Nags Head, North Carolina

Nags Head is the southernmost of the three core Outer Banks beach towns, roughly 20 miles south of the Wright Memorial Bridge via US-158 (the Bypass) and NC-12 (the Beach Road). It's also the oldest resort town on the Outer Banks by a wide margin — vacationers were coming here nearly two centuries before "Outer Banks Travel" was a phrase anyone used.

North Carolina's First Tourist Colony

Nags Head's history as a resort dates to the 1830s, when Perquimans County planter Francis Nixon brought his family across the sound to escape mainland malaria. Other planters and merchant families followed, and by the 1850s Nags Head had become a full-fledged summer haven for "genteel families," complete with vacation cottages and the Nags Head Hotel, built at the foot of what's now Jockey's Ridge. The town's name itself comes from local folklore recorded in an 1860 Harper's Magazine piece — the tale of islanders tying a lantern around a horse's neck and walking it along the beach at night. It's a good story, and worth repeating as legend rather than settled fact.

Jockey's Ridge State Park

The single biggest reason Nags Head reads differently from Kill Devil Hills or Kitty Hawk is Jockey's Ridge State Park — 427 acres protecting the tallest active sand dune system on the East Coast. Visitors climb the dunes for sunset views over both the Atlantic and Roanoke Sound, fly kites, and in the evening watch hang gliders launch from the ridge. It's free to enter and open year-round.

The Waterfront: Jennette's Pier and Bodie Island

Jennette's Pier opened in 1939 as one of the first fishing piers built on the Outer Banks and has been rebuilt since as a concrete, storm-resistant structure with an oceanfront pier house. A few miles south, in the South Nags Head section of town, the Bodie Island Lighthouse rises 156 feet over the marshes at the edge of Cape Hatteras National Seashore — built the same year as Jennette's Pier, 1939, and still an active aid to navigation.

What Staying in Nags Head Is Like

With a year-round population of about 3,150 (2020 census), Nags Head is a genuine town, not just a rental-house strip — it has the oldest, most established commercial core of the three, mixed in with classic weathered-cedar beach cottages that predate modern zoning. It sits at the southern end of the Kitty Hawk–Kill Devil Hills–Nags Head corridor, making it a natural base for day trips both north toward Wright Brothers National Memorial and south toward the Cape Hatteras National Seashore villages.