Qualla: Washington, North Carolina

Washington, North Carolina: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK, CC BY 4.0. The town has a chip on its shoulder about its name, and you can hardly blame it. There is, after all, a more famous Washington upriver from the Potomac. But this one came first. In 1776, on a hundred acres donated by Colonel James Bonner along the Pamlico River, the residents of a settlement called Forks of the Tar voted to rename their town in honor of the Continental Army commander. George Washington had not yet won the war. He certainly had not yet been president. The town named for him in eastern North Carolina is the oldest such town in the country - older than the federal capital by fourteen years - which is why locals will, with absolute consistency, call it 'Original Washington' or simply 'Little Washington' if you want to start a conversation.

Image: APK | CC BY 4.0

Washington, North Carolina: Forks of the Tar

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit bobistraveling, CC BY 2.0. Before it had a name and a Revolutionary cause, the settlement was just a riverbank with good water access. James Bonner, an English-born planter and Patriot, owned land where the Tar River broadens and becomes the tidal Pamlico, and through the 1770s small wharves and warehouses...

Image: bobistraveling | CC BY 2.0

Washington, North Carolina: Burned and Burned Again

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tradewinds, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Civil War was hard on Little Washington. The town changed hands repeatedly. In 1862 a Union gunboat bombarded the courthouse - the original 1824 building burned to the ground from a shell hit - and the Union held the town for most of the war. A cannonball from that period is ...

Image: Tradewinds | CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington, North Carolina: A Pulitzer at the Daily News

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. In 1990 the Washington Daily News, with a circulation under ten thousand, won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service - the smallest daily newspaper in history to win the award. The reporting series investigated local water contamination, and the paper's persistence in ...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Washington, North Carolina: Estuarium and Boardwalk

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Modern Washington has built much of its identity around the river that defines it. The North Carolina Estuarium, a museum on the waterfront, houses more than two hundred exhibits on the ecology of the state's estuaries and the Tar-Pamlico-Pamlico Sound system. A three-quarter-mil...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0