Springer’s Point Preserve stands on the highest land on Ocracoke Island beside an adjoining channel and deep harbor, and it has figured prominently in the island’s history. Archaeological evidence indicates that Late Woodland Algonkian Indians fished and gathered shellfish there in pre-colonial times. It is believed to have been the site of Pilot Town, established in 1715 as the first European settlement on Ocracoke, where English pilots built small huts and docked their boats while guiding ships through Ocracoke Inlet, and that settlement eventually evolved into the community of Ocracoke. The point later became associated with Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, and in September 1718 he and pirates including Charles Vane, Robert Deal, and Calico Jack Rackham met there in what is described as the largest pirate gathering ever held on the mainland of North America. Nearby Teach’s Hole was Blackbeard’s favorite anchorage, and it was there that Lieutenant Maynard defeated him in a fierce battle in 1718; legend says the headless pirate swam around his ship seven times before sinking into Pamlico Sound. Shortly after Teach’s death, Springer’s Point, along with the rest of the island, was granted to John Lovick and then passed through a number of owners. Spanish privateers who seized Ocracoke Inlet in 1747 and invaded the island probably landed there, stealing livestock, burning homes, and killing several residents, and an attack by nine British ships and 2,000 soldiers during the War of 1812 is also said to have targeted the settlement there. As late as 1837, the property was probably the most populated part of the village, and Ocracoke’s only road then ran from Springer’s Point to Hatteras Inlet according to the road keeper’s minutes of Carteret County. Delvan Spring and his wife Clara were the first Springers to own the land, and Wallace Springer, for whom it is named, later acquired it from William Howard before selling it to Sam Jones, a Norfolk industrialist and Ocracoke philanthropist who owned The Castle and the Berkeley Manor and was buried in the cemetery at Springer’s Point next to his favorite horse, Ikey D.