As the Manns Harbor Bridge over the Croatan Sound nears its 70th birthday, it’s getting what North Carolina Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Pablo Hernandez recently called “the first major renovation that I’m aware of in my 28-, almost 29-year career here in Dare County.”

The bridge, he added quickly, needs work, but overall, “the fact is that we got almost 70 years out of it without a tremendous amount of maintenance investing.”

Hernandez also added that the work that had been done, mainly minor concrete repairs and a paint job about every 25 to 30 years, “but the current project seems to be the most complete.”

When the William B. Umstead Bridge, as it is officially known, opened to traffic in December 1956, Outer Banks newspaper the Coastland Times described it as “a fine Christmas present for the Southern Albemarle region,” adding that it “will make possible a lot of holiday visiting, particularly on the Dare County mainland.”

The bridge connects mainland Dare County with Roanoke Island and the Outer Banks. This delivered 20th century amenities to the isolated hamlets and towns of mainland Dare County that had yet to be electrified. With the bridge carrying connections for electric power and telephones, “some eight families will have electric lights for the first time” in the sleepy fishing village of Mashoes. And in the longstanding, unincorporated Manns Harbor community, “the bridge makes possible modern telephone,” the Coastland Times reported.

Although the bridge may appear to be in surprisingly good shape, it is a solid 40 years beyond its expected lifespan, and when the $33.75 million project began in summer 2023, uncertainty remained about the extent of repairs needed.

The original price tag has risen: “Estimated projections of total costs are currently around $45 million,” Hernandez wrote in an email. “We are doing what we can to control the costs but not to the detriment of the structure.”

“Until you’re there, you don’t know what you’re going to find, just like with an old house,” Hernandez said, “you start renovating it, and things need attention.”

The project is a blend of modern materials and traditional, often hands-on applications. Resurfacing the deck, for example, was completed using an epoxy that included an aggregate material to provide a textured surface. During the application process, the bridge was closed for nine months.

“All of those layers of the epoxy, as well as the aggregate to provide the textured surface, were all applied by hand, so over 300,000 square feet of bridge deck was rolled and squeegeed with these four separate layers of epoxy,” Hernandez explained.

The decision to apply the new surface in this way, instead of using “specialty trucks and pavers,” was in part because of the bridge’s 70-year-old design and the weight of the materials. “We don’t put a lot of what we call dead load on the bridge,” said Hernandez.

Other factors were also considered. “The deck was in surprisingly solid, good condition,” Hernandez said, “so there was no need to remove an inch just to put back another inch.”

The epoxy used is a viscous material that seals any cracks that may have developed.

Hernandez said the bridge design has a “certain robustness to begin with. It’s kind of like building a a deck on your house when you use a six-by-six post or an eight-by-eight or four-by-four post.”

Home to purple martins, pre-dedication damage

The bridge has for years been home to thousands of purple martins during summer. Hernandez, in response to Coastal Review’s query, was emphatic that the birds’ droppings had not damaged the bridge. He pointed out that the aerobatic birds roost on the bridges steel beams and atop the caps, concrete members that support the steel beams and are only there at night.

“From my experience, we have not seen a tremendous amount of bird droppings,” he said. Hernandez cited as evidence one night when he was with the Purple Martin Society conducting bird surveys. “We provided a boat and there were hundreds of thousands flying around. I don’t think anybody got nailed (with droppings).”

The most recent work has been below the bridge deck and the view down there is concerning. On the north side of the bridge, toward the mainland side, an entire piling is missing. In its place, iron girders support this part of the bridge. A March 1957 storm took out the piling before the bridge was officially dedicated the following month.

A grain barge, the C. W. Curlett “struck the bridge when it got out of control, said to have been due to the failure of one of the two motors. It swung down and struck the North side of bridge, shattering one of the huge concrete piles, so that the reinforcing steel inside it was exposed and bent,” the Coastland Times reported.

Just to the east of the bridge’s center rise, workers have been lowered to assess its condition. One worker taps the concrete with a hammer while another makes notes of their observations.

“They are listening for a hollow or dull sound,” Hernandez explained. “This indicates a deteriorated concrete layer.  If it is solid, it will have a distinct sharp, pinging sound.”

Repairs to the concrete pilings are now the project’s focus. The concrete is showing its age, largely because of the limited materials available in 1956, as compared to current designs. The bridge pilings, Hernandez said, were only “mildly” reinforced. “It just has reinforcing bars in it.”

The reinforcing bars, or rebar, is exposed through cracks in the concrete. Repairs involve removing any rust from the iron and replacing the concrete. Although there is visible rust on the rebar, the one-inch bars are still in good shape with only basic maintenance needed to clean the rust and repack the concrete.

Hernandez compared the Manns Harbor Bridge pilings to those supporting the nearby new Lindsay C. Warren Bridge, aka the Alligator River Bridge, a project to replace the early 1960s-era structure that Hernandez also supervises. The pilings there are prestressed, by “basically taking a very dense and durable cable and stretching it, pouring concrete around it, and then letting that elastic force come back in (and) help squeeze the concrete together, so you get a denser piling that can go through a lot more cycles without any kind of cracking.”

Looking back: State awards $450M deal to build new Alligator River bridge

The cracks in the Umstead Bridge were not unexpected after seven decades. Temperature variations and cycles of freezing and thawing in a marine environment will cause the material to develop small fissures. Once air reaches the rebar, the iron begins to rust. Conversely, below the surface of the water, in what is considered anaerobic conditions, “the concrete is dense and sound, and the rebar is protected from water and oxygen,” Hernandez replied in an follow-up email. “The majority of the deterioration of the concrete and rebar is in the splash zone where there his ample oxygen to facilitate the corrosion process of ferrous metals.”

Repacking the piling concrete is one of the most labor-intensive, hands-on parts of the project. After removing the damaged concrete and cleaning the rebar of rust, barges form a protected area around the work zone under the bridge. On a barge deck, workers mix Speed Crete Blue Line, a product described by Hernandez as a “rapid-setting underwater concrete repair mortar.” According the manufacturer, Euclid Chemical, the product will set in three to five minutes after coming in contact with water.  

Three divers are also employed in the repairs, reaching into buckets of mortar, pulling out a handful and pushing it into the voids and continuing the process until the piling is back to its original specs.

The mortar creates an airtight seal, protecting the rebar inside the piling. Then the pilings get an additional layer of protection.

“After we do the concrete piling, we come back with an epoxy-saturated carbon-fiber sheet of fabric and wrap that around the piling shell,” Hernandez said.

The bridge is considered one of the state’s “high-value bridges,” Hernandez said, referring to bridges within a $50 to $70 million range replacement cost.

Hernandez noted an NCDOT assessment of the bridge that asked, “Could we invest in a significant bridge preservation effort to get another 20, 30 or 40 years of life out of those structures?”

The repairs, Hernandez said, are going well, but the work originally slated for a Nov. 26 completion date that is “around the corner,” is unlikely to wrap up as scheduled. “Unfortunately we’re not going to be complete with the concrete repairs.”

Editor’s Note: Tabb’s Trails is a commentary photo-essay series with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb. Post has been updated.

Although it has been a dry year so far at Nags Head Woods Preserve, the protected maritime forest on the Outer Banks is a lush and vibrant green. Songbirds flit among the branches. The raucous cry of woodpeckers is distinctive and unmistakable.

Actually, the more than 1200 acres of protected maritime forest along the Roanoke Sound has been drying out for the past few years, and the freshwater ponds that dot The Nature Conservancy’s preserve are showing the effects. Ponds that are usually picture book-reflecting pools are shallow and covered in algal growth.

The ponds are at the base of a series of hills. “They are relict sand dunes,” said Lora Eddy, conservation coordinator for the preserve. You can “take a core sample of the soil, and it’s just a very thin layer of organic with just sand.”

Those ponds, even if they are low, are the key to the verdant growth of the woods, which the nonprofit organization calls “one of the largest remaining maritime forests on the East Coast.”

“It’s really neat how areas between our relic dunes hold rainwater and help provide a little bit of extra water for the forest, wicking up some of that groundwater and that’s in here so they can sustain themselves,” Eddy said.

The best guess is Nags Head Woods formed around 700 to 1,000 years ago, although it could be older than that. Protected from the salt spray and ocean winds by natural sand dune systems at Jockeys Ridge State Park to the south and Run Hill to the north, the woods are filled with old-growth trees, marsh and upland habitats that have withstood everything nature has thrown them for hundreds of years.

“You think about these really cool coastal habitats, they’re just used to change,” Eddy said. “That’s the amazing thing about coastal habitats.”

There are more than 8 miles of trails and the variety is one of the best features of the reserve, Eddy continued.

The preserve seems to offer trails for everyone, including the quarter-mile Center Trail, a loop around two freshwater ponds by the visitor center. It is a very easy trail and a great introduction to enjoying the forest for young legs.

The Sweet Gum Trail is certainly more demanding. Hikers climb ridges with elevation gains that make it seem almost like a mountain trail.

The Sweet Gum Trail connects with the Blueberry Ridge Trail to create a challenging 3.75-mile hike.

There is also an Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, Trail with two accessible parking spaces. The 1,850-foot boardwalk circles a pond fed from Roanoke Sound. It may be the best birding trail in the reserve.

In the winter, yellow-butted warblers are ubiquitous, red-bellied and pileated woodpeckers are common and there’s an occasional green heron that can be seen on the fringes of the pond.

At the beginning of the ADA Trail is a butterfly garden. The flowers are just now coming into bloom, but the butterflies have been flitting through the reserve since the first warm weather of April.

Nags Head Woods participates in the Carolinas Butterfly Monitoring Program that “aims to track butterfly populations using scientifically sound, standardized survey methods as well as opportunistic sightings across both North and South Carolina.”

It is a community-based science program and Eddy is enthusiastic about it.

“We are using the scientific method called the Pollard Walk,” she said. “I imagine there’s this circle around me as I walk, and as I walk, I count butterflies within that circle. It’s a lot of fun. When I talk to kids who are visiting, they’re asking me what I’m doing, carrying a clipboard and chasing butterflies.”

The squirrels are out in force this year, dancing out of the way of cars as drivers navigate Old Nags Head Road, possibly one of the last maintained dirt roads on the Outer Banks.

The road is located in Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head and is jointly maintained by the towns. The road, Eddy said, “takes a lot of maintenance.”

The speed limit on the road is 15 miles per hour and for a good reason. It’s only one lane, and meeting an oncoming car involves seeing who has the closest place to back up to allow the other car to pass.

The annual Nags Head Woods 5K hosted by the First Flight Rotary Club takes place every year on Old Nags Head Road the Saturday before Mother’s Day. The race just celebrated its 40th year.

It’s a beautiful road and one of the oldest in Dare County. N.C. State Highway Commission maps from the 1930s show a dirt road heading west off what is now N.C. 12 and then going south along Roanoke Sound until it reaches Nags Head.

Now gone, there was a small but thriving community at Nags Head Woods. The Nature Conservancy published a book in 1987, “Everyone Helped His Neighbor: Memories of Nags Head Woods,” that was reissued in July 2018 featuring interviews with those who lived there.

There are still a few homes on the edge of the woods along Roanoke Sound, but the forest has been largely uninhabited for over 40 years.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

Speaking before a standing-room-only audience at the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education in Corolla on Tuesday, Coastal Protection Engineering (CPE) Senior Project Manager Ken Willson said that beach nourishment on the north end of Corolla “appears to be the preferred alternative of the ones that we’ve evaluated.”

In his 45-minute presentation, Willson discussed four areas that were experiencing high rates of beach loss. The areas include the four-wheel-drive beach just north of the Horse Gate, an area Willson referred to as the Reserve/Refuge Reach. He also highlighted two relatively small areas, the Spindrift community and Pine Island South. The largest area is the North Corolla Reach, beginning at the Horse Gate on the north end and ending at Seabird Way.

Although the Spindrift and the Pine Island areas did not lend themselves to convenient solutions, Willson’s analysis of the North Corolla Reach indicated that beach nourishment was “the only one out of those three … that would technically meet the goals and objectives for the area south of the Horse Gate.”

The Reserve/Refuge Reach has a path forward with the recommendation of buyouts and removal of threatened structures by Currituck County, based on a cost-benefit analysis and the potential for legal challenges.

Willson’s presentation followed the February 2026 release of CPE’s five-year “Beach Monitoring and Beach Stability Assessment.” That report recommended additional monitoring, but did not call for any specific action to address property owner concerns about areas of the Corolla shoreline that are eroding.

Residents and the Corolla Civic Association have been pressing the county to be more proactive in addressing the loss of beach, and have presented a number of plans to county officials that include beach nourishment.

In his remarks, Willlson displayed a feasibility chart that presented options that included doing nothing, moving structures, and beach nourishment. In some areas, they included fencing and trucking sand to the beach, steps the county is already taking.

The charts offered an assessment of whether the project could be permitted under current law or would face significant regulatory challenges, as well as a cost-benefit analysis. But Willson also noted that, “We have not done a rigorous cost-benefit analysis the way the Corps of Engineers would do for one of these federal beach nourishment projects. We have made some assumptions … that we’ve seen with other projects.”

The Spindrift and Pine Island South areas have seen erosion on their beaches, but the affected shoreline is too short for a beach nourishment project, Willson explained, adding that, “When you build a very narrow section of beach (using) beach nourishment, there’s a lot of losses. We call them diffusion losses, off of the side of that project. For a project that’s 1,200 to 3,000 feet long, you’re almost losing more than you actually placed there.”

In a beach nourishment project, Willson explained, there is a taper “kind of a wedge-shaped fill,” on either side of the nourished beach that mitigates sand loss, But in a smaller project, the effect of the taper is minimal. Smaller projects, such as truck haul that have been used to protect sand the beach in Spindrift and Pine Island, may provide a temporary buffer, but are on a much smaller scale than nourishment.

In developing possible solutions, Willson noted one alternative that could not currently be permitted.

“We’ve considered the potential of putting some small structures on either side of the beach nourishment that might over the long term reduce the cost of the shorter beach nourishment projects,” Willson said. Those small structures would be short groins and would be considered hardened structures. Current North Carolina law does not allow hardened structures on the state’s beaches, a state Senate bill would repeal the ban.

Asked by the Voice after the meeting about the small structures, Willson acknowledged that “none of those short structures that we mentioned today could be permitted under the existing law, but,” he added, “the commissioners have asked us to consider everything.”

When he was asked about sandbags during a question-and-answer period, Willson responded that “Sandbags are designed to be temporary structures to hold the line until you can do something more permanent. Essentially, you have to be in really dire conditions to be able to qualify. The water line needs to be 20 feet from your structure, I believe, before they will allow you to install those.”

As he finished his presentation, Willson told the audience that “we haven’t gone into a ton of detail here, because we’re pushing the process and that determines the final alternatives.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

The Virginia State Lottery was going to hold a drawing on April 25, 1827, for the benefit of the Dismal Swamp Canal Co.

Whole tickets were $4, half-tickets $2, and a quarter-ticket could be purchased for $1. The grand prize was $10,000 and more than $100,000 in prize money was going to be awarded.

The lottery was part of an overall strategy by the company to raise funds to improve the then-22-mile-long Dismal Swamp Canal, a human-made waterway connecting the Albemarle Sound to the Chesapeake Bay that was completed in 1805.

Those improvements included creating the Northwest Canal, which was “built on the line of a waste ditch from the 1820s” and connected the Dismal Swamp Canal with the headwaters of the Northwest River. From there, the river empties into Currituck Sound on the coast, near the Virginia-North Carolina line, a 1973 report from the Canal Society noted.

