Within these wooded grounds are the stories of generations of families and their struggles to colonize a new world. Here, in 1587, the first attempts to establish an English colony began under the sponsorship of Sir Walter Raleigh. The fate of this "lost colony" remains a mystery today. The site also celebrates the preservation of Algonquian culture and was the location of an important Freedmen's Colony during the Civil War era. John White, a watercolorist, made a map of the Roanoke Island area around 1586, and his maps were for decades the basis for other maps of the region.