Since 1937, more than four million people have attended The Lost Colony and learned about the earliest English attempts to settle the New World and of the birth of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America.

This is the mission of the Roanoke Island Historical Association, realized each summer on the stage of the beautiful Waterside Theatre in Manteo, North Carolina: to celebrate the history of the first English colonies on Roanoke Island.

The Lost Colony weaves the words of North Carolina’s Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright, Paul Green, with music and dance to tell the haunting story of the 117 men, women and children who settled on Roanoke Island in 1587 – and then vanished mysteriously. The result is a theatrical experience that reveals the strength and spirit that comes from challenge and endurance. These qualities represent the courage of our early New World inhabitants and all those who would follow in their footsteps.