History
2
In the late 1500s, European expeditions commonly constructed small defensive structures by digging ditches and forming walls from the removed soil. Ralph Lane, a fortifications export, led the 1585 English expedition, and at this spot he set his men to building such an earthwork. Its purpose is unknown. Its small size would not have provided nearly enough space for the numbers of 1585 explorers, let alone the more than one hundred settlers who arrived two years later. Documentation shows that those settlers lived in a palisaded fort, which has not yet been found.
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Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina · United States
