The Outer Banks of North Carolina have had a lively and sometimes lurid history going back four centuries. These barrier islands, frequently battered by storms and hurricanes, were the site of the first English colony in North America and figured prominently in the Civil War. The hundreds of shipwrecks off their shores have earned the Outer Banks a reputation as the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic.'

Rodney Barfield has assembled here more than 150 historic photographs and drawings, most of them never before published, to create a remarkable visual portrait of the Outer Banks' history and...