Water to maintain the needed depth for navigation on the Dismal Swamp Canal and the Northwest River Canal was diverted from Lake Drummond in the Great Dismal Swamp. Those waters had traditionally drained though slow-moving creeks and rivers that emptied into Currituck Sound. That had been the case since opening in 1805.

The canal is often considered to be the oldest operating canal in the United States.

New Currituck Sound closed for the final time in 1828, changing the northern end of Currituck Sound from a saltwater to freshwater estuary, an event largely credited to the changes the Dismal Swamp Canal created in the flow of water.

“In 1828, the Atlantic inlets into the Currituck Sound closed due to the diversion of water in the Dismal Swamp and shifted the sound from salt-water to freshwater, upsetting the oyster and salt water fishing industries and changing commerce in the region,” Lago Mar on the Back Bay posted on their Facebook page on Dec. 31, 2025.

In a 1977 study “Coastal Processes and Resulting Forms of Sediment Accumulations Currituck Spit,” the authors note that “The completion of the Dismal Swamp Canal in 1805 undoubtedly also played a role in the closing of New Currituck Inlet.”

But coastal geologist Dr. Stan Riggs is skeptical that the Dismal Swamp Canal caused the inlet to close. The inlets of Currituck Sound are “ephemeral,” he said.

“They open in a storm, and they’re good for a while, and then they shoal back down,” he told Coastal Review. “It’s not the inside waters like down in the Pamlico. The inside waters there (in the Pamlico) play a big part in controlling the inlets and outlets, but up there (in Currituck Sound), there’s not enough water mass to build any kind of a storm surge on the inside.”

There are other factors arguing against the Dismal Swamp Canal closing the inlet that Riggs points to, as well.

With relatively little volume of water surging through the inlet, “it’s mostly the dynamics from outside that are driving that,” Riggs said. “One storm can move sand south, another storm will come along and move sand north. There’s a push and a pull that’s going on and up there. It’s mostly the dynamics of the ocean that are dictating what’s happening.”

And the ocean is getting sand from “a big sand pile off the mouth of Chesapeake Bay” Riggs said. “One of the reasons that we have so much sand up there in the first place is you have to have a source, and that source is the offshore (sand). That inlet closed because nor’easter storms were driving the Chesapeake sands to the northern barrier island.”

Neither the Old Currituck Inlet that would have been on the border of North Carolina and Virginia, nor the New Currituck Inlet just south of Knotts Island were especially useful for shipping.

There was some traffic through inlets for a short time, but William Byrd wrote in 1728 in his “History of the Dividing Line,” that “Navigation is a little difficult, and fit only for Vessels that draw no more than ten feet Water.”

Currituck County had a customs house to handle shipping arriving through New Currituck Inlet, but as author Meg Malvasi wrote in a 2010 “Historic and Architectural Resources of Currituck County 1790-1958” produced for the National Park Service, “One historian described the port as ‘of little consequence, for the few vessels which put in there were small, and the cargoes inconsiderable.’ Whenever one came to the port to unload goods, the port master would simply be there to greet the vessel.’”

The customs house closed in 1819 when Congress did not fund the location.

Even with either Currituck Inlet open, farmers and merchants in northeastern North Carolina lacked access to major seaports, and a canal linking the Outer Banks sounds with Norfolk, Virginia, had been discussed even before the American Revolution.

The earliest ventures were more concerned with draining the Great Dismal Swamp to create arable land than creating a canal. George Washington was a principal in the Dismal Swamp Co. formed in 1763 “for the purpose of taking up and draining a large Body of Land called the Dismal Swamp.” 

The venture failed, but Washington held on to his shares.

After the American Revolution, he and the other shareholders made a second attempt at draining the Dismal Swamp. That, too, failed. But, now familiar with Lake Drummond and how the waters moved through the swamp, he wrote in 1784 to North Carolina politician Hugh Williamson that “I have been long satisfied of the practicability of opening a communication between the rivers which empty into Albemarle Sound (thro’ Drummonds Pond) & the waters of Elizabeth or Nansemund Rivers.”

A doctor and scientist, Williamson, after the British occupied Philadelphia in 1777, fled to Edenton where he was elected to the state legislature and eventually sent to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Edenton was an critical port of entry in the 18th century and, according to a 1969 National Register of Historic Places document, Williamson “owned ships that traded profitably between Edenton and the West Indies.” A canal connecting Elizabeth City on the Pasquotank River with Norfolk would draw trade away from Edenton to the much better ports of Virginia.

Nonetheless, Williamson was “the primary advocate of the canal in North Carolina,” historian Mathew Shaeffer wrote about the Dismal Swamp Canal for the North Carolina History Project.

His support was important. The Dismal Swamp Canal Co. needed permission from Virginia and North Carolina to move the project forward. Virginia chartered the company in 1787, and it took three years for North Carolina to follow suit, but in 1790, the state chartered the company allowing construction to begin.

It took a while.

Work did not begin until 1793 on the poorly funded project to create the canal connecting South Mills in North Carolina and Deep Creek, now part of Chesapeake, Virginia.

Most of the work to cut the canal by hand was almost all done by enslaved laborers.

The conditions to dig a ditch through the tangle of swamp vegetation were horrific: extreme heat, venomous snakes, constant danger of flooding, and ice and cold in the winter.

Because the labor force was predominantly enslaved individuals who were often rented from their owners, there are no known records of the deaths that occurred while the canal was being built.

Originally conceived to be 32 feet wide and 8 feet deep, engineering for the project was primitive, French noble Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt wrote after a visit to the canal.

“What must appear surprising, is that, for this canal which already seems in such a state of forwardness, no levels have been taken. It is not yet known what number of locks may be necessary, and even whether any will be requisite,” he observed.

Even after opening to traffic in 1805, the canal did not match the original concept. When the canal was filled and the water was 8 feet deep, larger boats could not use it, although the water was sufficient for shallow-draft barges.

“That would be enough to let the residents of northeastern North Carolina get their produce and lumber to market,” David Walbert wrote for Anchor, a North Carolina online history resource.

Improvements were made, though. The War of 1812 “increased the desire to have a ‘back door’ shipping route between Virginia and North Carolina,” Shaeffer wrote, noting the canal “was not able to provide an adequate alternative route.”

Before the war ended in 1815, the “canal was expanded, and the first recorded passage of a vessel other than a flatboat occurred in June 1814,” Shaeffer continued.

Improvements continued to be made. On May 13, 1830, the Roanoke Advocate in Halifax wrote, “The interesting spectacle of the launching of a new  boat, was exhibited on Saturday … in Portsmouth. Though small, being only about 65 feet length on deck, the plan and purpose of this boat render her an object no little importance; she is intended to ply between this place and Elizabeth City via the Dismal Swamp Canal, and to admit of her passing through the canal without injury to the banks she is to be propelled by paddles in the rear … The name of this handsome appendage to the navigation of our port is the Lady of the Lake.”

The Lady of the Lake was the first steam-powered boat to ply the waters of the canal.

The Dismal Swamp Canal, though, was facing increased competition. Railroads in North Carolina and Virginia offered faster transportation of goods. In 1859 the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, or A&C Canal, provided deeper water and a more direct route to Virginia ports for North Carolina goods.

Union and Confederate forces fought for control of the canal during the Civil War, and although the North wrested control from the Confederacy in 1862, the South “did benefit from extensive smuggling via the canal during the rest of the war,” according to the Virginia Places Dismal Swamp Canal webpage.

For a brief period beginning in the 1890s, following upgrades by Lake Drummond Canal & Water Co., which purchased the canal in 1892, the Dismal Swamp Canal carried more freight than the Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal. With the federal government purchasing the A&C to create the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the fate of the Dismal Swamp Canal was sealed.

As with part of the Intracoastal, use of the A&C was free, and the Lake Drummond Canal & Water Co. did not have the resources to maintain its canal as well as the federal government could.

The federal government purchased the Dismal Swamp Canal in 1929 and it is currently maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Today, the canal is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway that stretches along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast states, and it measures 19 miles long, 60 feet wide and at a controlling depth of 9 feet, according to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Featured Image

A brightly hued eastern bluebird peeks out from a knothole in a tree at the Dare County Arboretum and Teaching Garden in Kill Devil Hills. Male bluebirds tend to draw attention to themselves at their nest cavities in this way to lure potential mates, according to Cornell Lab. Dare County Extension Master Gardener volunteers maintain the arboretum garden at 300 Mustian St. Photo: Kip Tabb

Featured Image

A snapping turtle climbs from the water for a snack recently at Sandy Run Park in Kitty Hawk. The park at 4343 The Woods Road offers public access to the Kitty Hawk Woods Maritime Forest, a half-mile nature trail with a pair of gazebos, canoe or kayak access, a nature observation tower, a catch and release fishing pier, picnic tables, benches and interpretive signage. While Sandy Run Park is home to friendly turtles, visitors are asked to not feed them. Photo: Kip Tabb

AHOSKIE — Between 35 and 40 protestors gathered on a downtown street corner Saturday to call attention to the proposed reopening of the Rivers Correctional Facility in Winton as a federal immigrant detention center.

While the number protesting was modest, they were buoyed by the overwhelmingly supportive response from passing drivers.

The 257-acre, 1,450-bed facility shuttered in 2021 is being considered as a facility to house people seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and suspected of not being in compliance with U.S. immigration law. The facility is owned by international private prison company GEO Group, “the largest detention services provider to ICE, with nearly 40 years of operational experience under ICE contracts,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU on Jan. 29 released the information it had obtained via a Freedom of Information Act process, and within three weeks, during the Hertford County Board of Commissioners Feb. 16 meeting, at least 10 people spoke out against the prison plan.

One individual, while not expressing support, noted that the decision about the fate of the Riverside prison was in the federal government’s hands, leaving county officials little, if any, recourse.

County commissioners, as of this publication, had declined to take a position on the property. Soon after the Feb. 16 commissioners meeting, Coastal Review asked County Manager Bill Shanahan whether he had been contacted about reopening the facility.

“I can tell you that the county manager has not been contacted,” he said, indicating that he had no more to add.

In an email following Saturday’s protest, Shanahan said nothing had changed.

Caroline Stephenson, who helped organize the protest, told Coastal Review that while she opposed ICE moving in, she had also been thinking about the “implications for citizens and residents,” she said. “I think the implications are not great.”

She said the facility would overwhelm the sheriff’s office, emergency medical services and hospital. “We’re a really small, rural county in terms of the amount of capacity that we have,” she explained.

Hertford County had fewer than 22,000 people when the last census was taken, and the official estimate was fewer than 20,000 as of 2024. Its population is roughly 58.4% Black, 36% white, 6.7% Hispanic or Latino, 1.9% Native American and 1.2% Asian. Nearly 23% of residents live in poverty and the per capita income is less than $29,000.

Walking along the protest line, Bobby Riddick used his cellphone to record the protest, planning, he said, to use it on his Facebook page. As cars passed by honking in support, he talked about the challenges of organizing a protest in Hertford County.

“It’s a very small area. A lot of people here have been here all their life,” he said. “They’re not used to protesting. They’re not used to fighting for their rights.”

Stephenson agreed, telling Coastal Review, “A lot of people, I think, are unsure or afraid of using their First Amendment rights and any of their rights that are provided under the Constitution. I think it’s important to educate people about their rights, but also about the dangers of not speaking.”

Standing with two friends behind a sign reading “ICE Out,” C.S. Brown High School senior Bird Lashbrook spoke clearly about her feelings.

“I have a voice that should be put to use, and I’m happy to give my support,” she said.

In 2021, President Biden, citing Justice Department reports that found private prisons were often less safe and had lower safety standards, as compared to publicly managed facilities, ordered the Justice Department to no longer renew contracts with private prison companies.

Across from the Pleasant Plains Baptist Church and just outside of Winton in Hertford County, it remained unclear for years whether the historic but badly damaged Rosenwald Pleasant Plains School built in 1920 could be saved.

If it could not, the school building, which replaced an earlier structure built on the grounds in 1866 that may have been the first “Colored” school in Hertford County, would probably be lost.

And then, in September 2024, a driver ran their car off U.S. 13 where the school is, and slammed it into the building with such force that the entire structure was moved off its foundation. The driver was drunk at the time.

With the one corner of the building crushed, the school off its stone foundation, and brick and other debris littering the inside, things looked bleak for the building that the National Register of Historic Places described in a 2016 report “as the only graded public school that served both local African American and Native American students in the Pleasant Plains community … from 1920 to 1950.”

As the report notes, the building was “a very intact, representative example of early twentieth-century rural school design.”

Yet what at first seemed like a disaster, may ultimately have saved the building. The insurance settlement was enough put the structure back on its foundation, repair the roof and exterior and paint the building.

There is, though, still work to be done.

Even before the accident, the roof had been leaking, and a new roof “stopped the problem with the leaks,” Roy Pierce said, who has been monitoring the condition of the school and handling repairs for years. “But before that took place, there were some leaks around those old chimneys, and the water seeped in and damaged some of the wooden ceiling.”

The ceiling needs repair, but it is just one of a number of problems pushing the cost of bringing the building back beyond the means of the Pleasant Plains Church, which owns the building and property.

Pierce pointed to the windows that have been boarded up to prevent vandalism. He explained that when restoration experts looked at the windows, he was told much of the glass was original, as were the frames.

“The estimate on just fixing those windows, was $17,000,” he said.

The land where the school rests has always been owned by the Pleasant Plains Church. The church, founded in 1851, is one of the oldest multiracial houses of worship in North Carolina. When founded, the church was for the nonwhite, free people of color only.

“Permission was granted to organize a church provided no slaves nor their descendants were allowed to join the church. The church was to be solely for the use of free-born people,” Corinne Hare Brummell wrote in Pleasant Plains Baptist Church 150th Anniversary Program in 2001.

At that time, and well into the 20th century, a person of color was anyone who was Black, African American or of mixed ancestry.

It is possible that there was a school associated with the church as early as the 1850s, but early church records were destroyed in a 1941 fire. It is known, however, that as early as 1866 “ten men were responsible for building a school house at Pleasant Plains,” the Hertford County Herald wrote recounting the history of Hertford County.

The first school house was one room, and “the only elementary school accessible to people of color, including African Americans and the descendants of Native Americans, in the Pleasant Plains community,” the National Register of Historic Places notes.

By the turn of the 20th century, it was clear a one-room school house was inadequate and in 1902, the county approved $90 “for the school with a total of ninety-eight students in the three classrooms,” according to the historic places document.

In 1920, hoping to improve the Pleasant Plains school, the community raised $750, the Hertford County school board contributed another $850 toward building a new three-room school, and the community received a $300 grant from the Rosenwald Foundation.

Although about a third of the construction cost of the school was low compared to other Rosenwald schools, Julius Rosenwald, the founder of the fund, “agreed to allow … funds to help rural Southern communities erect schools for black,” the historic places document explained if the community also contributed.

The school was in use from 1920 to 1950. When it closed, students began attending C.S. Brown School in Winton, which was also a Rosenwald-funded school that is now the Hertford County C.S. Brown Cultural Arts Center and Museum in Winton.

Chief Thomas Lewis, chief of the Meherrin nation, began his formal education at the school, but he recalled, “the floor fell in, and we had to go from there to one of the county schools. So by living in this area, we went to C.S. Brown.”

When he got to his new school, he and his brother who was in the second grade, “had to repeat grades,” he said. “I don’t know the reason, but that’s what they made us do.”

Although he attended the Pleasant Plains school for only the one year, Lewis has a clear memory of at least one of his teachers.

“Miss Ardelle Garrett, she was my girl. I brought her an apple every day,” Lewis said.

Garrett who, was born in 1904 in Ahoskie, had a long association with the school. As early as the 1930 census, Garrett is listed a teacher in a public school on the census form. And “the North Carolina Education Directory in 1939 notes the school with three teachers, including Ardelle Garrett, the principal,” according to the historic places research.

