Wild horses, pirate history, and a walkable grid: Beaufort NC earns every slow mile

North Carolina’s third-oldest town doesn’t disappoint

Beaufort sits on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast, and it has been there since 1709, making it the third-oldest town in the state.

About 4,400 people live here now, in a walkable waterfront grid that looks almost exactly like it did three centuries ago. Blackbeard knew these waters.

Wild horses still roam the islands across the creek.

The whole place runs about 12 blocks, and almost every one of them has something worth slowing down for.

Front Street runs right along the water

Front Street is where most of your time in Beaufort will go.

It runs along Taylor’s Creek, and from just about anywhere on the boardwalk, you can look across the water and see the Rachel Carson Reserve islands. Benches line the walkway.

Boats sit at the downtown marinas. Ferries to the barrier islands leave from here.

On a clear morning, if you look long enough across the creek, you might spot a horse standing at the water’s edge.

Blackbeard ran his ship aground just outside town

Before Beaufort was a fishing village, it sat on the site of a Native American settlement called Wareiock. When the colonists arrived, they turned it into a port town tied to maritime trade under the Lords Proprietors.

That made it a natural stop for pirates. Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and Anne Bonney all worked these waters.

In June 1718, Blackbeard ran his flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge, aground at Beaufort Inlet. That wreck is part of why the town’s maritime museum exists at all.

See Blackbeard’s actual shipwreck artifacts for free

The North Carolina Maritime Museum sits right on Front Street and costs nothing to walk through.

It reopened in February 2026 after a full year of renovations, and it now houses more than 300 restored artifacts from the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

Two new exhibits were added, one covering North Carolina’s role in the Revolutionary War and another on coastal recreation.

Across the street on Taylor’s Creek, the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center runs boatbuilding courses if you want to do more than look.

The Old Burying Ground holds stories stranger than fiction

On Ann Street, about a block from the waterfront, the Old Burying Ground has been taking in the dead since the early 1700s. The town took ownership in 1731, and more than 200 headstones predate the Civil War.

Some of the earliest graves are marked with wood, brick, and shells because carved stone had to come by ship.

Among those buried here: a child preserved in a rum keg after dying at sea, a War of 1812 privateer, and the crew of a schooner lost in an 1886 storm.

Walk six restored colonial buildings on Turner Street

The Beaufort Historic Site covers two acres on Turner Street and packs a courthouse, an apothecary, a jail, and several historic homes into one walkable block.

The Beaufort Historical Association runs the place and offers guided walking tours or rides through the district on a vintage English double-decker bus.

Inside the Leffers Cottage, volunteer weavers work antique looms and will show you what they’re making.

The Mattie King Davis Art Gallery, the oldest gallery in Carteret County, displays work from more than 100 local and regional artists.

Wild horses graze just across Taylor’s Creek

The Rachel Carson Reserve sits directly across from downtown, close enough that you can watch it from the boardwalk. Getting there takes a ferry or a boat, but the crossing is short.

The reserve covers 2,315 acres across Carrot Island, Town Marsh, Bird Shoal, and Horse Island, and fewer than 35 feral horses live on it. A local physician brought them to the islands in the 1940s.

When you go, stay at least 50 feet back. That’s about the length of a school bus, and the rule exists because these horses are wild.

Shackleford Banks has a wilder herd with Spanish roots

Shackleford Banks is a separate island entirely, part of Cape Lookout National Seashore and reachable only by boat or ferry.

More than 100 horses live there, and genetic testing has confirmed they descend from Colonial Spanish breeds that arrived in the Americas in the 1400s and 1500s. Nobody feeds them, waters them, or shelters them.

The National Park Service and the Foundation for Shackleford Horses manage the herd through monitoring and a birth control program, which makes this one of the last isolated wild horse herds on the East Coast.

Cape Lookout’s 56 miles of barrier island are almost empty

Cape Lookout National Seashore stretches 56 miles from Ocracoke Inlet to Beaufort Inlet with no roads, no hotels, and no crowds.

It was established in 1966 and includes North Core Banks, South Core Banks, and Shackleford Banks. You can shell, fish, kayak, bird, or camp on primitive sites.

The National Park Service also certified it as an International Dark Sky Park, the first on the Atlantic coast.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse, built in 1859 and standing 163 feet tall, is closed for climbing right now due to a stabilization project that runs through 2027 or 2028, but the beach and the Keepers’ Quarters Museum are open.

Fort Macon draws over a million visitors despite its small size

Fort Macon State Park sits on Bogue Banks near Atlantic Beach, a short drive from Beaufort. Workers built the five-sided brick fort between 1826 and 1834 to guard Beaufort Inlet and Beaufort Harbor.

It became North Carolina’s first functioning state park on May 1, 1936, after the Civilian Conservation Corps restored it. Admission is free.

You can walk through 26 vaulted rooms, hike the nature trails, swim at the beach, or catch a Civil War reenactment.

About 1.3 million people come through every year, which says something for a park that covers only 424 acres.

The aquarium has a 60-foot window into a World War II submarine

About 20 minutes from Beaufort on Bogue Banks, the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores takes you from the mountains to the sea in one building.

The centerpiece is the Living Shipwreck exhibit, a 60-foot viewing window where sharks, rays, and sea turtles move around a replica of a German U-352 submarine.

River otters, a stingray touch tank, and bald eagles in an outdoor habitat round it out. The aquarium opens daily at 9 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m. year-round.

Nature trails through the surrounding Theodore Roosevelt Natural Area are there when you need air.

The 1713 street grid still runs the town today

Beaufort’s original 12-block layout from 1713 survives on the National Register of Historic Places, and you can still walk it.

Colonial-era homes stand a block or two from Front Street, many kept up by the Beaufort Historical Association. Each summer, the Old Homes Tour opens private historic houses and gardens to the public.

On Saturdays, the Olde Beaufort Farmers Market sets up on the courthouse lawn with local produce, crafts, and goods.

The town has been here for more than 300 years, and it wears that history without making a fuss about it.

Visit Beaufort, North Carolina

Beaufort sits on the Crystal Coast in Carteret County, about 150 miles southeast of Raleigh. The closest airport is Coastal Carolina Regional Airport in New Bern, roughly 40 minutes away.

Once you arrive, you can walk to most of downtown without a car. The NC Maritime Museum, the Old Burying Ground, and the Beaufort Historic Site are all free.

Ferries to Shackleford Banks, the Rachel Carson Reserve, and Cape Lookout depart from the waterfront, but check current schedules and departure points before you plan your island days.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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• North Carolina’s Crystal Coast has wild horses, pirates, and almost no tourists
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