocracoke, then called Wokokkon, was used as a subsistence hunting and fishing ground for the Hatterask Indians. Yaupon Tea or Black Drink, made from the dried leaves of the indigenous yaupon, a native holly, was used ceremonially by the Native Americans in the area. A small village on Hatteras Island is said[when?] to have had forty fighting men. The area was first described in detail by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian navigator, in 1524. Verrazzano was unable to navigate the tortuous channels leading into the Pamlico Sound and assumed that China lay beyond the Outer Banks.
Nearby cities include Hatteras.