As a teacher, Garrett seemed to have had an impact on all her students.

“My father’s 96 and he talks about Ardelle Garrett to this day,” Lewis said.

There are other memories of what the school was like as well. Lewis mentioned that in the morning “we had people designated to go to the coal power and get coal, because that’s how the classrooms were heated.”

There is also a mention in the historic places report that Lewis recalled using “the outhouses in back of the school.”

There was a strong sense of community among the families surrounding the Pleasant Plains community.

“This stretch of highway, at one time you could leave Winton and drive to Ahoskie, and you knew that was Roy’s house and Thomas Chavis’ house, and whoever’s house. Back then, we knew everyone,” said Dr. Terry Hall, Pleasant Plains Church deacon, in describing U.S. Highway 13 that passes the church.

Yet if the C.S. Brown School was a larger and more modern school, it still took the community keep it going.

“There were a lot of fundraisers,” Lewis recalled. “They would sell cakes and pies to buy band uniforms and football equipment, all that kind of stuff.”

“They used to show movies. You could pay 15 cent and go see a movie,” Pierce added.

Although the school did not have the resources the white schools of the county had, what it did have were very good teachers.

“The teachers were good. We had people from here that went on to colleges and did well,” Hall said. “I think in some of the competitions, they used to have debates and stuff like that. They did good.”

In 1968, Hertford County Schools began the process of consolidating their schools and for the first year, student attendance was optional.

“It was part of what they called freedom of choice. I wanted to try to get a new experience. So I transferred (to Ahoskie High School),” Pierce said. Pierce graduated from Ahoskie High School in 1968.

The greater opportunity that was offered by the white schools may now be playing a role in how difficult repairing the Pleasant Plains School has become.

“We’ve gotten into an older population and people have gone into different professions,” Hall said. “Years ago, Thomas and his father and other people that did carpentry … they would have been buying the materials would have been all that would have cost us.”

“It’s like my younger brother, he said, ‘I’m leaving here because I’m not doing nothing with my hands,’” Lewis said. “And he moved to Roanoke Rapids.”

Second of two parts; read part 1

Not every slave master in Moses Grandy’s life was cruel. Some actively worked with Grandy to help him buy his freedom.

There was “Richard Furley, who … gave me a pass to work for myself.”

The agreement between Furley and Grandy was simple.

“I obtained work by the piece where I could, and paid him out of my earnings what we had agreed on; I maintained myself on the rest, and saved what I could…He paid seventy, eighty, or ninety dollars a year for me, and I paid him twenty or thirty dollars a year more than that.”

Sometime around 1813 or 1814 Grandy noted “the English blockaded the Chesapeake, which made it necessary to send merchandize from Norfolk to Elizabeth city by the Grand Canal, so that it might get to sea by Pamlico Sound and Ocracock Inlet…”

A skilled waterman by this time, he “took some canal boats on shares; Mr. Grice … was the owner of them.”

Most likely that is Mr. Charles Grice, described in a National Register of Historic Places survey of Elizabeth City as “the leading merchant in Elizabeth City’s early years.”

Grandy’s arrangement with Grice gives an indication of how valuable and trusted Grandy was. “I gave him one-half of all I received for freight: out of the other half, I had to victual and man the boats, and all over that expense was my own profit,” he described as the business arrangement.

It was during this time, when visiting “my brother Benjamin returned from the West Indies,” that how cruel and capricious life was for an enslaved person becomes clear.

Grandy was in one room and in another room “heard the heavy blows of a hammer…went to see what was going on. I looked into the store, and saw my brother lying on his back on the floor, and Mr. Williams, who had bought him, driving staples over his wrists and ankles; an iron bar was afterwards put across his breast, which was also held down by staples.”

His brother had done nothing wrong, he was told, “but that his master had failed, and he was sold towards paying the debts.”

Grandy Tries to Buy His Freedom

Although increasingly independent, Moses Grandy was still owned by James Grandy and at the suggestion of Grice, Moses asked how much would it cost to buy his freedom.

After considerable negotiation, $600 was the agreed price.

“I then went heartily to work, and whenever I paid him (James) for my time, I paid him something also towards my freedom, for which he gave me receipts,” Grandy recalled.

When $600 was reached, Moses went to his master and “he tore up all the receipts: I told him he ought not to have done so; he replied it did not signify, for as soon as court-day came, he should give me my free papers.”

Read the first part: Enslaved in Camden County, Moses Grandy knew its cruelty

When the court date came, James “was playing at billiards, and would not go with me.”

Concerned his chance for freedom would be lost, Moses went to the Grices and asked for help. Mrs. Grice sent for James who “cursed her, and went out of the house.”

Mr. Grice then met with James and he agreed to go to court and sign the papers. Instead “he rode away, and kept away till court was over” and sold Moses for $600 to a Mr. Trewitt.

It was the first of three attempts by Grandy to buy his freedom.

Trewitt, agreed to the same arrangement Grandy had had with Grice and that $600 would buy his freedom.

After two and a half years, Grandy had paid the full $600. Trewitt on Christmas Eve asked him, though, to take a letter to a Mr. Mews on Newbegun Creek, a small tributary to the Pasquotank River, in Weeksville.

When he delivered the letter, Mews read it “and looking up at me said, ‘Well, you belong to me.’”

Trewitt had used Grandy as security on a loan and failed in his payments.

“‘Mews’ was almost assuredly William T. Muse, a Pasquotank land speculator who owned slaves and more than twenty thousand acres of swamp forest. Muse, who had not really wanted Grandy, sold him back to Sawyer,” Cecelski wrote.

Initially his time with Sawyer went well. His second wife was owned by Sawyer, and Grandy’s maritime skills afforded him a better life and more freedom than most other enslaved people.

“I got into a fair way of buying myself again; for I undertook the lightering of the shingles or boards out of the Dismal Swamp …” Grandy said.

But Sawyer had gone into business with “his two sons-in-law at Norfolk, who failed; in consequence of which, he sold eighteen coloured people, his share of the Swamp (lightering), and two plantations.”

Grandy was again in the fields, but this time may have been the worst.

“The overseer was a bad one, his name was Brooks,” Grandy said.

Working in the field, if a worker did not put in sufficient effort, “One black man is kept on purpose to whip the others in the field; if he does not flog with sufficient severity, he is flogged himself: he whips severely, to keep the whip from his own back.”

Grandy witnessed Brooks kill “a girl named Mary” and “also killed a boy about twelve years old. He had no punishment, or even trial, for either.”

After years working as a waterman, the hard labor of field work was wearing him down and Grandy told Sawyer that he had “not been used to it for a long time; that his overseer was the worst that had ever been on the plantation, and that I could not stand it.”

Grandy pointed to how little food the field hands were given, Sawyer agreed to provide more food. The slaves working in the field “much rejoiced that I got this additional allowance for them. But I was not satisfied; I wanted liberty.”

A payment of $230 had already been made to Sawyer, and Grandy again began negotiations for his freedom.

Sawyer agreed to sell Grandy for the $600 he paid for him plus the $230 already given him. Grandy, “hired an old horse and started for Norfolk.” At Deep Creek he went to the house of “Captain Edward Minner … in former days I had done much business for him.”

Minner agreed to pay the $600 for Grandy’s freedom with the understanding that he would be repaid. At first Sawyer refused to sell his property, but Minner “shewed him the paper he had given me, saying, ‘Mr. Sawyer, is not this your handwriting?’”

Unlike everyone else who had purchased him, Minner was adamant that he would not own another human being.

“Mind, gentlemen, I do not want him for a slave; I want to buy him for freedom. He will repay me the money, and I shall not charge him a cent of interest for it. I would not have a coloured person to drag me down to hell, for all the money in the world,” Moses recalled Minner telling Sawyer.

By 1828, Grandy had repaid Minner and he had his “free papers, so that my freedom was quite secure, my feelings were greatly excited. I felt to myself so light, that I almost thought I could fly, and in my sleep I was always dreaming of flying over woods and rivers.”

He moved north, first to Providence, Rhode Island, then to Boston, Massachusetts. He traveled the world as sailor, telling of trips to “St. John’s in Porto Rico…(and) several other voyages, and particularly two to the Mediterranean. The last was to the East Indies.”

He had now saved enough to purchase the freedom of his wife. “I sent it to Virginia…She came to me at Boston. I dared not go myself to fetch her, lest I should be again deprived of my liberty, as often happens to free coloured people,” Grandy said.

He was also able to buy his son’s freedom as well and learned that at least two of his six daughters had purchased their freedom.

Grandy, now a free man, found life in the northern states troubling.

“Although I was free as to the law, I was made to feel severely the difference between persons of different colours. No black man was admitted to the same seats in churches with the whites, nor to the inside of public conveyances, nor into street coaches or cabs …” he said, adding however, “the abolitionists boldly stood up for us, and through them things are much changed for the better.”

Grandy was particularly harsh in his criticism of the American Colonization Society, the organization that was founded to send Black and enslaved people back to Africa.

“As to the settlement of Liberia on the coast of Africa, the free coloured people of America do not willingly go to it. America is their home: if their forefathers lived in Africa, they themselves know nothing of that country,” he indicated.

Enoch Sawyer was a vice president of the Camden County American Colonization Society the Raleigh Register, and North-Carolina State Gazette recorded in 1825.

Although illiterate Grandy was a keen observer of events and the personalities of the people he met along his journey. There were slave owners, as he noted, that did treat their human property well, at least by the standards of many slave owners.

But overall “The proprietors, though they live in luxury, generally die in debt: their negroes are so hardly treated, that no profit is made by their labour. Many of them are great gamblers. At the death of a proprietor, it commonly happens that his coloured people are sold towards paying his debts. So it must and will be with the masters, while slavery continues: when freedom is established, I believe they will begin to prosper greatly.”

The concept of freedom and its importance to the individual is an idea Grandy returns to a number of times throughout “Late a Slave in America.”

“Slavery,” he observed, “will teach any man to be glad when he gets freedom.”

First of two parts

A highway sign installed last September in Camden County calls attention to Moses Grandy, born there an enslaved person, and the story of his life told in “Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America.”

The book was published in London, England, in 1843. When the book was printed, he was, Grandy guessed, 56 years old, although as he notes in his book, “Slaves seldom know exactly how old they are: neither they nor their masters set down the time of a birth; the slaves, because they are not allowed to write or read; and the masters, because they only care to know what slaves belong to them.”

The book was published the following year in the United States.

There are no kindly “Old Black Joes,” elderly enslaved people treasured for their wisdom by caring masters in Moses Grandy’s autobiography. Rather, early in the book, there is a description of his mother, “blind and very old … living in a little hut, in the woods, after the usual manner of old worn-out slaves.”

Grandy observed late in his narrative that, “As far as the owner is concerned, they live or die as it happens; it is just the same thing as turning out an old horse.”

The book is filled with Simon Legree-like characters, capricious in their cruelty, and chilling descriptions of the horrors of the American institution of slavery. Legree is a harsh slaveowner in Harriet Beacher Stowe’s fictional, antislavery novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Yet the book is more than that. Grandy’s eye for detail and his memory are remarkable. What emerges from the pages is an exceptional and complex description of the institution of slavery.

It is Grandy’s penchant for remembering names that may provide the most damning indictment of slavery.

The title page of the book carries the warning, “It is not improbable that some of the proper names in the following pages are incorrectly spelled. M. G., owing to the laws of the slave states, being perfectly illiterate, his pronunciation is the only guide.” Yet, if some names are muddled in pronunciation and untraceable, there is still plenty to go on.

He describes his first master, Billy Grandy, as “a hard-drinking man” who “sold away many slaves.”

The Camden County 1790 census lists 18 slaves in the William Grandy household, but its apparent there had been more.

“I remember four sisters and four brothers; my mother had more children, but they were dead or sold away before I can remember. I was the youngest,” Moses Grandy recalled. 

His master died when he was probably 9 and the Grandy will bequeathed Moses to James Grandy, the son of William Grandy. James and Moses were the same age and there was a stipulation in the will that Moses would be hired out until “my master and myself were twenty-one years old.”

When he was old enough “to be taken away from my mother and put to field-work, I was hired out for the year, by auction, at the Court House, every January; this is the common practice with respect to slaves belonging to persons who are under age.”

The first person to buy his services, a Mr. Kemp, “used me pretty well; he gave me plenty to eat and sufficient clothing,” he then went to Jemmy Coates, “a severe man”

“Because I could not learn his way of hilling corn, he flogged me naked with a severe whip made of a very tough sapling…The point of it at last entered my belly and broke off; leaving an inch and a-half outside…On looking down I saw it sticking, out of my body: I pulled it out and the blood spouted after it. The wound festered, and discharged very much at the time, and hurt me for years after,” he said.

“I was next with Mr. Enoch Sawyer of Camden county,” Grandy recalled.

A prominent North Carolina politician immediately after the Revolution, Sawyer was deeply involved in developing the Great Dismal Swamp Canal. If the gravestone the Elizabeth City Economist found in November, 1897 is to be believed, Sawyer was a good man.

“Sacred to the memory of Enoch Sawyer, who was born on the 10th of March, 1758. and departed this life on the 16th of March, 1827, age 68 and six days. He was universally beloved and respected, and a faithful servant of the Lord Jesus. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his Saints,” the Economist reported.

If Sawyer was a good man to his neighbors and peers, to Grandy, “It was cruel living.”

“We had not near enough of either victuals or clothes … I have often ground the husks of Indian corn over again in a hand-mill, for the chance of getting something to eat out of it,” Grandy reported. “In severe frosts, I was compelled to go into the fields and woods to work, with my naked feet cracked and bleeding from extreme cold.”

If the living was cruel in working for Sawyer, Grandy learned a skill that gave him a degree of freedom very few enslaved people enjoyed.

“The young Moses Grandy tended the ferry across the Narrows on the Pasquotank River,” historian David Cecelski wrote in his 1994 article “Moses Grandy: A Slave Waterman’s Life,” written for the Institute for Southern Studies.

The Black watermen were, Cecelski wrote, “an elite fraternity … both irreplaceable to the plantation economy, and subversive of the racial bondage that fueled it.”

That skill served Grandy well, raising his importance as a commodity, and the value that was placed on his skill as a waterman underscores how complex the institution of American slavery was.

After three years working for Sawyer his services were acquired by “Mr. George Furley (probably George Ferebee, early postmaster of South Mills) … he employed me as a car-boy in the Dismal swamp; I had to drive lumber, &. I had plenty to eat and plenty of clothes. I was so overjoyed… that I then thought I would not have left the place to go to heaven.”

Although no longer working under Sawyer, the “cruel living” touched him once again.

“I married a slave belonging to Mr. Enoch Sawyer,” he said. After eight months of marriage, he was returning home on a Friday, when he “heard a noise behind me, on the road which ran by the side of the canal … When they came up to me, one of them cried out, ‘Moses, my dear!’… It was my wife. She cried out to me, ‘I am gone.’

His wife had been sold.

He was able to walk with her for a short distance “and bid her farewell. I have never seen or heard of her from that day to this. I loved her as I loved my life.”

Next in the series: To purchase his freedom

Featured Image

A male pileated woodpecker, or Dryocopus pileatus, searches for a snack Sunday in the bark of a pine tree in Nags Head Woods Preserve, one of the largest remaining maritime forests on the East Coast, according to The Nature Conservancy. This woodpecker, which feeds on insects in trees and logs, is one of more than 150 bird species visitors may spot at the preserve, and at least a third nests here, according to the conservancy. Photo: Kip Tabb

Editor’s Note: Tabb’s Trails is a commentary photo-essay series with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

Manteo Marshes on Roanoke Island is a confounding, confusing place to visit, not because it’s hard to find — although blink and the parking lot off the road to Wanchese is missed — but because there’s no telling what will be there on any given day.

