Columbia, North Carolina: Port on the Scuppernong

Columbia, the county seat of Tyrrell County, sits on the eastern shore of the Scuppernong River near where it widens toward Albemarle Sound. It is one of the quieter places in North Carolina, a consequence of being surrounded by swamp, pocosins, and tidal wetland that kept development at a distance for centuries. The town was chartered in seventeen ninety-three as Elizabethtown and later renamed Columbia.

Tyrrell County itself dates to seventeen twenty-nine, one of the oldest counties in the state, named for Sir John Tyrrell, one of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina. Timber, fish, and crops moved through Columbia's riverfront docks, tying this isolated corner of the coastal plain to the wider world. Today it is the gateway to the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest remaining peatlands in the eastern United States.