Qualla: Bertie County, North Carolina

Bertie County, North Carolina: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Bertie County (rhymes with 'thirty,' with the accent on the first syllable - a local pronunciation that defies the spelling) is one of the oldest counties in North Carolina and, by one peculiar statistic, the most rural in the state. According to the 2020 census, exactly zero percent of Bertie County residents live in what the Census Bureau classifies as an urban area. All 17,934 of them live in towns, hamlets, and crossroads small enough to count as countryside. Wedged between the lower Roanoke River to the south and the Chowan to the east, with cypress swamp and farmland in between, Bertie has been emptying out for decades. What remains is a quiet country that traces directly back to the colonial era.

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Bertie County, North Carolina: A County of Sounds and Rivers

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Bertie was formed in 1722, named for the Bertie family of English nobles, two of whom (James and Henry Bertie) were Lords Proprietor of Carolina. The original county was enormous; subsequent divisions carved out Northampton, Edgecombe, and parts of other counties from its territo...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Bertie County, North Carolina: Indian Woods and the Tuscarora

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit US Census, Ruhrfisch, Public domain. One of the county townships is called Indian Woods, and the name preserves a difficult history. After the Tuscarora War of 1711-1715, the surviving Tuscarora in eastern North Carolina were confined to a reservation in what is now Bertie County. The reservation - a strip of land a...

Image: US Census, Ruhrfisch | Public domain

Bertie County, North Carolina: Population in Decline

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jmbrowne3, CC BY-SA 4.0. Bertie has been losing people for a long time. The 2024 estimate places the population at 16,939, down about 5.5 percent from 2020. Look further back and the trend is steeper - the county had 21,282 people in 2010 and over 19,000 in 2000. The reasons are familiar across the rural...

Image: Jmbrowne3 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bertie County, North Carolina: A Quiet Country

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. What Bertie has, in compensation, is space. Open land, big skies, cypress-lined rivers running mostly empty. The county is the kind of place where photographers go for the unspoiled river views and where birders go for the migratory waterfowl that use the Roanoke and Cashie botto...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0