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

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Place Description
Gulf

town in S central Chatham County. Inc. 1913, but long inactive in municipal affairs. Early nineteenth-century center of trade and coal mining. Alt. 275. The geographic center of the state, which see, is nearby.

Gulf Branch

rises in NW Burke County and flows SW into Linville River.

Gulf Creek

rises in SE Chatham County and flows SW into Cape Fear River.

Gulf Prong

rises in NE Swain County and flows S to join Chasm Prong in forming Bradley Fork.

Gulf Stream

is a warm current in the Atlantic Ocean that flows out of the Gulf of Mexico along the E coast of the United States and E in the North Atlantic toward Europe. Along the coast of North Carolina, it approaches Cape Hatteras and gives that part of the state a milder winter than would otherwise be the case. Winter temperatures of the surface waters there are approx. 63°, while summer temperatures are about 80°. The Gulf Stream was first described by Benjamin Franklin, and it appears on a map prepared for him in 1770 by Timothy Folger.

Gulf Township

SW Chatham County.

Gull Island

a tiny island in SW Carteret County in Bogue Sound.

Gull Island Bay

on the W shore of Hatteras Island in the waters of Pamlico Sound, S Dare County opposite Gull Island.

Gull Rock

community in E Hyde County on Wyesocking Bay. A former post office there was Gulrock.

Gull Shoal

a small island in Pamlico Sound off the W shore of Hatteras Island, SE Dare County. The name appears in local records as early as 1794 as "Gull Shore."