Virginia Finnerty found Washington by accident.

“I just kind of fell into it, really. I did not know Washington existed,” said Finnerty, owner of Pamlico House Bed & Breakfast on Main Street.

Finnerty was in the market for a bed and breakfast, and she discovered one in her price range in Bath. But it wasn’t what she was looking for.

Finnerty’s Realtor directed her to Pamlico House, a longtime B&B built more than a century ago as the rectory for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

“As it turned out, it was exactly what I was looking for,” Finnerty shared. “This was the right-size town.”

Finnerty was one of the 2,801 people who expanded Beaufort County’s population – through births, relocations and other ways – by a modest 6.2 percent over the past decade.

She said three basic things led her to come here and stay here: the right property, the size of the town and the reception she received from the start.

“I walked around the downtown area, and everybody was really, really friendly,” Finnerty said. “And that made the difference.”

The hypothesis seems simple, like that phrase from the movie “Field of Dreams” – “if you build it, they will come.”

In this case, “they” would be retirees and seekers of bedroom communities, or perhaps new industries and their workers.

It turns out things aren’t that simple.

You can build it, but they won’t necessarily come – not in droves, anyway, and not without a strong economy and the right marketing.

Bob Rich, owner of The Rich Company, a local real-estate firm, said incoming retirees contribute to overall home sales in this county, but so does job growth, and so do other parts of a complex whole.

“We’re not all dependent on being a bedroom community of Greenville or retirees or we’d all go broke,” Rich observed.

Of course, the Pamlico River is the biggest draw for outside people mulling over changes of address, he pointed out.

“Retirees is a big market, especially with communities like Cypress Landing and Pamlico Plantation,” Rich said, adding Realtors also see a lot of Greenville medical professionals looking for an easy commute.

“The cost of living is less over here for them, and there’s less of the hustle-bustle,” he said. “It’s a lot more quality of life oriented than it is we’re just a piranha of Greenville at this point.”

Bobby Parker, Beaufort County’s tax administrator, bolsters Rich’s point about growth being an effect with multiple causes.

New-home construction here isn’t confined to retirement communities or bedroom communities, according to Parker.

“Most of our growth is pretty equal across the county,” he said.

Citing building permits, Parker noted 20 single-family homes – probably near the water – being built or already finished in the Bath township area.

Another 13 homes have been built or are under construction in Long Acre township, and around eight a month are going up or on the verge of construction in the middle-class Northgate subdivision west of Washington, he shared.

“The rest of it’s just kind of scattered across the county,” he concluded.

All things being equal, growth, be it low or slow, is a layered experience, county officials indicated.

“Our population growth actually turned out to be fairly in line with previous decades,” said County Manager Paul Spruill. “The retiree interest in the community certainly assisted with helping us retain the normal rate of growth in the wake of a downturn in the economy.”

The most vigorous growth was seen south of the Pamlico, and likely was influenced by interest in living within waterfront subdivisions such as Cypress Landing and Long Point Landing, Spruill said.

There were signs the Great Recession’s stubborn offsprings – high unemployment among them – might have knocked down some of the growth that had been anticipated here a few years ago.

Census figures released so far don’t really tell that story, and that story may never be fully told, except in an anecdotal way.

But one of the women on the front lines of ongoing efforts to attract people to the county has her own perspective on these matters.

Paula Stephenson is a staff member at Washington’s Visitor Center on Market Street.

“Naturally, the water is a big draw,” Stephenson said, when asked what people cite while listing the amenities that lured them here.

“People want to be near the water,” she continued. “We get that, ‘It’s a pretty little town.’”

And the history of Washington brings folks in, as does live music on weekends and other things that families can see and hear together, she said.

Of the two main groups č tourists or potential relocatees – that pass through the Visitor Center, it’s likely that 60 percent are at or approaching retirement age, Stephenson said.

Some of these individuals in the retiree category point to the relatively low cost of living here compared with more metropolitan places, she added.

It’s the county’s rich potential, and the lowest interest rates on homes that he’s seen since 1972, that Rich hopes will spur bigger growth in the real-estate market in years to come.

And with that growth would come the expansion of the tax base, and more.

“It is the most opportune time that I’ve seen to buy a home and finance it,” Rich said. “Buyers are starting to come out of the woodwork.”