A local expert believes they have dug up evidence and solved the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. In the late 16th century, 115 people disappeared and it has since been a mystery of what happened to them puzzling historians for years.

The Roanoke Colony refers to two attempts by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the first permanent English settlement in North America. The first colony was established by governor Ralph Lane in 1585 on Roanoke Island in what is now Dare County, North Carolina, United States. Following the failure of the 1585 settlement, a second colony led by John White landed on the same island in 1587, and became known as the Lost Colony due to the unexplained disappearance of its population – Wikipedia

Scott Dawson, an EMT, and amateur archaeologist believes the colonists may have travelled to Hatteras Island after abandoning their new home, only he needs to prove it. In 2009 he and Mark Horton from the University of Bristol began exploring the area and Horton stated to the Daily Mail that “massive political eruptions and disagreements and people walking out and things” probably followed on Roanoke fell, leading to social splintering. “I’m pretty confident one group at least, probably the pretty substantial par, came out to Hatteras Island.”

At the beginning of 2013, Dawson, Horton, and their team started to dig through the layers and began to find evidence to prove their theory when they recovered thousands of items from the island, most of which were from the Croatoan tribe, but within their discovery, they found items that could be connected to the Lost Colony including an iron rapier and writing slates. When speaking to a local news outlet, The Outer Banks Voice, Dawson said “As much as I believed the colony went down to Hatteras, I never actually thought we were going to find it, I can’t believe we found what we found. It’s kind of surreal…We not only found evidence of mixed architecture of houses but also metallurgy, where they had blacksmith shops and were also working in copper and lead, and this continued right on into the 1600s. It’s hard to say how many, but a few dozen at least lived for a few decades down there in the villages and continued to work in metals.”

The team believes they have located what is left of the Lost Colony after they arrived on Hatteras and where they then integrated into the Croatoan tribe. After more than a decade the team had planned an archaeological dig, which was scheduled for this year to confirm whether or not Horton and Dawson’s analysis was correct, but with the outbreak of coronavirus, the excavation will be delayed until 2021.

Do you think the mystery of the Lost Colony may have finally be solved?