It’s about a milelong, notably easy hike around the impoundment. Some days there’s mallards busily feeding on the submerged grasses and lesser yellowlegs wading in the shallows making quick jabs into the water.

And then there are days where you feel lucky to see a northern mockingbird, numerous year-round at Manteo Marshes. But it’s worth the trip because, on those lucky days, it can be spectacular.

In the winter, lesser yellowlegs are often numerous in the mudflats. Get too close to that occasional mallard, and the drake will make it clear he feels threatened. In the copse on the north end of the impoundment, there is a constant twitter of birds – mostly yellow-rumped warblers in the winter, although northern mockingbirds make a good showing as well.

It is buggy in the summer, so put on some insect repellant and check it out. Osprey are constantly flying by, the northern mockingbirds are still there and lots of robins and heron are visitors as well.

But, be patient and pay attention. The birds are there, and an occasional squirrel.

The total project area is 1,874 acres. Except for the impoundment trail, the area is impenetrable marsh.

“We have had nine 100-year storms in the last 20 years,” said Dr. Reide Corbett during a conference in Wilmington back in November. “Somebody said that math doesn’t math.”

Corbett is dean of the East Carolina University Coastal Studies Institute Campus in Wanchese and he was addressing the fourth annual Water Adaptations to Ensure Regional Success, or WATERS, Summit held Nov. 13. He said the statistical model used to predict precipitation frequency is no longer reliable.

The model, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atlas 14 data server,  is widely used in infrastructure planning and flood risk assessments. Atlas 14 provides statistical modeling that is based on rainfall amounts and storm intensity for the 30 years leading up to the 21st century.

The server “contains precipitation frequency estimates for the United States and U.S. affiliated territories,” according to NOAA.

Corbett told those attending the summit that Atlas 14 “doesn’t hold any longer.”

In a follow-up interview with Coastal Review, Corbett said the problem with Atlas 14 is that it does not factor in how the climate has changed during this century.

“It does not take into account changes in the moisture that the atmosphere has, and it certainly doesn’t project forward,” Corbett said.

That’s why NOAA is developing an Atlas 15 model, which is to be rolled out in stages this year and 2027. When completed, “Atlas 15 will supersede NOAA Atlas 14 as the national standard and will become the authoritative source for precipitation frequency information across the United States.,” according to the NOAA website.

Dr. Jared Bowden, interim director of the North Carolina State Climate Office, agreed that, as a predictive model, Atlas 14 is flawed.

“It doesn’t use the most recent observations. (Atlas 14) hasn’t used any of the data in the past 20 or 25, years, really,” Bowden said.

Atlas 15 is expected to correct that shortcoming nationally, but in the meantime, the State Climate Office has developed a dataset that illustrates how precipitation patterns represented in Atlas 14 may evolve over time. 

RaInDROP, an acronym for the statistical information for the state model, Rainfall, Intensity, Duration and Return for Observations and Projections, is “a product that is tailored to North Carolina,” Bowden said. “Some things in the methodology that we do behind RaInDROP are very North Carolina specific.”

The datasets the State Climate Office developed use the Atlas 14 model as a baseline, but also predict what the future climate will look like. The modeling also takes into account North Carolina’s geography, Bowden said.

“There’s eight climate divisions across our state, and we use these climate divisions to help think about how we scale Atlas 14 values,” Bowden said. “We took climate change projections and tried to figure out how you would scale up based on the different climate divisions.”

The online RaInDROP tool maps show marked variations from Atlas 14 data. For instance, the southeast corner of the state, New Bern, Jacksonville and Wilmington, in particular, will experience significantly more rainfall and more intense events than previously modeled. Bordering the Atlantic Ocean, that output is consistent with climate change data that shows a warming atmosphere.

Climate change is not a linear increase with temperature and moisture, Bowden explained. Rather it’s an exponential increase and an exponential increase in moisture capacity.

“If you’re able to saturate the atmosphere and have a forcing mechanism to wring it out of the atmosphere, such as a hurricane, then you get these really big downpours. You get these really big flooding scenarios that will create just larger and larger problems for our infrastructure.”

The climate office tool is designed to have practical applications in designing infrastructure.

“If you’re looking out at midcentury, let’s say 2050- or 2060-time frame, and you were to design a culvert that’s supposed to last that period of time, how would your design criteria change based on using plausible future scenarios?” Bowden continued.

Public and private infrastructure rely upon reasonably accurate climate models to determine design criteria. Retention ponds, as an example, typically use a 4% annual chance of a 25-year storm as design criteria. Based on that assumption, a retention pond should perform as expected provided the storm events occur as predicted by Atlas 14.

However, climate events predicted by RaInDROP suggest that what is now thought of as a 25-year storm will be more frequent and more intense, and if that happens “it’s not going to perform as you expect, and it’s going to be overwhelmed more frequently, and it’s going to be become a problem,” Bowden said.

Environmental engineer George Wood, owner of Environmental Professionals of Kill Devil Hills for nearly 40 years, told Coastal Review that private infrastructure systems in particular would be overwhelmed by more frequent and increased storm intensity and rainfall. And, compounding the problem is less recovery time for the system between storms.

Wood was particularly critical of how private stormwater systems are maintained – or not — noting that private retention ponds are often overgrown with subaquatic vegetation and culverts are often clogged and incapable of even handling the rainfall amounts for which they were designed.

The Indian Woods historical marker at the intersection of St. Francis Road and U.S. Highway 17 in Bertie County is easily missed while cruising at 55 or 60 miles an hour.

Located at the edge of a farmer’s field after the fall harvest of cotton, the sign leans to the north, and hints of the story and its aftermath of an almost forgotten war between Native Americans and colonists in the early 18th century.

It is the northernmost of at least seven signs that are found throughout coastal North Carolina from Wayne County to Bertie County that trace the story of that conflict.

The Tuscarora War was brutal and horrific. Launching a coordinated attack on the morning of Sept. 22, 1711, Tuscarora warriors slaughtered 140 men, women and children throughout eastern North Carolina.

“The Tuscarora devastated white settlements in the Pamlico Neuse region and raised serious fears for the continuance of English occupation in North Carolina,” Thomas Parramore wrote for the North Carolina Historical Review in 1982.

Unable to defend its own people, the North Carolina colony’s general assembly begged Virginia and South Carolina for help.

Virginia refused to send troops, but put pressure on neutral Tuscarora villages in its colony to remain out of the conflict. South Carolina sent combined white and Native forces.

In the end in March of 1713, when the last pitched battle of the war was fought at Fort Neoheroka, which is present day Snow Hill in Greene County, at least a thousand Tuscarora were dead and another thousand sold into slavery in South Carolina.

In North Carolina, as many as 200 colonists were killed and the combined white and Native combatants provided by South Carolina suffered an additional 200 deaths.

Tuscarora lineage

The Tuscarora were part of the Iroquois, whose original lands stretched from New York state into Canada. The migration to North Carolina most likely occurred sometime around the 1500s, Dr. Arwin Smallwood, dean of the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University, told Coastal Review.

Smallwood, who traces his lineage to the Tuscarora people, grew up in Indian Woods and has studied the history of the Tuscarora extensively.

“In the 1500s they’d already moved down from (New York) and settled North Carolina,” he said, adding that “they never broke their blood ties to the five nations,” which are the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.

By the 1580s, when Sir Walter Raleigh’s doomed expeditions landed on Roanoke Island, the Tuscarora were well established in eastern North Carolina and probably were the dominant Native nation of the region. They may have been the ones who decided the colony’s fate.

“Tuscarora oral traditions say they were the ones who destroyed the Lost Colony,” Smallwood said. “They always had large numbers of people who had European characteristics like red and auburn hair, even sometimes blonde hair, but definitely what (Native Americans) called the Tuscarora eye, which was blue-green, kind of a hazel eye, that was prevalent throughout the Tuscaroras and that distinguished them.”

War: Longtime complaints

At its simplest, the Tuscarora War was about long-established complaints of the Tuscarora: Encroachment on lands they had traditionally controlled and unfair and dishonest trading practices.

But, Smallwood noted, there were other factors at play.

It was “trade routes. The Tuscaroras controlled the Piedmont and the coastal plains of North Carolina. They controlled all the major trade routes between North Carolina and Virginia,” he said. “Anyone who needed knives, axes, guns, gunpowder, whatever they had to trade through them, including rum. They had to trade through the Tuscaroras. For the southeastern Indians, it was a way of eliminating them as the people who monopolized trade.”

It is possible that, after at least 60 years of observing the internal politics of the North Carolina colony, the Tuscarora were aware of the internal rivalries that were threatening to tear the colony apart, and that may have played a role in the timing of the initial attack.

Cary’s Rebellion pitted Thomas Cary, the Quaker-leaning former governor of the colony, against Edward Hyde, who the Lords Proprietors had selected to govern the colony. The rebellion exposed the deep political divisions within the colony that led to open warfare with Hyde finally taking the reins of the governorship in 1711.

At that time, the colony was divided into two counties: Albemarle in the north and Bath in the south. Although in 1711 the nominal capital of the colony was Bath. There was no government office there and it’s doubtful if the population of the town ever reached 300 people.

The northern Albemarle colony was dominated by the supporters of Hyde and the resentment from Cary’s attempt to wrest control of the colony permeated the region.

“The Cary Rebellion had pitted Albemarle against Bath and had left the colonists of the two counties somewhat at odds with each other. It was by no means clear that Albemarle would rush to the defense of Bath County and, in fact, it did not,” Parramore wrote.

If there was a proximate cause of the war, it was the settlement of New Bern by Swiss immigrants and members of the Palatine religious sect escaping religious persecution in Europe.

“New Bern was built on what (the Tuscarora) considered to be part of their capital city,” Smallwood said.

Baron Christopher DeGraffenreid, the founder of New Bern, in his “Account of the Tuscarora War,” touched on many of the issues that have been cited as causing the conflict.

“What caused the Indian war was firstly, the slanders and instigations of certain plotters against Governor Hyde, and secondly, against me, in that they talked the Indians into believing that I had come to take their land,” he wrote. “Talked them out of this and it was proven by the friendliness I had shown them, as also by the payment for the land where I settled at the beginning (namely that upon which the little city of New Bern was begun), regardless of the fact that the seller was to have given it over to me free.”

Captured with surveyor John Lawson, DeGraffenreid was able to talk his way out of imprisonment and possible death.

It is possible Lawson could have avoided his fate, but, Smallwood said, “he quarreled with the chiefs. You’re being held prisoner, and you’ve been put on trial, and then you go argue with the prosecuting attorney and the judge who decides whether you live or die.”

Lawson, whose book “History of North Carolina” gave accurate and clear-eyed accounts of Native life in the colonies, was not so lucky, and may have had a hand in his own undoing. Accused by his captors of surveying the Tuscarora land for the purpose of selling it, he was tried and convicted and sentenced to death.

Like the North Carolina colony, the Tuscarora had internal divisions. Parramore described the Tuscarora as “not a nation and probably not even a confederacy though colonial perceptions of them had not traditionally recognized any significant internal divisions.”

Smallwood, however, paints a different picture.

“The whole structure was family based,” he said. “With that being said, they were all united because the whole nation is united by blood.”

Within that nation family, there were specific ways to make decisions that would affect all members for the Tuscarora nation, Smallwood said, describing the decision-making process as “a democracy.”

Smallwood explained that Lawson was convicted after “all of the chiefs met in the war council. In that council, they all agree to execute Lawson.”

War: First conflict

When the war first broke out in 1711, South Carolina sent military aid. Col. John Barnwell left South Carolina with “30 white men and nearly 500 Indians,” the Carolana website states.

Although Barnwell may have included giving military aid to North Carolina in his reasoning, by his actions and those of the men under his command, the profit that could be realized from the bounty on scalps and selling Native Americans into slavery was an important part of why he made the trip.

Thomas Peotta in his 2018 doctoral dissertation, “Dark Mimesis: A Cultural History of the Scalping Paradigm,” at the University of British Columbia, describes how profitable scalps and prisoners could be.

“Virginia and Carolina offered scalp and prisoner bounties to militiamen and allied Indians. Virginia…offered £20 per scalp to British colonists, while uninvolved Tuscaroras on Virginia’s frontier were offered a bounty of 6 blankets apiece…for the scalps of Hancock’s warriors, and market prices for enslaved women and children,” he wrote.

For Barnwell, the scalps had an additionally benefit, Peotta wrote, noting that “scalps and prisoners also offered a way to tally the dead: Barnwell’s forces recorded 52 scalps and 30 captives after (his) victory at Torhunta in 1712.” Torhunta is present day Pikeville in Wayne County.

After a series of battles with the Tuscarora including a 10-day siege at their main settlement in Craven County, Barnwell reached an agreement with the Tuscarora combatants to pay tribute and lay down their arms. After signing the agreement, he invited some of the local Indians, who had not attacked the colonists, into his camp. They were then seized, DeGraffenreid wrote, and sold into slavery

“He thought of a means of going back to South Carolina with profit, and under the pretense of a good peace he enticed a goodly number of the friendly Indians or savage Carolinians, took them prisoner at Core Town (to this his tributary Indians were entirely inclined because they hoped to get a considerable sum from each prisoner) and made his way home with his living plunder…This so unchristian act very properly embittered the rest of the Tuscarora and Carolina Indians very much, although heathens, so that they no longer trusted the Christians,” he wrote.

War: Conclusion

The action reignited the war, with King Hancock again leading the Tuscarora aligned with him. Renewing the conflict may have been justified, but it was not sanctioned by the war council, allowing the northern Tuscarora to remain neutral.

It would take another military expedition from South Carolina, this one led by Col. James Moore to end the war, but it also led to an open rift between King Hancock and the northern Tuscarora.

King Hancock was captured by northern Tuscarora at the orders of Chief Blunt (or Blount) in November of 1712 and turned over to North Carolina authorities who executed him.

The war did not end with Hancock’s death, however.

The agreement with Blunt was that he was to deliver the scalps of key leaders to North Carolina authorities by the end of the year. When he failed to do so, Moore renewed his campaign.

Finally, following a three-day siege at Fort Neoheroka the war came to an end, although there were sporadic raids and fighting until 1715.

Aftermath

For the tribal nations that had aligned with the South Carolina expeditions, their participation sparked “a continental war in the back country,” Smallwood explained.

“Because of the role,” Smallwood continued. “Those Indians in that area played in the war, it set off a continental Indian War. he Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondaga, the Senecas, and (allied tribes) came south, and they completely obliterated the (the southern tribes).”

In North Carolina, the war was a harbinger of extraordinary change. Initially the war’s end brought brought economic hardship to what was then called Bath County, an area that now includes Beaufort, Hyde, Bladen, Onslow, Carteret and New Hanover counties.

“The concentration of Indian attacks on frontier settlements during the war and the continuation of raids after the peace of 1713 stifled economic growth in Bath County and contributed to temporary food shortages throughout the colony,” Christine Styrna explained in a 1990 doctoral dissertation at the College of William and Mary.

But if the initial effect was to wreak havoc on the colony’s economy, the war also “provided certain colonial leaders with the opportunity to reinforce their economic and political power while serving as a catalyst for economic development,” Styrna noted.

Bath and New Bern had taken the brunt of the Tuscarora raids, and there, Styrna wrote, “colonists slowly rebuilt their homes and fortunes.”

The rest of the colony, though, experienced a “boom period” in which coastal and local trade increased dramatically. According to the shipping reports Styrna cites from the Boston Newsletter, “the number of vessels sailing to and from ports in North Carolina ports elsewhere between 1716 and 1720 increased fourfold in comparison to the five-year period before the war.”

If, however, North Carolina was on the road to recovery, the fate of the Tuscarora was one of enslavement and exile, leading to a diaspora of the tribal nation that stretched from North Carolina to Canada.

Most of the southern Tuscarora emigrated north. The largest group returned to the Iroquois in New York, becoming numerous enough that in 1722 the Tuscarora became the sixth nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.

As they moved north, some settled in Pennsylvania. There is today, a Tuscarora Mountain in south central Pennsylvania.

Many of them, though, settled in small communities throughout North Carolina and other states east of the Mississippi.

“It’s like you take a plate or mirror and you drop it on the floor and it shatters and shards go everywhere,” Smallwood said. “There’s some big chunks, and then there are lots of little chunks. And those little chunks, are scattered all over eastern North Carolina. They’re at least today, seven different factions of Tuscaroras that are (in North Carolina). And larger groups of them who are in Virginia, and even over into eastern Ohio.”

Coastal Review will not publish Thursday and Friday in observation of the Thanksgiving holiday.

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A recent visit to Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge offered little in the way of migratory waterfowl viewing for which it’s known but did yield this glimpse of a whitetail doe through the trees. The refuge, which was established in 1934, spans some 50,000 acres, including the 40,000-acre Lake Mattamuskeet, the largest natural lake in North Carolina. Photo: Kip Tabb

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COROLLA — There’s a pond at the Donal C. O’Brien, Jr. Sanctuary and Audubon Center, the Pine Island Club, just to the west of the clubhouse, with a troubled past.

Sometime in the 1940s, when the Pine Island Club was a hunting club, the membership dug out an existing pond, put in what was perhaps a 3 inches in diameter pipe to carry water from a canal off Currituck Sound and then bulkheaded the shore.

“They bulkheaded it so that they could have ducks in there all the time, so they could breed them,” said Audubon Center Senior Coordinator of Habitats and Facilities Sara Marschhauser.

The pond though, after more than 75 years, was no longer an inviting habitat for ducks, geese, or any of the species of birds, turtles or mammals that are part of the sanctuary habitat, longtime Sanctuary Director Robbie Fearn recently told the Coastal Review.

“The number of birds that I saw in it each winter went down as that pond was no longer serving the needs of wildlife,” he said.

Over the years, the water level had been falling, and “the water level was 2 feet below the bulkhead, so there was no soft side for turtles and smaller ducks. We saw little goslings (that) got stuck in there last year,” Marschhauser said. “We had to put something in there to get them out.”

That has since changed. As part of a $309,000 grant from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, the pond, Marschhauser said, has been “restored back to its previous footprint.”

With the pond restored, wildlife came back almost immediately.

“Pretty quickly we had two wood ducks come out from the back side of the marsh and just hang out on the edge for a couple weeks,” Marschhauser said.

She mentioned that she had seen shorebirds, in this case a tri-colored heron, spotted sandpiper and great egret, standing side by side feeding.

“That means then there must have been a lot of food there. They don’t cooperate unless there’s food,” Marschhauser said.

Restoring the pond required considerably more than merely removing the bulkhead, smoothing the sides and digging out the bottom where silt had filled it.

The original pipes were much too small to provide enough water to maintain the pond’s depth, and, over the years, Fearn noted, “as sediment filled into the bottom of that pipe it got more and more restricted.”

The new pipe is significantly wider and will be much easier to maintain so that silt doesn’t restrict water flow. That extra volume of water can already be seen as it allows fish more access the pond.

“We’ve already seen increase in fish reproducing in this pond,” Marschhauser said.

What was clear from the outset of the project, however, was that simply bringing the pond back to its original shape and size and laying in a larger pipe would not be enough to maintain sufficient water levels.

The road from the clubhouse to the Currituck Sound dock passes through an open vista of marsh, trees and grasses. Songbirds are in constant motion. The dock itself is a haven for shorebirds and an occasional nutria.

About 25 or 30 yards from the dock, the canal that feeds the pond passes under the road. At one, the crossing was little more than a causeway over a ditch. “There were two little pipes … and that was it. You weren’t really getting much flow at all,” Marschhauser said.

To correct that, a low bridge now crosses the canal that is more open, allowing water to flow freely, “so that there’s not even a pipe that it has to go through,” she said.

An added bonus, Marschhauser continued, is that in high-water events, which results from any sustained wind from the west, “hopefully our bridge won’t flood.”

With a sustained flow of water, Marschhauser said she was confident the habitat will return to its original diversity.

“The hydrology is what’s going to bring in all the critters now,” she said.

Fearn agreed, noting how much more diverse the wildlife using the restored pond will be.

“By changing it back to a to a natural-edge pond where not just like diving ducks could use it, but (also) wading birds and bobcats and the otter, it becomes a buffet for everybody, rather than a small buffet for a limited number of species,” he said.

The North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant the Donal C. O’Brien, Jr. Audubon Center has received is the second substantial grant awarded to the center in the past two years. Last year a $3.05 million National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant “to fund innovative marsh restoration pilot projects” was begun with a number of those pilot projects ongoing.

At least one of the projects, Fearn said, “a thin layer sediment, putting silt and sand on top of the (marsh) islands, is cutting-edge for the state of North Carolina. So the process of working through it with regulators … is taking a little longer to get that permit.”

Other shoreline-stabilization projects have been completed and are being evaluated.

Fearn attributed Pine Island’s success in scoring major grants to simply listening.

“We’re listening to the landscape, and we’re listening to what the community needs, and then we understand the grants that we’re applying for and make sure they fit well,” he said.

Editor’s Note: Tabb’s Trails is a commentary photo-essay series with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

Driving along N.C. 12 Saturday, Oct. 18, it becomes quickly obvious that a nor’easter recently blew across the Outer Banks.

Traffic has stopped twice in the 4.5 miles to clear the road of sand and ocean overwash between the south end of the Basnight Bridge and the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, where a birding trip was scheduled as part of the 2025 Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival held Oct. 14-19. The trip, along with several others on federally managed lands, were canceled or modified because of the government shutdown that began Oct. 1 and continued at the time of this publication.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crews are hard at work, rebuilding the sand dune, but the evidence of the storms that had battered coastal North Carolina cannot be missed.

Standing water from overwash still covers the road in places. Sand on the roadway forces drivers to slow down even when there is no stoplight controlling traffic. Some dunes show clear signs of the waves that ran over them, their sand a darker color and more compact that dunes to the north and south.

Yet nature will abide, and at the visitor center, the North Pond is filled with images that no camera can truly capture. A flock of 200 or 300 northern pintail 150 or 200 yards long seems to be paddling effortlessly from the south to the north.

There are songbirds in the trees and foliage, and a yellow-rumped warbler darts by, too quick for the camera to focus. It’s a bird that is almost never seen in the summer in northeastern North Carolina but it is ubiquitous in the fall and winter.

As it turns out, it was a remarkable day on the half-mile North Pond Wildlife Trail that begins behind the visitor center, with rarely seen species making an appearance and migratory waterfowl filling the waters of the pond with color and sound.

The historic Whalehead Club in Corolla, a Currituck Banks landmark, will turn 100 years old next month and ticketed events commemorating the centennial are on sale.

Completed in 1925, the Whalehead Club, the majestic 21,000-square-foot art nouveau mansion and centerpiece of Historic Corolla Park, was completed after three years of construction. Its $383,000 price tag at the time is about $7.1 million in 2025 dollars.

The 33 years that Currituck County has owned the property is the longest period it has gone without changing hands.

After more than three years of negotiations, the county purchased Whalehead in November 1992 from Howco Residential Development Inc., which had foreclosed on the property in 1989. That was after the failure of two savings and loan institutions, which had previously owned the property, according to a 1992 report in the Coastland Times.

Although Whalehead is now again a symbol of wealth and opulence on Currituck Banks, at the time of the county’s purchase, it was dilapidated and a shell of what it had been when construction finished 67 years earlier. Its 1992 price tag of $2.8 million included the building and 28.5 acres, and the purchase was extraordinarily unpopular with county voters. Every commissioner on the 1992 board that bought the property lost their reelection bid after the purchase.

“Most people didn’t understand what we were doing,” Jarvisburg resident Jerry Wright, who was a county commissioner at the time, recently told Coastal Review.

Whalehead was like nothing the Outer Banks had ever seen.

Multimillionaire industrialist Edward Collings Knight built the mansion as a vacation getaway and hunting refuge for himself and his wife Marie-Louise LeBel.

It had an elevator and a basement. Elevators were unheard of here, and the basement was an engineering feat for a building so close to sea level. Two Delco-brand generators provided electricity at all times.

The Knights named their Currituck Banks getaway cottage Corolla Island, a reference to the artificial island that was created by dredge and fill so the ground could support the massive building.

“The main house was erected on a hill formed by the earth dredged to create the moat. The hill made it possible for Whalehead to have a full basement that rests on sunken wood pilings, a feature that is considered extraordinary for a coastline structure,” notes the 1978 Register of Historic Places documentation.

Until 1922, the 2000-acre property had been owned by the Lighthouse Club, one of Currituck Sound’s most exclusive hunting clubs of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Although there are legends that Knight bought the Lighthouse Club after his wife, who was an avid hunter, was not permitted to hunt because of her gender, there is no evidence to support the claim.

According to a 1986 letter provided by the Whalehead Club and written by John B. Litchfield, Corolla Island was built by a local contractor and the plans for the building were somewhat vague.

“Mr. Knight, who had had training in art, drew the plans for the house,” Litchfield wrote. “He did not, however, include any specifications. I do not know who recommended my father as a builder, or how they got together. At any rate, Mr. Knight contracted with my father, J. A. Litchfield of Poplar Branch, N.C. to build the house.”

Litchfield’s observation that Knight’s plans did not “include any specifications” is consistent with the belief that Knight did not use an architect to design the house, in spite of the project’s complexity.

The Knights stayed at Corolla Island for extended periods over the next nine years, entertaining a number of guests. The last entry Edward Knight recorded was Nov. 24, 1934. Edward Knight died on July 23, 1936, and his wife Marie Louise died three months later.

This was during the Great Depression and Knights’ heirs had no interest in maintaining a vacation getaway and hunting lodge on the Outer Banks. They auctioned off many of the one-of-a-kind Tiffany designs in the houses and other art nouveau objects and started looking for a buyer.

Rep. Lindsey Warren, who represented northeastern North Carolina at the time, told his congressional colleagues about the property, and New York Rep. William Sirovich agreed to purchase it for $175,000. The closing date was to be Dec. 17, 1939, the same day Sirovich died suddenly.

Ray Adams, a Washington, D.C., meat packer with considerable political connections, instead bought the property for $25,000 in early 1940.

It was Adams who gave the property its name.

“According to tradition, in the process of clearing land for the air strip that would facilitate transportation of guests, a whale bone was found which prompted Adams to rename his estate Whalehead Club,” the National Register of Historic Places notes in their documentation.

Although a whale bone may have been found when an airstrip was being built, there is reason to believe the area was already sometimes referred to as “Whalehead.”

An August 1926 article in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance headlined “Currituck Girls Enjoyed Camping Trip” reported that the young women had “just returned from their summer camping trip at Corolla, that part of the beach known as Whalehead.”

Adams had big plans for his newly purchased property. Although interested in hunting, “his major motivation for acquiring the 2000-acre estate was to use it for entertaining the government officials who controlled the contracts that provided the bulk of his business,” according to Historic Register documents.

Adams on Nov. 1, 1940, formed Whalehead Club Inc. with 10 shares mostly held by Adams and his wife.

Knight’s plans for an entertainment center, though, were put on hold when the United States entered World War II and the Coast Guard needed a training and patrol site.

In 1942, Knight agreed to rent the Whalehead Club to the Coast Guard. Barracks were built, which no longer exist. At one time, up to 300 Coast Guardsmen were stationed at Corolla.

Adams, concerned about protecting his property, included a provision that his club superintendent, Dexter Snow, be made a chief bosun’s mate and be stationed at Corolla to look after his interests.

After the war, Adams threw himself into his plans to create a luxury resort on Currituck Banks.

“He was kind of promised a toll road that would go … like a Route 12, but all the way up to Virginia along the beach,” said Whalehead Club Curator Jill Landon. “He wanted it to be like a Myrtle Beach or kind of like an Ocean City, Maryland. We’ve got the plans drawn up with like a Ferris wheel and all sorts of infrastructure up here.”

Using his government contacts, Adams began lobbying for a beach toll road.

Adams’ plans relied on the toll road to make the project feasible, but the concept he had in mind was extensive.

The plans are on file with the Olmsted Archives at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Listed as Job No. 10031, Whalehead, the documents drawn for Adams by Olmstead Brothers Landscape Architects clearly show a planned toll road with a 100-foot right-of-way, a yacht basin, shopping center and fishing pier, among other amenities.

The Carolina Virginia Turnpike Authority, or CVTA, was formed, but problems soon emerged.

Dare County Rep. Bruce Etheridge introduced a bill in the House for the “five-year-old beach toll-road project,” reported the April 17, 1953, edition of the Coastland Times.

The bill was doomed. The authority had been given powers of eminent domain, but the state Supreme Court, the article noted, had “opined that the Legislature could not give a company municipal powers nor the right to condemn private land.”

The authority also found there was little appetite in the bond market for a toll road that would cross state lines and require approvals from two states. In December 1954, the Coastland Times reported that “The sponsors of the Nags Head-Virginia Beach toll road still have not sold their bonds.”

The problem, CVTA authorities explained, was “the fact that two separate authorities and two states are involved has created legal problems which must be clarified before the bonds are sold.”

Two years later, in August 1956, it had become clear that the toll road was not going to happen. Adams’ dream of creating a sprawling resort community along the Currituck Banks was never realized.

The last entry in the Whalehead Club log recorded “that Adams died there suddenly at 6:10 p.m.,” according to the Historic Places documentation. That was Dec. 31, 1957.

The heirs to the Adams estate were able to quickly find a buyer. Portsmouth, Virginia, contractors MacLean and Wipp paid $375,000 for the estate and in turn leased the building and immediate grounds to the Corolla Academy.

The Corolla Academy had a clear vision of how the education of young men should proceed.

The Historic Places document quotes from a brochure to parents: “Corolla Academy is the result of the firm conviction that summer study for boys of secondary level is a rewarding and enjoyable experience. The time has passed when American boys can afford to waste the three months’ interval between the end of school in June and the resumption of classes in September.”

It’s not clear if it was location, philosophy or some other reason, but the Corolla Academy closed after three years.

What followed may be one of the more intriguing uses of the Whalehead Club.

The United States was in a frantic race in 1961 with the Soviet Union to be the first nation to land on the moon, and Atlantic Research Corp. was in the thick of it, designing rocket engines for NASA. The Soviet Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, existed from 1922 until 1991 in eastern Europe and northern Asia.

The corporation, or ARC, leased the estate from Wipp and MacLean with a $1.25 million option to buy that was exercised in 1964. For ARC, the Whalehead Club was ideal for its purposes.

ARC was experimenting with beryllium as a fuel for the Poseidon rocket engines. As a fuel, beryllium has some real advantages. It’s very powerful and it’s relatively stable, although it is extremely toxic.

It became apparent that beryllium was not going to be a practical fuel, and in 1972, ARC sold the property to local Norfolk real estate developers Kabler & Riggs for more than $3 million. That firm subdivided the property but left the 35 acres around the Whalehead Club building intact.

The building was left vacant for 20 years, but as noted in the Historic Places 1978 report, the building, with its I-beam construction and 18-inch-thick walls, had been “successfully constructed to withstand the most severe coastal storms.”

Obligated to pay off the loan for the 1992 purchase of the property, Currituck County was not able to begin a full restoration of the building until 1999, when 25% of occupancy tax collections could be used.

