Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina

Kill Devil Hills sits in the middle of the core Outer Banks beach corridor, between Kitty Hawk to the north and Nags Head to the south, roughly at mileposts 5 through 10 on US-158. With a year-round population of 7,633 as of the 2020 census, it's the largest municipality in Dare County and the commercial hub of the northern Outer Banks — most of the area's shopping, dining, and lodging density sits here.

Where the Wright Brothers Actually Flew

On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first four sustained, controlled powered flights at the base of the big dune here — not in the village of Kitty Hawk, despite the popular shorthand. The brothers had been coming from Dayton, Ohio since 1900, drawn by the U.S. Weather Bureau's data on the area's steady winds and by the privacy a remote barrier-island site offered in the early 1900s. Wright Brothers National Memorial, run by the National Park Service, now marks the spot with a granite monument atop the hill and a visitor center with a reproduction of the 1903 Flyer.

Why the Name Says "Kitty Hawk" in the History Books

Kill Devil Hills didn't exist as an incorporated town in 1903 — it wasn't chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly until March 6, 1953, exactly fifty years after the flight. After the flights, the Wright brothers walked to the nearest telegraph office, at the Kitty Hawk Weather Bureau station, to send word of their success. That telegram is why "Kitty Hawk" became the name permanently attached to the first flight in popular memory, even though the actual liftoff was several miles south, on the dune that gave this town its name.

Where the Name "Kill Devil" Comes From

The town's own name has several competing origin stories, and no single one is confirmed. The most commonly repeated is that a shipment of unusually strong Caribbean rum — dubbed "Kill Devil" rum, strong enough, as the saying went, to kill the devil himself — washed ashore or was salvaged from a wreck here. Other versions point to homemade moonshine distilled in the dunes, or to the area once being thick with killdeer birds ("Killdeer Hills"), or to treacherous currents in the sound that sailors said were "enough to kill the devil to navigate."

A Practical Base for the Whole Northern Outer Banks

Kill Devil Hills' population didn't take off until the Wright Memorial Bridge and Umstead Bridge connected the barrier islands to the mainland in 1930 (following an earlier 1920 sound crossing); before that it was a sparsely populated dune community. Today its central location and larger commercial base make it the most practical place to stay for visitors who want to be within a short drive of Kitty Hawk to the north and Nags Head to the south.