The Roanoke Colonies
European exploration of the Outer Banks of modern-day North Carolina began in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano in the service of the French king, Francis I, skirted the Outer Banks in 1524 and the following year the Spaniard Pedro de Quejo passed by on a voyage to the Chesapeake Bay. Neither the French nor Spanish made any effort to settle the region, however, and other than a brief visit by the Spanish in 1566 Europeans showed no interest in the Outer Banks until the Roanoke voyages sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh nearly twenty years later.