The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources is a cabinet-level department within the state government of

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

dedicated to overseeing projects in the arts, culture, and history within the borders of the state. The current Secretary of Natural and Cultural Resources, the

cabinet-level A cabinet is a body of high-ranking state officials, typically consisting of the executive branch's top leaders. Members of a cabinet are usually called cabinet ministers or secretaries. The function of a cabinet varies: in some countrie ...

officer who oversees the Department, is D. Reid Wilson. Wilson has been in office since January 2021 and was immediately preceded by

Susi Hamilton Susi Hamilton was a Democratic member of the North Carolina House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017. Hamilton also owns the consulting firm, Hamilton Planning, which specializes in city planning and downtown economic development. In 2017, Gov ...

, who served as secretary from 2017 to 2020

History

The department was founded as the North Carolina Department of Art, Culture, and History. Its first secretary was

Sam Ragan Samuel Talmadge Ragan (December 31, 1915 – May 11, 1996)Representative Eva Clayton of North Carolina''Tribute To Sam Ragan''(House of Representatives – May 16, 1996). Retrieved September 10, 2016. was an American journalist, author, poet, a ...

, poet and arts advocate who later became North Carolina Poet Laureate. It was renamed to Department of Cultural Resources in 1973. In 1973, Grace Rohrer succeeded Ragan, becoming the first woman to hold a cabinet-level office in North Carolina. Many of the offices and divisions of the department were founded as separate institutions, such as the State Library of North Carolina, founded in 1812, the

North Carolina Museum of History The North Carolina Museum of History is a history museum located in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. It is an affiliate through the Smithsonian Affiliations program. The museum is a part of the Division of State History Museums, Office of Archives ...

, founded in 1902, and the

North Carolina Symphony The North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is an American orchestra based in Raleigh, North Carolina, with sixty-six full-time musicians. The orchestra performs in Meymandi Concert Hall and performs occasionally with the Carolina Ballet and the Opera Com ...

, founded in 1943. These organizations either remained independent or were gradually combined under the Office of Archives and History until 1971, when the Department of Cultural Resources became the first cabinet-level office of any state in the United States to deal solely with history, the arts, and cultural knowledge. On September 18, 2015, the Department of Cultural Resources was renamed the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The name change came with a transfer of several divisions to the department, including North Carolina's

state parks State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...

aquariums An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, a ...

zoological park A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to zool ...

museum of natural sciences The Museum of Natural Sciences of Belgium (french: Muséum des sciences naturelles de Belgique, nl, Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen van België) is a museum dedicated to natural history, located in Brussels, Belgium. The museum is a part of t ...

, the Clean Water Trust Fund and the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program.

Property and holdings

The Department of Natural and Cultural Resources supervises and cares for a large number of historic sites, documents, pieces of art, and other items and places of cultural value for the state. The State Archives, for instance, contain over 100 million historic documents, including North Carolina's copy of the

United States Bill of Rights The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the ratification of the Constitution and written to address the objections rais ...

and the original 1663 charter for the

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...

as granted by

Charles II of England Charles II (29 May 1630 – 6 February 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685. Charles II was the eldest surviving child of ...

. Perhaps the most prominent building supervised by the department is the

North Carolina State Capitol The North Carolina State Capitol is the former seat of the legislature of the U.S. state of North Carolina which housed all of the state's government until 1888. The Supreme Court and State Library moved into a separate building in 1888, and the ...

, an 1840

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

building that contains a substantial number of historic artifacts, furniture, and monuments related to the history of North Carolina. The

North Carolina General Assembly The North Carolina General Assembly is the Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of the Government of North Carolina, State government of North Carolina. The legislature consists of two chambers: the North Carolina Senate, Senate and the North Ca ...

's appropriation in 1947 of $1 million for the purchase of artworks and sculpture to be housed in the Museum of Art made it the first state in the nation to use public funds for the purpose of building a state art collection

Department structure

The department is organized in the following manner (all divisions located in

Raleigh Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the Southeas ...

unless otherwise noted):
Office of Archives and History
* State Archives of North Carolina (formally known as the Division of Archives and Records) **

Outer Banks History Center {{Short pages monitor