In 2002, 10 years after the property had been purchased, the Whalehead Club opened to the public.

The original custom Steinway piano was inside and some of the original Tiffany sconces were still intact. Careful research of auction records had enabled the team working on restoration to track down a surprising number of original furniture pieces. By the time it opened to the public, the county had spent more than $1 million in restoring the building.

The Whalehead Club is available for tours. Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling 252-453-9040 ext. 226, at the site or online.

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People on Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head watch as waves generated by Hurricane Erin crash into the concrete structure that’s part of the North Carolina Aquariums system. The storm’s center was about 260 miles east of Cape Hatteras at midday Thursday and moving out to sea, but hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 105 miles and tropical-storm-force winds extended up to 320 miles from the sprawling but weakening storm’s eye. Life-threatening surf and rip current conditions will likely continue as storm surge and flood risks subside. The pier’s website provides information on current conditions and live webcam views. Photo: Kip Tabb

MANTEO – The Dare County Board of Commissioners, in the face of strident pushback from residents and coastal advocates over a proposal to gut special protections for an area around the Buxton Woods Reserve, voted Monday to keep in place those development restrictions officials had previously called “unenforceable.”

The longstanding restrictions on multifamily dwellings within the half-mile buffer around the 1,007-acre Buxton Woods Reserve on Hatteras Island are part of a zoning ordinance that created the 1,868-acre special environmental district, also known as SED-1, which also includes protective areas around the island’s drinking water wellheads.

A company called OBX Timber Trail LLC in March had requested that the county remove the zone’s dwelling density limitation for multifamily development, townhouses, or condominium projects. The request from company manager and New Jersey resident Brian Suth was so he could add a fourth apartment for year-round occupancy to his commercial building in Frisco.

That request was ultimately granted in a unanimous vote Monday, but only after it had triggered questions among county officials about the validity of the 1988 zoning ordinance in place, and fears among Buxton residents and others that the special protections would be erased.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam said during a meeting in April that the ordinance didn’t appear to meet state standards because it hadn’t been properly indexed or codified.

Others disagreed.

“The ordinance was properly adopted in 1988, “Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys Derb Carter and Julie Youngman wrote in a letter to Dare County Manager Bobby Outten dated Aug. 1.

When Suth submitted his request, Gillam found there had been no reference to the ordinance since the 1990s. Consequently, there had been no development that would have challenged its wording.

Concerned about confusion and possible legal challenges, Gillam proposed striking the ordinance entirely.

That’s not what happened Monday commissioners opted instead to approve a text amendment for the fourth apartment rather than remove the entire ordinance.

“Our original amendment for the text amendment was solely to lift the limitations on density, not to eliminate the entire ordinance,” said Joseph Anlauf, engineer for the project, during the commissioners’ discussion.

During a commissioners meeting May 6, the board, after hearing from Buxton residents who were vocal in support of the overlay district and a preliminary opinion from Outten that the county might lose a court challenge on the issue of improper indexing, postponed a vote to allow time for a firmer legal opinion.

Outten’s concern were confirmed by Outer Banks attorney John Leidy that it was likely the county would lose a court challenge. Outten was also worried about the implications of a state law passed late last year that prohibits downzoning, or placing a more restrictive use on a property after it has been purchased, as could be the case in enforcing SED-1 restrictions.

But the Southern Environmental Law Center pushed back in its letter, holding that, although state statutes require indexing, “it does not specifically state that an ordinance cannot be enforced if those requirements are not precisely satisfied.” Nor does the law provide a “definition of ‘indexing’ or any directions for how to do it properly.”

Other officials had submitted their written concerns about removing the development restrictions, including David Owens, who was with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management for a decade, notably serving as its director at the time the ordinance was adopted, an author, historian in land use law and retired professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina School of Government.

In his letter, Owens recalled that the “Dare County Board of Commissioners, the county planning staff, and the county attorney all strongly argued for local regulation, contending the standards the county would adopt would be comparable to the state standards being considered.”

John Taggert, who in the 1980s and 1990s was the Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Reserve manager, had urged in a letter that commissioners “retain the ordinance with consistent enforcement to permit development within the buffer that will reasonably protect Buxton Woods from significant loss of adjacent vegetative cover and allow sufficient natural infiltration for sustainable recharge of the underlying aquifer system.”

lan Weakley, professor of botany and conservation biology at UNC, also wrote to commissioners, noting that the county had approved the zoning regulations to bolster coastal protections.

“In the 1980s and early 1990s,” Weakley wrote, “the state Coastal Resources Commission relied on the Dare County zoning protections in deferring regulation of Buxton Woods as a CAMA (Coastal Area Management Act) Area of Environmental Concern. The decision was that the zoning regulations, as written and implemented, would maintain a buffer with sufficient natural character, including canopy closure, to protect the natural values of Buxton Woods.”

MANTEO — Dare County commissioners and school board officials gathered Wednesday and plunged their ceremonial shovels into the ground at the south end of the College of the Albemarle campus here, marking the start of construction of the Dare County Early College building.

Early college programs are part of a state-authorized system created to “expand students’ opportunities for educational success through high quality instructional programming,” according to the 2003 state law known as the Innovative Education Initiatives Act.

With an estimated cost between $21 and $25 million, the building here is scheduled for completion in winter 2026. This year’s first class of incoming freshman will utilize unused classroom space in the College of the Albemarle building.

“We’re building more than just a school on this ground today. We’re building opportunity,” said County Commission Chair Bob Woodard in remarks welcoming Dare County Schools leadership, elected officials and others who were instrumental in moving the project forward.

Officials donned red and white hard hats and wielded gold-painted shovels for the event held at the corner of 205 U.S. Highway 64/264 S. and Grenville Street.

Construction costs for the early college building are to be paid from a state lottery fund that can only be used for school capital improvement projects. The North Carolina early college program, known officially as Cooperative Innovative High Schools, has been in place since 2004 with more than 80 of the state’s 134 school systems now participating.

The program is geared to help students at risk of dropping out of high school, first-generation college students, and students who would benefit from accelerated learning opportunities.

A Hometown Heritage marker telling the story of the Atlantic District Fairgrounds in Ahoskie was dedicated last month as part of a Juneteenth celebration.

The fairgrounds were, at one time, the cultural centerpiece of the region’s African American community.

But those times are gone. The track established in 1920 where trotters pulled sulkies for almost 90 years is overgrown and covered with grass. The brick grandstand, built in the late 1950s, is still there and from a distance looks intact, but the roof of the building next to it that once housed the stables is sagging and the paint is peeling.

The fairgrounds haven’t been used since 2010, but, for most of the nine decades it was in operation, it was a place where people of color in Hertford, Bertie, Gates and Northampton counties had the opportunity “to submit items of work and pride: preserves, needlecraft, woodcraft, cooking, livestock and art for possible prizes. It was rare for people of color to have such opportunities and rewards: to win a ribbon along with a dollar or two,” wrote Marvin Tupper Jones, executive director of the Chowan Discovery Group in a grant application for the nonprofit William G. Pomeroy Foundation.

The marker was unveiled June 14 at the R.L. Vann School Community Resource Center at 415 Holloman Ave. in Ahoskie, located beside the historic fairgrounds, during a Juneteenth program.

The Chowan Discovery Group works to preserve the history of the Winton Triangle, a 280-year-old landowning community of people of color. The Pomeroy Foundation was established in 2005 and offers several grant programs to help communities honor their history.

For a brief time during segregation, there were two fairs in Hertford County. The Hertford County Fair in Winton was first held 1918.

Prominent African American business owners and educators from Ahoskie and surrounding areas formed the Atlantic District Fair Association in 1920 after being denied access to the Hertford County Fair in the county seat.

“The Atlantic District Fair Association, incorporated, Ahoskie in Hertford county, to conduct a district agricultural fair and to promote agriculture, authorized capital $20,000, with $1,000 paid in by Augustus Sessoms of Ahoskie, C.D. Nichens, Winton and many others,” the Greensboro Daily News reported in February 2020.

The fair proved an immediate success, with the Hertford County Herald reporting on Oct. 28, 1921, “Since Tuesday, the opening day of the Atlantic’District Fair (colored), immense crowds have paid daily visits to the grounds…The opening day witnessed the smallest crowd of the 3-day fair. Wednesday’s and today’s crowds have met the expectations of the officials of the fair, who have been making extensive preparations for their initial fair.”

For three years, 1921-1923, the two fairs took place within a few weeks of one another.

But, according to the Ahoskie News Herald, by 1923 the Hertford County Fair was in financial trouble.

“The Hertford County Fair Association has called a meeting of the stockholders of the association … next Thursday, December 6. At that time a report of finances will be given and records of this year’s fair given. On account of the quick change in weather and postponing of the first day of the fair this year, the final report shows the association to have lost money, to the extent of about $350 this year (approximately $6,600 in 2025). This leaves the association worse off financially than before, and the meeting at Winton will probably decide the fate of the organization for another year,” the paper reported.

No further references to a Hertford County Fair was found in area newspapers.

Yet the Atlantic District Fair thrived throughout the 20th century. As the 32nd annual fair got underway in 1954, the Gates County Index reported in its Oct. 7 edition that, “President Clarence Chavis (had) received from Commissioner of Agriculture L. Y. Ballentine a letter in which the Atlantic District Fair was described us the third ranking fair in the state in the amount of agricultural exhibits and premiums, thus only one other fair besides the NC Stale Fair ranked higher than the Roanoke-Chowan’s Atlantic District Fair which in all its history has been promoted and managed entirely by Negroes.”

The paper did not identify the fair that ranked second.

Almost 40 years later, the fair continued to thrive. In a 1993 addendum to “History of the Atlantic District Fairground Association Incorporated … A.D. 1919 – A.D. 1991” wrote author Clarence Newsome, vice president of the association. “The 1993 episode of the Atlantic District Fair … was one of the most auspicious events in the recent history of the association.”

Paid attendance totaled nearly 8,000 people.

If 1993 was an auspicious year, there were storm clouds gathering.

“The population of the area started declining. A lot of the people active in the fair were business people. In the 70s,” Jones explained to Coastal Review. “We weren’t creating new retailers. We weren’t creating any more stores and business people and business people know how to run things.”

The population of Hertford County and Ahoskie have been in decline for more than 50 years, but the past 10 years have seen some of the more significant declines. From a population of almost 25,000 in the county in the 2010 census, the population is now estimated at less than 20,000. Ahoskie’s downtown district, which was at one time a thriving railroad transportation hub, reflects the broader changes seen countywide.

The entire downtown is a historic district, architecturally seemingly frozen in time between 1900 and 1940.

“The range of architectural styles found in Ahoskie is limited due to the relatively short period of the most of the town’s development,” wrote the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in documents creating an Ahoskie Historic District.

Today, however the downtown is almost entirely deserted, many of the buildings empty and in disrepair. Not all of them though. Toward the west side of town, The Sweets on Main opened in May after renovating a 1948 building that had once housed a doctor’s office. The watermelon sorbet was perfect on a hot summer day, according to this reporter.

Yet even if there are a few businesses trying to bring the downtown back, Jones isn’t sure if there is enough of the same spirit that had once created a bustling, viable downtown Ahoskie.

“I don’t know if I see a new generation of leaders,” Jones said. “In the late 60s, 70s and up, we were trying to hang on to what our parents and grandparents…had passed down to us, but we don’t see a generation behind us that’s going to bolster what we’re doing.”

This story has been updated. A previous version misidentified the date of the harness racing photo.

Dewey Hemilright has spent more than 30 years on the water as a commercial fisherman. Along the way he has become an outspoken, sometimes harsh critic of how commercial fishing is regulated in the United States.

He is forceful in expressing his opinions, his language sometimes colorful, but the knowledge is deep, insightful and earned through a lifetime in the commercial fishing industry.

“I started in the fish house, unloading the boat. That’s the lowest tier on the totem pole,” he recalled.

He moved up the totem pole to working in a fish house, “packing, laboring long hours, nights, winter, cold, all that other stuff.” And when he turned 21, he headed to Ocean City, Maryland, to go fishing.

“My first two weeks, I lost 15 pounds from being seasick and throwing up. But the first trip we went fishing, we caught a big bluefin tuna, and I thought it was the most unreal thing. And from then on, I’ve been going my own route,” he said, adding, “but I never thought when I got started into it, that (the industry) would end up where it is today.”

He’s a longliner, fishing from his 42-foot-long boat, the F/V Tarbaby. The name, he explained, came about because it’s a smaller version of the 48-foot Tarheel, a charter vessel owned by John Bayliss and built by Ricky Scarborough.

He doesn’t get out to sea much at all any more. The combination of his advocacy, bad knees and years spent on the water have taken their toll, although the Tarbaby still heads out from Wanchese with a father-and-son crew he’s worked with for years.

Hemilright resides in Kitty Hawk with his wife Sara Hallas, education and outreach director for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

Dwindling numbers

Longlining has become the least environmentally harmful method of commercial fishing, although “25 years ago, it wasn’t, but for the U.S. now, we’re the Mother Teresa,” Hemilright said describing the improvements regulators demanded and the changes the fishing industry made — or at least the changes have been made in the U.S. fishing fleet, which is one of Hemilright’s biggest complaints.

As to what remains of the domestic longline fishing fleet — Hemilright estimates the numbers from Maine to Texas total fewer than 50 active vessels — is forced to harvest fish in an environmentally safe way, but other nations aren’t, yet they have the same access to American markets as he does.

“You would want the U.S. standard of the harvest in these quota (for) these other (nations) in the Atlantic to be doing the same method. Or if they’re not, they don’t get our marketplace,” Hemilright told Coastal Review.

Hemilright’s concerns are wide-ranging. Asked about regulations and whether they are necessary, his one-word answer is “absolutely.” His answer, though, comes with a caveat: Stock assessments are based on models that use data selected by the scientists working on the assessment.

“That model performs by the data you interject into it,” he said.

A lot of studying

Hemilright was an indifferent student — at best — in high school, he said, telling Coastal Review, “If I would have studied this much in school, I wouldn’t be fishing today.”

The studying he does now has taken him to Majorca, Spain, for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) in an advisory role in 2019. From 2012 until 2023 he represented North Carolina on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and served as the liaison to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

And it requires a lot of studying.

“You got to know the politics, you got to know the council, you got to know the stock assessment. You got to know this whole different picture,” Hemilright said describing what is needed to be an effective advocate.

Hemilright has stepped back. “Twenty-five years of bitching, complaining at fishery meetings, to where I’m coming down the backside of the hill and aging out,” he explained.

Yet, he is still passionate and highly critical of fisheries management describing the science behind the regulatory structure as trying “to put a roof on the house, and we don’t even got pilings for the foundation.”

“You would not run your life, your business, or anything, by the way that accounting is taking place,” he said. “The folks at the table would not want their livelihood, their household income, or anything based on this MSC.”

The MSC, or Marine Stewardship Council, is an international organization that rewards “efforts to protect oceans and safeguard seafood supplies for the future.” Its fisheries certification program is a widely used standard to establish whether a fishery is sustainable. The MSC awards its blue label only to fisheries that the organization determines meets its standards.

Hemilright said the organization is inconsistent in how it uses data to award blue label certifications, particularly sample sizes and margins of error.

“Some of them have a lower decision of standard of error. Some of them have a higher standard error,” he said.

The MSC has been criticized in recent years. The U.K. charity Shark Guardian published a 2023 study by the advocacy group On the Hook that concluded, “the MSC’s drive for growth and income has come at the expense of the Standard’s effectiveness and scientific credibility.”

