In 1929, a boatbuilder named Joel Van Sant designed a small sailboat for his children to learn in on the Pasquotank River. The boat was eleven feet long, weighed about 110 pounds, and could be built in a garage for a few dollars' worth of plywood. He called it the Moth. Within a few years, fleets were racing in Tokyo Bay, on the Solent, in Sydney Harbour. The Moth is now an international racing class with foiling boats that hit thirty knots. The original design - the simple plywood version - was born here in Elizabeth City, on the same waterfront where you can still tie up your boat for free in the downtown harbor, exactly the way visiting sailors have done since the town called itself the Harbor of Hospitality.
The town was founded in 1793 on land acquired from Adam and Elizabeth Tooley, and originally called Redding. In 1794 it was renamed Elizabeth, and in 1801 Elizabeth City. The historical record is unsettled about which Elizabeth got the credit: some sources say it was Queen Elizabeth I, who two centuries earlier had funded Walter Raleigh's attempts to colonize the same Carolina coast that Elizabeth City now anchors. Other sources say it was Elizabeth "Betsy" Tooley herself, the landowner who sold the original tract. Both explanations have local supporters. The town sits at the head of the Pasquotank River, which empties into Albemarle Sound, which connects to the Intracoastal Waterway, which runs the length of the East Coast. Geography made this a port. The port made it a town.
Elizabeth City State University, founded in 1891 as the State Colored Normal School, has a long connection to Alex Haley. He attended the college in 1937-1939 - his father had moved the family to Elizabeth City where he taught - before Haley enlisted in the Coast Guard. Decades later he published Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976), and the 1977 television miniseries adapted from it changed how Americans thought about slavery and genealogy. Haley returned to ECSU in 1977 to speak at Lyceum and received the university's first honorary doctorate in 1984, and the town has claimed him ever since. ECSU today is a historically Black university with about 2,000 students, part of the University of North Carolina system, and the only historically Black university in the country with an FAA-certified four-year aviation science program - which fits a town shaped by the Coast Guard air station next door.
About four miles south of downtown sits the largest Coast Guard air base in the country - Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, with its Aviation Logistics Center and Aviation Technical Training Center, operating HC-130J Hercules and MH-60T Jayhawks across an enormous Atlantic operating area. In 2015 Elizabeth City became the 20th officially designated Coast Guard City in the United States. The base employs about three thousand people - the largest employer in northeastern North Carolina - and pumps roughly half a billion dollars a year into the regional economy. The relationship is intimate enough that base fire and police departments respond to off-base emergencies, and the town's restaurants are full of Coastguardsmen on the weekends. It is one of those military-town relationships that actually works.
Downtown Elizabeth City preserves six historic districts of nineteenth-century brick and clapboard buildings around the Pasquotank waterfront. The Waterfront Market on Water Street runs Saturdays from May to October. The Potato Festival happens in May. Summer brings the Moth Boat Regatta back to the river where the boat was invented, and speed boat races on the Pasquotank that draw crowds along the seawall. Muddy Waters Coffee House on Main Street - locally called Muddy's - sends baristas to national competitions. Cypress Creek Grill on Water Street and Quality Seafood Co. anchor a downtown dining scene that is small but specific. The Museum of the Albemarle, opened in 2006, tells the regional story from Pamlico fishing camps to Coast Guard rescues in three permanent galleries. The waterfront still offers free dockage for transient boaters - the Harbor of Hospitality keeping its name honestly.
From Elizabeth City, the Outer Banks are forty-five minutes east - Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers flew, sits across Currituck Sound. Edenton, the colonial-era capital with its eighteenth-century brick houses and Edenton Tea Party history, is forty-five minutes west around the top of Albemarle Sound. Norfolk, with its naval base and arts scene, is forty-five minutes north across the Virginia line. The town is well placed for crossings: Pasquotank River north toward the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, Albemarle Sound south toward the Roanoke and the Pamlico. The Intracoastal traffic moves through here constantly. Pull up at the dock, walk into Muddy's, and you are in the middle of one of the more interesting cross-currents in the South.
Coordinates 36.30 N, 76.22 W. Recommended viewing altitude 2,000-4,000 feet to see the historic district hugging the Pasquotank River and the Coast Guard base to the south. ICAO KECG (joint-use civilian/Coast Guard - active military airspace nearby, check NOTAMs). Currituck County Regional (KONX) 22 nm north as a quieter alternative. Norfolk International (KORF) 50 nm north for IFR services. The Pasquotank widens into Albemarle Sound about 15 miles south. Best light early morning or late afternoon to read the brick of the historic district.