NORTH CAROLINA

The Upper South. constituent state of the United States of America, in the southeastern part of the country. It is bounded on the north by Virginia, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by South Carolina and Georgia, and on the west by Tennessee. The state capital is Raleigh. The first permanent white settlement in North Carolina was made in the 1650s when settlers from Virginia arrived in the Albemarle Sound area. In 1663 the English king Charles II issued a charter that established Carolina as a proprietary colony. The northern part of the Carolina colony was known as Albemarle until 1691, when it was renamed North Carolina and given a deputy governor, who ruled from Charleston. In 1712 the colony was officially divided in two, and North Carolina was given its own governor. The colony reverted to royal status in 1729, and the boundary with South Carolina was fixed in 1735. Growth accelerated after 1729. The Battle of Guilford Court House (1781) was a strategic victory for the Americans during the Revolution. North Carolina reluctantly seceded from the Union in 1861 and was readmitted in 1868. North Carolina is divided into three physiographic regions. The Coastal Plain, constituting 45 percent of the state, is a gently rolling plain and swampy tidewater close to the Atlantic coast. The Piedmont Plateau, another 45 percent of the state's area, is west of the Coastal Plain and is characterized by rolling, forested hills. The southern extension of the Appalachian mountain system in the far west of the state includes the parallel, northeast-southwesttrending Blue Ridge and Great Smoky ranges and associated high intermontane plateaus. North Carolina has warm summers and mild winters. Its average annual temperatures range from 66 F (19 C) in the east to 60 F (16 C) in the central region and 55 F (13 C) in the mountains. Annual rainfall averages 4654 inches (1,1701,370 mm) in coastal areas, 4450 inches (1,1181,270 mm) in the Piedmont, and 4080 inches (1,0152,030 mm) in the mountains. The original inhabitants of North Carolina were primarily Cherokee Indians. Though forcibly removed from the state in the 1830s, about 65,000 resided in North Carolina in the late 20th century. This is the largest Indian population of any state east of the Mississippi River. The early European immigrants were a heterogeneous group, representing a variety of religious faiths and nationalities. Blacks represented 33 percent of the population in 1790 but only 22 percent in the mid-1990s, a decline attributable to continued emigration. The population has grown faster than the national average, and North Carolina had in the mid-1990s the 10th largest population among the states in the Union. The population is almost half rural. Agriculture remains important in North Carolina. Its principal crops include tobacco, sweet potatoes, corn (maize), soybeans, and peanuts (groundnuts). Forest products are employed in the construction of furniture and as a source of pulp and paper. The state has one of the nation's largest phosphate reserves. Tourism is also an important source of revenue. North Carolina's industrial output was eighth in the nation in the early 1990s. The major industries are textiles, tobacco, electrical equipment, metalworking, chemicals, paper and paper products, plastics, and food processing. North Carolina has two Atlantic ports and a very large trucking fleet; the state is only one day's trucking time from either New York City or Florida. The cottage industries of North Carolina's western mountains combine with those of the coast to offer some of the country's richest traditional arts and crafts. The North Carolina Museum of Art and the North Carolina Symphony were the first state-supported institutions of their type in the nation. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1789) is the oldest state-supported university in the country. Duke University (1838) at Durham is a prestigious centre of higher education. Area 52,669 square miles (136,412 square km). Pop. (1990) 6,632,448; (1995 est.) 7,195,138. constituent state of the United States of America. Twelfth of the 13 original states, it lies on the Atlantic coast midway between New York and Florida. Bounded on the north by Virginia, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by South Carolina and Georgia, and on the west by Tennessee, North Carolina has an area of 52,669 square miles (136,413 square kilometres). Its 3,826 square miles of inland water, the fifth largest such area of any state, are concentrated both in the extensive marshlands of the coastal tidewater and in the lakes and reservoirs of the Piedmont and Appalachian regions. These three physical regions are related to major diversities in life-styles among the people of the state, creating three distinct cultures within the state's boundaries. The capital is Raleigh. North Carolina is the leading industrial state of the Southern Atlantic states. Approximately one-half of the state's inhabitants live outside urban communities, giving it one of the largest rural populations in the nation. North Carolina's beginnings were tied closely to the earliest attempts at English colonization of the New World. Roanoke Island in the northeast, a part of the heavily indented and island-fringed coast, was the site of the famous Lost Colony that vanished sometime after the original landing in 1587. This eastern region retains much of the flavour of colonial life, while the higher Piedmont region centred around Raleigh has become the state's hub of industry and population. The mountains of the west remain the focus of a lively folk culture and the home of a group of North American Indians. Additional reading Overviews of the state are provided by Federal Writers' Project, North Carolina: A Guide to the Old North State (1939, reprinted as North Carolina: The WPA Guide to the Old North State, 1988) still worth consulting; and James A. Crutchfield (ed.), The North Carolina Almanac and Book of Facts, 19891990 (1988). Richard E. Lonsdale, Atlas of North Carolina (1967), shows points of local and historical interest. James W. Clay, Douglas M. Orr, and Alfred W. Stuart (eds.), North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State (1975), gives a graphic profile of a wide variety of topics, from politics to the physical environment. DeLorme Mapping Company, North Carolina Atlas & Gazetteer, 3rd ed. (1997), focuses on topography. Articles on the people, history, and folklore of North Carolina may be found in the magazine Our State (monthly).Introductions to North Carolina's history are found in William S. Powell, North Carolina (1977, reprinted 1988), and North Carolina Through Four Centuries (1989); Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell, Colonial North Carolina: A History (1973); H.G. Jones, North Carolina Illustrated, 15241984 (1983); and Lindley S. Butler and Alan D. Watson, (eds.), The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History (1984). Plantations and slavery are examined in Jeffrey J. Crow, The Black Experience in Revolutionary North Carolina (1977). David Grier Martin, Jr. The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica