Nags Head Wood Ecological Preserve

This extensive ecological preserve on North Carolina’s Outer Banks protects a remarkable range of unique habitats, including forested dunes, interdune ponds, marshes, and wetlands. The preserve offers a welcome natural respite from the busy coastal scene not only for wildlife, but also for human visitors as well.
Two of the largest active sand dunes on the East Coast, Run Hill and Jockey's Ridge, run along the northern and southern borders of the preserve respectively. These huge ancient dunes constantly move and change shape as the prevailing northeasterly winds blow sand into the forest, marsh, and sound. Shielded from the ocean winds by the dune ridges, Nags Head Woods features a diversity of plant and animal life that is unusual to find on a barrier island. Towering oaks, hickories, and beech trees, some hundreds of years old, rise from the sand and create a canopy of trees more typical of the mountains of the eastern United States.
Over 100 species of birds have been documented at Nags Head Woods. The preserve is an important nesting area for more than 50 species, including green heron, wood duck, red-shouldered hawk, clapper rail, ruby-throated hummingbird, pileated woodpecker, prothonotary warbler, and summer tanager. Fifteen species of amphibians and 28 species of reptiles have been documented as well. The freshwater ponds are inhabited by seven species of fish and many reptiles and amphibians in addition to a great diversity of floating aquatic plant life, including the rare water violet. An extensive marsh system bordering Roanoke Sound on the western side of the preserve supports a wealth of wildlife including river otter, egrets, herons, and many species of migratory waterfowl.
During the 19th century and through the 1930s, Nags Head Woods was a thriving village community with 13 homesites, two churches, a school, a store, farms, a gristmill and a shingle factory. There are artifacts remaining of village life: a home foundation, cemeteries and other signs of previous human habitation in the forest.