The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Islan in Dare County in present-day North Carolina was an enterprise financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 16th century to establish a permanent English settlement in the Virginia Colony. Between 1585 and 1587, groups of colonists were left to make the attempt, all of whom either abandoned the colony or disappeared. The final group disappeared after a period of three years elapsed without supplies from England, leading to the continuing mystery known as "The Lost Colony." The principal hypothesis is that the colonists were absorbed by one of the local indigenous populations, although the colonists may possibly have been massacred, by the Spanish or by the Powhatan Confederacy.