Avon was first called Kinnakeet, a name derived from its first settlers, the Algonquian Indians, and although the post office changed the name in 1883, locals still call themselves Kinnakeeters. For much of its early history, Kinnakeet was the largest village on Hatteras Island, but after Hatteras Inlet opened in 1846, Hatteras Village became the island’s economic center. Kinnakeet’s abundant live oaks and cedars supported exceptional boatbuilding until those resources were depleted shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A Native American tradition there was drying yaupon, a native caffeinated plant, for tea, which was used as a substitute when China tea was cut off by British Loyalists. Kinnakeeters became known for legendary seamanship, and the U.S. Coast Guard eagerly hired them for life-saving stations along the North Carolina coast, including Big Kinnakeet and Little Kinnakeet, which protected this part of the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Eel grass in Pamlico Sound also supported great numbers of migratory waterfowl that attracted hunters, while local hunters worked as guides and made and set decoys. In 1912, Postmaster C.T. Williams began harvesting, drying, baling, and shipping eel grass for use in mattresses, furniture stuffing, and polishing fine wooden furniture, employing some 30 to 40 Kinnakeeters at peak production. Until 1947, boats were anchored along the Pamlico Sound shoreline, and that year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dug the T-shaped harbor.