Harkers Island is a census-designated place (CDP) in Carteret County, North Carolina, United States. The population of Harkers Island was 1,207 at the 2010 census. Harkers Island is unincorporated and receives most public services, including play in enforcement and public education, from Carteret County. A membership obliging provides the island following electric and water services. Major industries upon the island augment fishing, boat building, tourism, and waterfowl decoy carving.

Formerly named Davers Ile and Craney Island, Harkers Island was occupied by Native Americans of the Coree tribe gone the first European explorers arrived in the 16th century. Ownership of Harkers Island was first titled to Farnifold Green, a indigenous of the Carolina colony, by the lord overseer in 1707. Ebenezer Harker purchased the island in 1730, settled there taking into consideration his family, and built a plantation and boat yard. The island became known as Harkers Island soon after his death. A large immigration of islanders fleeing the hurricane-ravaged Outer Banks in 1899 dramatically increased the island population, which largely depended on fishing and boat building. Separated from the mainland for centuries, many Harkers Island residents speak a distinct dialect of English, earning them the nickname “Hoi toiders.”

Before the beginning of European explorers and settlers, Harkers Island was inhabited by Native Americans of the Coree tribe, who likely spoke a language of the Algonquian family, like most coastal tribes. The nearby Core Sound and Core Banks are named after the Coree. The Coree left little in the artifice of evidence of enduring habitation upon Harkers Island, except for a large mound of oyster missiles at Shell Point upon the eastern subside of the island. Similar shell mounds were found by Europeans on the Shackleford Banks and supplementary islands of the Outer Banks. The precise purpose of the mounds for the Coree remains unknown, but changing cultures of native peoples in the Southeast had been building major earthwork mounds back 3500 BCE, the Middle Archaic period, usually amalgamated to religious and ceremonial uses.

In 1584, an English expedition financed by Sir Walter Raleigh and led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe explored the North Carolina coast for a up to standard site for the first English colony in North America. Two Native Americans, Wanchese and Manteo, accompanied the expedition back to England in the fall of 1584. According to local island legend, Wanchese was a Coree from Harkers Island. The island was first charted upon the maps drawn by John White during the 1584 expedition, but it was shadowy at the time. The island appears upon a 1624 map of the greater Virginia coastline created by Captain John Smith. On that map, the island is labeled “Davers Ile”, probably for Sir John Davers, one of the founders of Jamestown in 1607.