Ocracoke Island blends old traditions, community spirit, solitude, and a steady flow of visitors, remaining accessible only by ferry, private plane, or private boat. Except for the village, it is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and remains an undeveloped barrier island. Originally called Pilot Town, its south end and the north end of Portsmouth Island formed the gateway to Ocracoke Inlet, a key shipping point in colonial history, where early colonial mariners piloted vessels to mainland ports or transferred cargo from large schooners to smaller freight boats for Pamlico Sound’s shallow waters. The island is also known for horses descended from Spanish mustangs washed ashore in 16th- and 17th-century shipwrecks; once roaming wild, they were rounded up every 4th of July for gelding, branding, and breaking, later serving as transportation, for pulling carts, and for beach patrol at lifesaving stations. In 1954, Ocracoke Boy Scout Troop 290 began the nation’s only mounted scout troop, and in 1959 the National Park Service assumed care of the horses after the island road was paved. For generations, guiding duck hunters and charter fishing on Pamlico Sound and the nearby Gulf Stream have been part of island life, and the Ocracoke Working Watermen’s Association, founded in 2006, works to preserve the livelihoods of fishermen, clammers, crabbers, and oystermen as commercial fishing has become more regulated since islanders shifted from subsistence to commercial fishing after World War II. The mailboat Aleta linked Ocracoke Island and Atlantic in Carteret County during the 1940s and ’50s, carrying mail, passengers, and groceries on trips that could take up to 10 hours. During World War II, after the British HMT Bedfordshire was torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1942, the four bodies that washed ashore were buried in a plot donated to Britain by the people of Ocracoke, and a memorial ceremony is held each May. The island’s Independence Day celebration remains a treasured community event. Ferry service between Hatteras and Ocracoke began in 1950 with Frazier Peele’s adapted shad boat, expanded to carry 3 or 4 vehicles at $5 each, and became a free state service in 1957. The white Ocracoke Lighthouse, 75 feet tall, has stood since 1823 as the second-oldest operating lighthouse in the country, showing a stationary, nonblinking beam. The island’s history is preserved and shared at the Ocracoke Preservation Society Museum in the David Williams House, and Ocracoke also lies along the Outer Banks National Scenic Byway, part of a coastal landscape of marshes, dunes, beaches, sounds, wildlife refuges, lighthouses, and traditional villages.