Hemilright is particularly critical of recreational fishing. The criticism is not directed at the men, women and kids throwing a line in the water, rather it’s how what is caught gets counted – or doesn’t. He described recreational catch limits as pieces of a pie, “and you whack this pie up here, and you whack this pie up here — there ain’t so much of a pot of a resource out there.”

Commercial fishing is highly monitored with cameras on boats and inspectors taking trips with fishing craft to ensure compliance with catch limits. Recreational landings are self-reported and fisheries biologists use a small sample size to estimate how many fish are being caught.

Although recreational landings are estimates, they are often given a larger share of the pie than commercial fishing interests. Hemilright is critical of a recent North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission decision to consider increasing the amount of southern flounder allocated to recreational fishing to 50% and reducing the commercial portion by 10% of what had been previously allocated. The reallocation plan came despite acknowledgement that the recreational catch was 14,000 pounds over the 2024 limit. Commercial landings were within 1.6% of allocation.

“You’re taking it from one that’s accountable for its catch, and you’re giving it to the other side that’s not that’s not accountable to the methodology that’s been placed upon them,” Hemilright said.

Recognitions

Hemilright  has received numerous awards for his advocacy. In 2015, the Coastal Federation awarded him its Pelican Award for “outstanding contributions to education and outreach on behalf of the federation.”

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council presented him in 2024 with the Ricks E Savage Award “given annually to an individual who has made exceptional contributions to the management and conservation of fishery resources in the mid-Atlantic region.”

Looking back on his career, Hemilright laughed at how it unfolded.

“I did it for North Carolina, that’s where I’ve been advocating, and my community and my town. I never thought when I got started into it, that it would end up today, not just what I’m doing, but the industry, because the world evolved where the technology changed, things have changed,” he said.

Second in commentary photo-essay series, Tabb’s Trails, with coastal reporter, photographer and hiking enthusiast Kip Tabb.

It was a close thing, whether Jockey’s Ridge would be leveled for a development five decades ago.

If you find yourself at what is now the 426-acre Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Dare County, head north out of the parking lot and up one of the steepest dunes there.

In about a quarter mile, the disintegrating asphalt of a 50-year-old road is stark evidence that, if the late Carolista Baum had not stood in front of a bulldozer on Aug. 15, 1973, to prevent the sand dune system from being developed, a truly unique geological treasure would not exist today.

The North Carolina State Park System in 1975 established Jockey’s Ridge, what it calls the tallest living sand dune system on the Atlantic Coast. The Friends of Jockey’s Ridge State Park has organized a four-day, family friendly event starting Thursday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the state park. The friends group supports the state park in Nags Head.

Related: Take a hike Saturday to celebrate National Trails Day

Details and the itinerary for all programs being offered at no charge can be found on the nonprofit organization’s website.

Jockey’s Ridge is a remarkably complex environmental wonder.

It is a harsh environment. Where the sand is deepest and most active, nothing grows. But one of the ironies of what is left of the road is the roadbed stabilized the sand, and as the asphalt cracked, opening the soil to the elements, small thickets of pine took root.

There are self-guided trails in Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

The Soundside Nature Trail is a 1.2-mile loop that begins at the main parking lot by the visitor center, and the Tracks in the Sand Trail is a 0.6-mile loop trail beginning at the Soundside parking lot.

Depending on where the hike is going, the conditions can be strenuous. Hiking conditions are fine sand and steep inclines. It’s not necessary to be an athlete, but reasonable physical condition is important.

Visitors can explore all areas of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, but there are some things to know while there.

Take water with you, especially in the summer as conditions can be extremely hot and there is no drinking water anywhere, and insect repellant is a good idea.

When hiking in the thicket at the base of the main dune, be respectful of nature. There are a surprising number of trails and no need to create a new one.

Among the dunes where the soil has stabilized, flowering plants thrive and insect life is abundant.

There are a surprising number of flowering plants that flourish in Jockey’s Ridge, perhaps none as spectacular as a mound lily yucca.

As the flowers come into full bloom this time of year, pollinators and other insects swarm to the plants, such as the trumpet vines, which are prolific on the hillocks throughout the park.

The trumpet vines are just one of many flowering plants in Jockey’s Ridge where pollinators can be spotted, including red-spotted purple butterflies.

As the foliage thickens in spring and into summer, the sound of songbirds, like the gray catbird, is a constant chorus. Usually deep in the foliage, they are heard but not seen, but sometimes they’ll make an appearance.

Following a prescribed burn in April of this year, the largest thicket, which could almost be considered a small maritime forest, is showing signs of regeneration as summer approaches.

The wooded area on the Roanoke Sound is in the wind shadow of the largest dune in Jockey’s Ridge, and extends a little over a half mile from the parking lot and recreational beach at the southeast corner of the park.

The colors of a blue grosbeak spotted on a branch in the burn area, according to Cornell University’s All About Birds website, indicate a breeding male. The species is “uncommon but widespread across the southern United States.”

If the hike is going to be fairly long and include the Roanoke Sound shoreline, there is considerable underbrush and walking through while barefoot can be painful.

Waterfowl are a frequent sight as well. In a cove off the trail, two mallards shared a quiet moment. The drake kept bringing its foot to its head in what appeared to be an attempt to scratch something by his beak.

The North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail crosses the state, connecting the eastern terminus in Jockey’s Ridge State Park on the Outer Banks and the western terminus in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

After two hours of testimony from county officials and public hearing comments, a visibly frustrated Dare County Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard presented a motion to table any decision on an environmental zone of influence that borders Buxton Woods for 90 days, “so that we can study this and try to iron out exactly what we’ve been discussing.” The motion passed unanimously.

The discussion at the Monday meeting followed a recommendation from the Dare County Planning Board that the zone of influence in the SED-1 district should be removed from the county ordinances “based on consistency with the Dare County Land Use Plan.”

Created in 1988, the zone of influence includes an eight-mile-long area on the soundside of N.C. 12 from Frisco to the north end of Buxton. Written soon after Buxton Woods Reserve was founded in 1988, the zone of influence was an attempt to provide a “buffer to the core area of the forest that was protected under the SED-1 (Special Environmental District),” Derb Carter, Southern Environmental Law Center senior adviser and attorney, said.

The SED-1 “is Dare County’s most restrictive zoning ordinance right as it pertains to the land,” County Planner Noah Gillam told the commissioners.

The controversy over the ordinance originated earlier this year when New Jersey resident Brian Suth, who owns a building in Frisco located in the zone of influence, asked Gillam what would be involved in converting retail space in a building he owned and creating a fourth apartment. At that time, Gillam came across the 1988 language in the SED-1 amendment that defined the zone of influence.

“No multi-family development, townhouses, or condominium project located with ½ mile of any SED-1 zoning district shall exceed a dwelling density of three single family units (whether contained under one or more roofs) per acre,” the amendment reads.

A number of Buxton and Frisco residents recalled the language in the amendment was specifically designed to stop a 40-unit condominium from being developed. The amendment did, in fact, prevent the construction of the condominium. But Gillam pointed out at the meeting that if the intent was to stop intensive development of a lot, it failed.

“It doesn’t apply to a duplex. It doesn’t apply to group developments, where you put ten single family structures on one property,” he said. “You could build a hotel on it.”

That amendment, tacked on to the end of the SED-1 zoning language, was never properly indexed or referenced in county zoning documents, and that has created the dilemma for the county.

The zone of influence was not, it is important to note, a zoning district. Rather it would overlay any zones that were created in the future.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said “There’s law that says that if you don’t properly index it, then it’s not enforceable. And so it’s clear that it was not properly indexed. You can’t go into zoning and look it up.”

What has happened in the 37 years since the zone of influence was established is that the soundside of Hatteras Island parallel to Buxton Woods has been zoned for a number of uses, such as residential, commercial and industrial, and none of those zones reference the zone-of-influence language. Because that has been the case, there are numerous nonconforming land uses in the district.

After identifying the zone of influence amendment, Gillam advised Suth that he could not “continue moving forward creating nonconformities.”

“I advise him that he couldn’t do this,” but he could have “the language (in the amendment) removed so he could have the four dwelling units,” Gillam said.

Much of the discussion at the May 5 meeting focused on whether the amendment is enforceable and whether it does protect Buxton Woods.

Asked by Commissioner Rob Ross to comment on the language prohibiting four living units under one roof, Carter noted the amendment was more comprehensive and had robust protections for land disturbance.

“There’s a pretty substantive requirement, if it were followed, to minimize the disturbance for every type of development that occurs in every zoning district within that influence area, and that’s important,” he said.

Carter also felt the county had met the minimal standard in indexing the amendment.

“The requirement in state law on indexing is you’ve got to have a file ordinance with an index that’s readily available to the public. That’s the basic legal requirement. And in our view, all that’s been met, on indexing a zoning amendment,” he said.

The confusion about what to do was reflected in the public’s comments. Although Hatteras Island residents were overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the protections of the amendment, there was an acknowledgment that it was a complex issue.

“It feels a bit rushed, like every angle has not been fully explored. I’m reminded of the Jodi Mitchell line,” said Buxton resident Aida Havel, paraphrasing the composer’s song Big Yellow Taxi. “They came to paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Complicating any effort to enforce the zone of influence is state law SB 382 passed last year that requires written permission from every property owner in a zoning district if the district is downzoned. Since the zones covered by the zone of influence allow more development than would be permitted by the language of the amendment, it would constitute downzoning, and that Outten said, means the ordinance may not even be relevant any longer.

“You can get rid of it or if you leave it in place, we can’t enforce it,” he said.

After listening to Buxton residents, in particular, voice strong support for keeping the zone of influence in place, Woodard said, “Those (1988) commissioners had a valid reason for doing what they were doing, and they were honoring what the citizens of Hatteras Island wanted. I understand what’s before us, and there’s too much gray there for me, way too much gray for me to say, ‘let’s move forward.’ I would prefer to table it.”

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with The Voice to provide readers with more stories of interest about our coast.

Debbie Swick has been waging a single-handed campaign describing how dangerous a balloon is after it has been released.

“I promise you, with every fiber of my being, helium balloons do not go to heaven,” she said and suggested alternatives.

“Blow bubbles, plant a tree, scatter wildflower seeds,” the Southern Shores resident continued.

“There’s so many other things that you can do besides releasing balloons,” adding, “I would not tell people not to celebrate. I would not tell people not to mourn those that have passed on.”

For over a year, Swick has been, in her words, “a one-woman crusader.”

She describes herself as a “devout Christian” who believes “this is God’s planet, and we’re just visitors here, and let’s leave it a little better than we found it.”

Something happened to her one morning over a year ago when “God spoke to me that morning when I watched this balloon release on TV.”

Since then, she has been indefatigable, writing letters to every county manager and board in the state, innumerable municipalities, visiting counties and towns to talk about the dangers of balloons. And learning some things along the way.

She describes the impact on marine animals and wildlife, including the 2023 death of a juvenile Gervais’ beaked whale beached on Emerald Isle. The whale starved to death after a plastic balloon became trapped in its digestive tract.

“I tell everybody, speak to our commercial fishermen, ask anybody that goes out in the ocean and ask them how many balloons they encounter. It’s staggering,” Swick said.

Yet after speaking to Camden County commissioners, a new danger emerged, telling Coastal Review that a commissioner, “was saying how a farmer was complaining that he wrapped (a balloon) around his combine and broke this very expensive piece of equipment.”

And now, after months of lobbying, letter writing, cajoling and presentations, it may be that her efforts will be rewarded.

North Carolina Senate Bill 20, “An Act to Prohibit Certain Mass Balloon Releases,” filed Jan. 29, 2025, currently is in the senate’s rules and operations committee.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, told Coastal Review that there is “unanimous support on both sides of the aisle, both chambers, manufacturers, retailers, associations, everyone has come out in support of it.”

Hanig explained early this month that the bill would likely to stay in committee as the senate worked on their version of the budget, which was introduced April 17.

“We’ve been dealing with the budget process, so I’m hoping that over the next couple of weeks, things will start getting pulled out of Rules and start moving to committees,” Hanig said.

Cosponsored by Sen. Gale Adcock, D-Wake, and Woodson Bradley, D-Mecklenburg, the bill does appear to have the bipartisan support Hanig touted.

Adcock, Hanig said, “was a senator I worked with on several piece of legislation. We served together in the House. We have a great relationship. And Woodson Bradley, she’s new this year, she said she wanted to be on (the bill).”

Underscoring the support for the bill, Adcock wrote in an email that “I heard from a dozen or so of (her district’s) constituents after the bill was filed, and after I had signed on to the bill.”

The bill is short, less than 250 words, and straightforward in its language.

“The General Assembly finds that the release into the atmosphere of balloons inflated with lighter-than-air gases poses a harm to the scenic beauty of the State and a danger and nuisance to wildlife and marine animals,” the bill reads.

The bill includes fines for releasing balloons, and the fines can be substantial at $250 per balloon.

For Swick, that’s important. Her hope is that people will look at that and realize, “I’m not even going to chance it, because at $250 per balloon,” she said. “Four balloons is $1,000. I don’t have that kind of money to part with.”

As she continues to work to bring awareness to the issue, Swick said she has found a wide spectrum of interests supporting her efforts, including the Surfrider Foundation, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“We have the CRC, which is the Coalition for Responsible celebrations, who works directly with Dollar Tree and Party City,” she said.

Even the balloon industry “has taken on a responsible attitude about balloons. They understand their negative impact on the environment, so they’re joining with groups like me to educate and say, ‘Listen, enjoy your balloons, but dispose of them responsibly.’”

That the legislation is enjoying bipartisan support is, to Swick, part of the backing she has seen as she has worked on the issue.

“We waste so much time fighting each other,” she said. “This is one of those things where it shouldn’t be, ‘your side, my side.’ This is for the good of all people and all things living,” she said.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

Speaking April 16 to a room of more than 40 concerned residents gathered in the former Buxton Volunteer Fire Station, Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam addressed community concerns over the fate of a zone of influence district designed to protect Buxton Woods Reserve.

The zone of influence is an area on the soundside of N.C. Highway 12 from Billy Mitchell Airport Road north to the Buxton and Cape Hatteras National Seashore boundary. The zone may have been written to give extra protection to the maritime forest when it was established as a reserve site in 1988 by the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, a land protection program under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

But based on what came to light during the meeting organized by the Buxton Civic Association, the zone of influence was not referenced in Buxton or Frisco zoning ordinances for at least 30 years, and apparently the Dare County Planning Department was not aware of it.

In April, a request for a text amendment for a fourth apartment in a three-apartment building in Frisco brought the zone of influence language to Gillam’s attention. Based on that, the variance would not be a permitted use. But there are legal questions about whether the 1988 ordinance can be applied and is enforceable, and whether anything can or should be done about apparent nonconforming uses within the zone of influence.

Gillam said he learned of the zone of influence ordinance when researching a request from New Jersey resident Brian Suth, who owns an office building in Frisco that is part of the S-1 zoning district, requested information on converting the offices to four apartments.

“The language that’s in the (zone of influence) ordinance prohibits him from doing that,” Gillam said “So he has requested (removing) the density limitation for multi-family housing that was established in September of 1988.”

The S-1 district is defined as allowing “broad flexibility of services and uses while establishing certain density limitations, setbacks, parking requirements and other general requirements.” Based on that description, Suth’s request would have been allowed. However, based on the language in the zone of influence, the additional apartment could not be permitted.

The zone of influence ordinance was apparently designed to stop a proposed 40-unit condominium project according to Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate and environmental economist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

“There are minutes that point to a 40-unit development that was denied originally,” Flynn said. Gillam agreed, noting, “That was the triggering point of what created the language in ’88,” he said. The zone of influence language is very specific, reading, “No multi-family development, townhouses, or condominium project located with ½ mile of any SED-1 zoning district shall exceed a dwelling density of three single family units…per acre or usable land area.”

