Editing Roanoke Colony (section)

===Secret operation at Beechland===
Local legends in Dare County refer to an abandoned settlement called "Beechland", located within what is now the [[Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge]]. The area has had reports of small coffins, some with Christian markings, encouraging speculation of a link to the Lost Colony.{{Sfn|Gabriel-Powell|2016|pp= 127–128}} Based on these legends, engineer Phillip McMullan and amateur archaeologist Fred Willard concluded that Walter Raleigh dispatched the 1587 colonists to harvest [[sassafras]] along the Alligator River. All records suggesting the colony's intended destination was Chesapeake Bay, and that England had lost contact with the colony, were supposedly falsified to conceal the operation from Spanish operatives and other potential competitors.<ref name="McMullan 2010">{{cite thesis |type=M.A. in History |last=McMullan |first=Philip S. Jr. |date=October 28, 2010 |title=Beechland and the Lost Colony |publisher=North Carolina State University |url=http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/resolver/1840.16/6486 |access-date=September 5, 2019 |archive-date=April 17, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230417064551/https://repository.lib.ncsu.edu/handle/1840.16/6486 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=263}}

According to McMullan,<ref name="McMullan 2010"/> Raleigh quietly re-established contact with the colony by 1597, and his sassafras expeditions were simply picking up the colonists' harvests. In this view, the colony was not truly abandoned until the secret of the colony's location died with Raleigh in 1618. After that point, McMullan argued, the colonists would have begun to assimilate with the Croatan at Beechland.<ref name="McMullan 2010"/>

This hypothesis largely depends upon oral traditions and unsubstantiated reports about Beechland, as well as a 1651 map that depicts a sassafras tree near the Alligator River. A significant problem with the hypothesis is that Raleigh supposedly planned a sassafras farm in 1587, to capitalize on a dramatic increase in crop prices, so that he could quickly compensate for the great expense of the failed 1585 colony.<ref name="McMullan 2010"/> The proposed financial motivation overlooks the fact that Richard Grenville's privateering recovered the cost of the 1585 expedition.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=60}} Additionally, sassafras prices did not skyrocket in value until the late 1590s, well after the establishment of the 1587 colony.{{Sfn|Lawler|2018|p=112}}