HIDDEN MAPS, HIDDEN CITY - The Lost Colony Center for Science ...

Since 1982 the authors of this paper have attempted to determine the fate of Sir Walter
Raleigh’s 1587 colony, popularly known as the “Lost Colony.” McMullan began his research
when he uncovered the legend of Beechland, a community of indeterminate age in the heart of
the Dare County mainland, whose descendants have always claimed that their ancestors were a
mixture of Indians and Raleigh’s colonists. A few years later, Willard became obsessed with the
fate of the colonists when he and Barbara Midgette became responsible for uncovering European
artifacts in the Croatan Indian village in Buxton on Hatteras Island 42 in 1993, discovering the
location of the relict inlet of Port Ferdinando 43 and most importantly, discovering thousands of
living descendants of the Croatan/Hatteras/Mattamuskeet Indians 44 . After independently coming
to the same conclusion about the fate of the colonists at Beechland, the authors began to share
their related discoveries and present their results at www.lost-colony.com, the website of the Lost
Colony Center for Science and Research, Inc. 26
Thirty years of combined studies, using multi-discipline research in eight sciences
(archaeology, biology, geography/map studies, computer science/satellite-imaging, geology,
history, genealogy, and DNA studies), have given these authors a strong research basis in
realizing that hundreds of clues related to the Lost Colony are all emanating out of one location:
the coastal plain of North Carolina, and that the location is Beechland. The most popular
paradigm related to the Lost Colony for the last 100 years has been that they migrated to
Chesapeake Bay and were murdered by the great Chief Powhatan, proffered by David Beers
26 42 Mary Helen Goodlow, “Trash Will Tell Very Tall Tale”, The Coastland Times (Manteo, NC: July 31, 1994):
www.lost-colony.com/Buxtonfind.html.
43 Fred L. Willard, Barbra Midgette, E. Thomson Shields (Edited by Charles Ewen), “The Roanoke Sagas:
Searching for the Roanoke Colonies” (North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources: Office of Archives and
History), 2003, http://www.lost-colony.com/sagas.html.
44 Willard, “Disappearing Indians”, 2000; McMullan, “Beechland”, 2002; Willard, “Migration Patterns of Coastal
N.C. Indians”, 1998.