Copyright Notice: This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Some place names included in The North Carolina Gazetteer contain terms that are considered offensive.
"The North Carolina Gazetteer is a geographical dictionary in which an attempt has been made to list all of the geographic features of the state in one alphabet. It is current, and it is historical as well. Many features and places that no longer exist are included; many towns and counties for which plans were made but which never materialized are also included. Some names appearing on old maps may have been imaginary, but many of them also appear in this gazetteer.
Each entry is located according to the county in which it is found. I have not felt obliged to keep entries uniform. The altitude of a place, the date of incorporation of a city or town, may appear in the beginning of one entry and at the end of another. Some entries may appear more complete than others. I have included whatever information I could find. If there is no comment on the origin or meaning of a name, it is because the information was not available. In some cases, however, resort to an unabridged dictionary may suggest the meaning of many names."
--From The North Carolina Gazetteer, 1st edition, preface by William S. Powell
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Tar Creek |
rises in E Pamlico County and flows N into Broad Creek. |
| Tar Heel |
a town in NW Bladen County. Settled 1875. Inc. 1963. Alt. 100. Named either for the appellation said to have been given, by Confederates from other states, to North Carolina troops who emerged from a river with tar adhering to their heels, or for tar produced in the vicinity taken to the Cape Fear River and then by raft to Wilmington. Along the riverfront, the ground was covered with tar, and so were the feet that passed over it. |
| Tar Kiln Creek |
rises in S Pamlico County and flows S into Dawson Creek. |
| Tar Kiln Ridge |
NW Clay County, extends from Short Off to the Tusquitee Mountains. |
| Tar Landing |
community in N Onslow County between Blue Creek and New River. Early deeds refer to the landing on New River as Owen Jones's Tar Landing. |
| Tar Landing Bay |
in the extreme E end of Bogue Banks on the sound side, S Carteret County. |
| Tar Ridge |
S Watauga County, extends SE from the head of Days Creek. |
| Tar River |
rises in W central Person County and flows SE through Granville, Franklin, Nash, Edgecombe, and Pitt Counties to Beaufort County, where it becomes the Pamlico River. It is 179 mi. long. Appears on the Moseley map, 1733, apparently for the first time; previously known as Pampticough and other spellings of the modern Pamlico. There are many explanations of the origin of the name. It may be from an Indian word, Tau, meaning "river of health"; named for the Taw River in Devonshire, England; or named because of the tar produced in the counties through which it flows. |
| Tar-ko-ee |
See Piedmont. |
| Tarawa Terrace |
residential area of Camp Lejeune Marine Base, central Onslow County. Named for the Pacific Island on which a battle was fought against the Japanese, November 21-24, 1943. |
