Fence added to protect Salvo Community Cemetery

Reprinted from Island Free Press

Thanks to a team of volunteers, a fence has been installed on the sound-facing border of the historic Salvo Community Cemetery, also known as the Salvo Day Use Cemetery, to further protect it from damage or accidental intruders.

The fence is part of a wave of improvements to the 146-year-old landmark, which also includes landscaping, installing signage for visitors and resetting a handful of dislodged headstones.

Situated along the Pamlico Sound on the northern edge of the Salvo Day Use Area, a popular soundside beach access site for visitors, the Salvo Community Cemetery has changed dramatically, and for the better, in the past few years. Home to the descendants of many local families on the Outer Banks, the cemetery has been slowly revitalized, and in the past decade, saved from complete destruction.

After a series of hurricanes in the 2010s, including 2011’s devastating Hurricane Irene, the cemetery began crumbling rapidly due to an eroding shoreline and little protection from the elements. Residents, family members and others, fearful that the gravesites would wash away, responded by embarking on a lengthy process to find a long-term solution for the landmark.

In 2015 and 2016, a community-wide initiative was launched to prevent further devastation to the cemetery, which was losing gravesites to erosion on a regular basis. The Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Civic Association played a big role in the restoration of the site, and served as the umbrella group to conduct the needed repairs and renovations. The association hosted fundraising campaigns to raise the estimated $120,000 to protect the cemetery.

This initiative was successful, and construction of a bulkhead and armor rock barrier along the Salvo Community Cemetery was completed in 2018. Fencing was also bolstered on three sides of the site to protect it further and keep it secure.

With the recent addition of the back fence, the cemetery is now fully enclosed. The new fence is just one of the improvements planned for the historic site, and other initiatives are being planned for the not-so-distant future.

“We are currently working on signage to help tourists understand that the cemetery is an ‘active’ one, and not abandoned … That’s step one,” Robin Daniels Holt, Hatteras Island Genealogical Society Member and project organizer, said in an earlier interview. “(The next step is to) develop a plan to establish ground cover to help sustain the sand before we reset the upturned stones. It would be a waste of time to reset the stones without some landscaping.”

While future renovations to the Salvo Community Cemetery are still in the planning stages, and there is no finalized timeline on what projects will be completed or when, the partnership with the National Park Service, which manages the public beach and the Salvo Day Use Area, is already established.

In the meantime, visitors to the Salvo Day Use Area are encouraged to use caution and to treat the active cemetery with respect. Visitors are asked not enter the cemetery, or launch watersports equipment from the bulkhead, and to steer clear of vulnerable gravesites and stones, some of which date back a century or more.

This story is provided courtesy of the Island Free Press, a digital newspaper covering Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. Coastal Review Online is partnering with the Free Press to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest along our coast.