Mary Island

Mary Island sits out in Currituck Sound just west of Corolla village, one of a handful of small, low-lying islands — grouped historically with Monkey Island, Lungreen Island, and Raccoon Island — that turn up together in old Currituck land records as part of a single tract of sound and ocean frontage sold off in the 1970s. There's no causeway, dock, or trail leading out to it, and it isn't set up to receive visitors; it's habitat, not an attraction, and the most realistic way to lay eyes on it is from a boat or kayak working the sound's marsh channels rather than on foot.

That habitat matters more than it might look. Currituck Sound holds one of the largest expanses of freshwater marsh left on the Atlantic coast, and it's disappearing — erosion, subsidence, and rising water have been eating away at islands like this one for decades. Mary Island shows up by name in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers feasibility study on restoring the sound's eroding marsh islands, and the broader push to shore up what's left is now backed by the Currituck Sound Coalition, a partnership that includes Audubon North Carolina and The Nature Conservancy. If you're paddling or boating the sound out of Corolla, islands like Mary Island are part of what you're actually looking at: the quiet, working edge of a marsh system that's rare, fragile, and easy to miss if you're only looking at the water.