The SED-1 district is the special environmental district that includes Buxton Woods in Buxton and Frisco and contains the most restrictive language of any county zone. The zone of influence borders the SED-1 zone, but it is not part of it.

The ordinance was written in 1988, but references to the zone of influence were not included in zoning language for either Frisco or Buxton. Because some of the provisions in the zone of influence are more restrictive than the zoning requirements in those communities, state law requires a reference to the additional zoning language, Gillam explained.

As it stands right now, the zone of influence ordinance may not meet the legal standards of the state.

“There’s a (North Carolina) general statute that establishes that if you make an amendment ordinance and you don’t codify it throughout the ordinance to the lands it affects, that ordinance is not legal…That’s what we’re investigating now with the county attorney. Is this language even enforceable?” Gillam said.

Whether or not it is enforceable, Gillam said, the ordinance is flawed. He pointed out that if the purpose was to restrict high-impact development, it failed to do so.

Flynn agreed with Gillam, noting that “It seems like this ordinance was put into place to stop a specific development that the county didn’t want…so in that sense it has worked because there aren’t 40-unit condominiums in Buxton or Frisco,” she said. “But Noah is exactly right. There could be a hotel there, and that’s where it starts to get hairy, because on one hand, it seems like it did its job, but on the other hand, it very clearly has not.”

There are other concerns as well. Asked if, based on the zone of influence language, there are nonconforming uses, Gillam answered, “When you look at Buxton, or just in the zone of influence area, I think I counted seven campgrounds that have a density way surpassing three units per acre.”

Pressed by The Voice to address what would happen to the zone of influence language if it were successfully challenged in court, Gillam answered, “It would be struck from the ordinance.”

“And that is what (county manager) Bobby Outten is investigating right now,” Commissioner Mary Ellon Ballance added.

It is unclear what, if any, effect removing the zone of influence ordinance would have. The zoning language has not been applied since it stopped the 40-unit condominium in 1988, and monitoring of the 1,007-acre Buxton Woods, which is the “largest remaining contiguous tract of Maritime Evergreen Forest on the Atlantic coast,” according to the Buxton Woods website, has shown it to be a healthy maritime forest.

Asked by the Voice what she felt the next steps should be to address concerns about the zone of influence ordinance, Ballance noted “There’s a lot of unknowns at this point, other than our first step has got to be a determination of whether this is even enforceable.”

She wondered if there could be “a 30-day freeze on building and on any new permitting within the zone of influence.” And in suggesting a moratorium on new permitting, Ballance’s position was similar to comments Flynn made during the meeting.

“I think we need to just take a step back and look at what removal of this ordinance would look like. Find more information so we can make an informed decision,” she said.

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with The Voice to provide readers with more stories of interest about our coast.

First in a new commentary feature, Tabb’s Trails.

Verdant and beautiful, coastal North Carolina boasts hidden treasures of nature. For the most part, the maritime forest reserves and parks that are found throughout the area require no special equipment or knowledge to explore, just a willingness to spend some time enjoying the environment’s beauty and the unexpected surprises it offers.

Sandy Run Park on the The Woods Road in Kitty Hawk is a 16-acre town park. The trail is a completely level, half-mile loop around a pond and marsh that is half boardwalk and half gravel and packed soil.

For birdwatchers, it is a small slice of paradise with a remarkable variety of birds in the trees and feeding in the ponds. For families with children, it is as good an introduction as there could be to the beauty and fascination of the natural world.

Spring has returned to Sand Run Park in Kitty Hawk.

Regular visitors for the past four or five years, the osprey pair have been busy repairing their nest that was destroyed in a storm last September.

As the weather warms, the winter residents leave, and there is perhaps no winter bird as ubiquitous as the yellow-rumped warbler. It’s rare to see one after April 1.

By Outer Banks standards, it was a snowy winter with one storm covering Sandy Run with more than 6 inches of snow. Among the reeds in the marsh a downy woodpecker found a meal.

During spring, summer and fall, the waters of Sandy Run are most alive. If there is symbol for the park, it would be the yellow-bellied sliders. There are also large snapping turtles and an occasional painted turtle, but it’s the yellow-bellied sliders that can be seen everywhere in the ponds.

For families with children, lettuce is a great snack for the turtles.

With abundant fish, frogs and food, blue heron are regular residents, but they are not the only member of the heron family to call Sandy Run home.

Especially in the spring and summer, green heron perch on tree limbs and deadfall.

Woodpeckers have been working on the trees for years. Red-bellied woodpeckers are the most common, although downy woodpeckers are seen from time to time, as well as an occasional pileated woodpecker.

Talkative, highly visible and ever-present, tweeting cardinals are year-round residents.

In the summer, the dense foliage of a maritime forest surrounding a coastal marsh teems with life. The intense red of trumpet vines seems to attract pollinators in extraordinary numbers.

Part of Duck Pond Creek, Sandy Run is a catch-and-release-only fishing site with three kayak launches. The creek connects with Kitty Hawk Bay, although paddling to the bay includes a carry on foot across The Woods Road.

There’s a historic marker by the road as U.S. Highway 64 turns toward Manteo when approaching from the Outer Banks.

“ANDREW CARTWRIGHT Agent of the American Colonization Society in Liberia, founded the A.M.E. Zion churches in Albemarle area. His first church, 1865, near here. NC 345 at US 64/264 southeast of Manteo,” the sign reads.

The sign, though, only hints at the full story, saying very little about Cartwright the man, his efforts to bring the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion Church to Africa, the American Colonization Society or the times in which he lived.

The consensus is Cartwright was born enslaved in Elizabeth City, probably in 1834, and at some point before the Civil War he escaped and fled north.

“By the beginning of the Civil War, Cartwright and his wife Anna, were living in New England and Andrew had become a minister in the African Methodist Episcopalian Zion Church,” according to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources account of Cartwright’s life included on the highway marker description website.

Cartwright followed Union forces to North Carolina, and his presence on Roanoke Island is confirmed in an autobiography, “A brief history of the slave life of Rev. L.R. Ferebee.” Ferebee describes coming in contact with Cartwright at the Roanoke Island Freedman’s Colony, writing, “Some time in May, the same year (1864), Rev. Andrew Cartwright lectured the Sabbath School on the subject of Repentance.”

The Roanoke Island church was the first of the AME Zion houses of worship Cartwright founded in northeastern North Carolina. He would go on to organize and build 12 churches in 10 years throughout the region.

He was, however, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the relationship between races.

“By the end of Reconstruction Cartwright had become disillusioned about his future in America. He served as an agent for the American Colonization Society, and in 1876 accepted their aid to emigrate,” Walter Williams wrote in “Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa.”

In March 1871, Cartwright was named president of the Freedmen’s Emigrant Society. Later that year, the organization’s constitution and its preamble were published in the May edition of the African Repository, the publication of the American Colonization Society.

“Whereas, We, persons of African descent, see no prospect of our race ever enjoying the right that naturally indue to freemen—while we remain in this country,” the preamble begins.

The bylaws lay out the purpose of the organization in stark language, stating, “The design of the members of this Society being to aid each other to obtain a home in Liberia, where, by the help of God, we shall be able to enjoy peace and happiness and all our social rights and privileges, which we despair of ever doing in this country.”

That Cartwright was working with the African Colonization Society was significant. Formed in 1816, the mission of the society was initially to return free people of color to what is now Liberia.

When created, its membership included some of the most prominent white men of the nation. Sens. Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner,” were among its founding members.

The society enjoyed widespread support initially. Presidents Monroe and Madison supported colonization, although they were not members.

In the South, slaveholders saw the organization as a way to rid themselves of free people of color who were an ever-present reminder to their enslaved people that freedom was possible. In the north, abolitionists saw the African colony as a viable way to give free people of color a new start in life and avoid the issue of equality between the races.

Although initially popular and well-funded, the society did not have the resources to support a colonization effort in Africa. Nor were the American immigrants welcomed in Liberia. Compounding the problems, by the 1840s the coalition of abolitionists and slaveholders was falling apart. Abolitionists increasingly saw the society as a way for slaveholders to retain their property and slaveholders were unwilling to free enslaved people and return them to Africa.

Nonetheless, the society remained a viable organization into the 20th century and didn’t dissolve until 1964.

If white America saw the society as a practical solution to racial tensions, most Americans of African descent had no desire to go to a continent they’d never seen. In 1849, Frederick Douglass, writing in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator observed, “I have as much right in this country as any other man…Our connection with this country is contemporaneous with your own. From the beginning of the existence of this people, as a people, the colored man has had a place upon the American soil.”

Yet there was an undercurrent of support among some African Americans as reconstruction ended and Jim Crow laws began to take effect.

“Despite financial and ideological limitations, sentiment favoring the evangelization of Africa did begin to grow among the black denominations after the late 1870s,” Williams wrote in “The Evangelization of Africa.”

The emigration movement was, Williams noted, “a nonreligious movement that pulled the church leadership into involvement.”

The call to return to Africa for Cartwright was, evidently twofold. He had become convinced that equality between the races was not possible in the United States, and a belief that he would bring the AME Zion church to Africa.

The 1877 annual society report wrote that “twenty-one promising emigrants embarked at New York on the barque ‘Liberia,’ and that … Rev. Andrew Cartwright … expect(s) to join the Liberia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”

Initially Cartwright’s missionary work was not done under the authority or supervision of the AME Zion church, nor did the church provide funding for his work.

“Even though he had no financial support or authority from denominational leaders, he organized A.M.E.Z. congregations among the Americo-Liberians,” Williams wrote.

Cartwright was a master at presenting the best picture of his work possible.

“I find the young people take great delight in a church ruled and governed by colored leaders or black bishops,” he told readers of The Star of Zion, the publication of the AME Zion church.

“Rev. Cartwright sent such positive reports back to the denomination moved the 1880 Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion to take permanent action for the support of African missions,” Leroy Fitz wrote in “A history of the African American Church.”

That support was short-lived.

“The intensity of interest among A.M.E.Z. leaders in Africa did not last long, and within a few years Cartwright’s salary was reduced by half, to only four hundred dollars annually…The church’s lack of response toward missions was partly due to Cartwright’s lack of progress in Liberia. He was a poor administrator, and had not expanded the mission,” Williams wrote.

Cartwright’s relationship with the American church leaders was frayed. In 1896 the AME Zion church appointed John Bryan Small Bishop for Africa. His visit to Liberia did not go well.

“Small was not impressed with Andrew Cartwright, and he found the A.M.E.Z. Liberian mission in ‘poor condition,’” Williams wrote.

Reacting to the lack of support and what was apparently a damning report from his superior, Cartwright lashed out in the Nov. 12, 1896, edition of The Star of Zion, a publication of the AME Zion church.

“What has A. Cartwright done to be treated like this, after working so long in America; walking and wading, Winter and Summer, and building so many churches—twelve in ten years—then went to Africa, crossing the ocean eleven times in the interest of Zion. I know better than anyone what I went for,” he wrote.

Cartwright remained in Liberia until his death in 1903.

“Elder Andrew Cartwright fell quietly into the arms of death between twelve and one o’clock p.m., Wednesday January 14, 1903 at his residence in Africa. He was born on March 15, 1834 in Elizabeth City, N.C. and was raised in the same State. He was not an educated man, but had a little learning,” according to his obituary.

From the editor: Kip Tabb, who resides on the Outer Banks and writes for Coastal Review and other regional publications, documented his recent walk along the Freedom Trail at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

The Freedom Trail on the north end of Roanoke Island is a beautiful walk through history. A history that is both uplifting and troubling.

Beginning at the visitor center of Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, the trail is an easy 2.5-mile out and back hike through a verdant maritime forest that ends at Freedmen’s Point on Croatan Sound.

Depicting the story of the Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island, interpretive signs along the path give details of what life was like there. Metal silhouette statues stand behind the signs in silent testimony to the tale that is told.

The Freedmen’s Colony is the story of the enslaved people who came to Roanoke Island desperate for freedom and hope.

It is a story that is interwoven with the men and women who came from the North to help an illiterate population learn to live in a free society.

After Union forces seized Roanoke Island in February 1862, enslaved people came by the hundreds and even thousands to the island, seeking refuge and freedom.

At first, the men and women who had escape bondage were called “contraband.” Because the South was in rebellion against the North, any property seized was considered contraband of war.

In the South, enslaved people were considered property and based on that premise, they were not returned.

Even before President Abraham Lincoln’s Jan. 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people behind Union lines were considered free people.

In 1863 the Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony was officially established. It was the first in North Carolina and one of the first in the nation. At its peak, according to an 1864 census, it had a population of 3,901.

In 1867 it was disbanded.

About the trail

Along the trail are eight interpretive signs and nine silhouettes that represent individuals who lived and worked at the Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island, according to the National Park Service.

The trail was unveiled June 1, 2024, during a ceremony organized by the National Park Service and the Dare County Trails Commission.

The sign, “Roanoke Island Before 1862,” with silhouettes representing Annice Jackson and her daughters, Marie and Alice in the background, highlights Marie Ferribee Watkins, who “was born enslaved in North Carolina. Through the strong will of her mother Annice Ferribee, she was able to become part of the Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony. After beginning formal education at the colony, she went to present-day Hampton University, becoming a college graduate and eventually an educator,” the National Park Service website states.

The nine silhouettes represent different people who were part of the history of the Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island.

When war came to Roanoke Island, Thomas Robinson who grew up enslaved on Hatteras Island, helped Union forces navigate the local waters.

He never officially was part of the Freedmen’s Colony, but stayed with Gen. Ambrose Burnside throughout the war. Afterwards, records show he moved to Rhode Island.

The thirst for literacy was intense among the residents of the Freedmen’s Colony. During its time on Roanoke Island, 10 schools were established.

“Arriving on Roanoke Island as an illiterate fourteen-year-old boy and leaving three years later as an accomplished scholar and educator, Reverend London L. Ferebee exemplifies how many Freed people used the Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony as a springboard into emancipated life,” according to the park service.

As the colony became established, missionaries from the north came to teach in schools and spread the Gospel. Of particular note was Horace James.

“Horace James was an evangelical minister from Massachusetts who served as a Union Army chaplain and director of the Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island. A graduate of Yale University, James enlisted as Army chaplain of the Twenty-Fifth Massachusetts Volunteers on October 29, 1861. In April, 1863, Major General John G. Foster appointed James “Superintendent of All the Blacks” in the Department of North Carolina. Based in New Bern, James was put in charge of the colony,” according to the park service.

In May 1863 the US Colored Troops was formed and many of the men of the Freedmen’s Colony enlisted, among them were Richard Etheridge, who went on to be the Pea Island Lifesaving Station Keeper and Spencer Gallop.

“Spencer Gallop worked on Roanoke Island cutting down trees for the Union forces after the Battle of Roanoke Island. When the Army began recruiting on the island, Spencer enlisted and served in the 36th U.S.C.T. becoming one of the first official Black soldiers in the U.S. Army,” according to the park service.

Religion was a central part of the Freedmen’s Colony experience. The enslaved people were educated by missionary women from northern churches and African American pastors from the AME and AME Zion churches.

Sarah Freeman stayed on Roanoke Island after the Civil War ended to help the formerly enslaved people navigate a life of freedoms. She left in 1866.

“Despite being one of the oldest teachers at age 51, Sarah Freeman’s remarkable dedication during her time as a teacher at the Freedmen’s Colony of Roanoke Island distinguished her as a resilient and industrious woman. Even when she was stricken with malarial fever and confined to her bed for a period, Freeman persisted in her unwavering efforts, alongside her daughter, to tirelessly distribute food and clothing to the formerly enslaved individuals on the island,” the park service says on the website.

The federal government broke their promises to the people who had come to all Freedmen’s Colonies.

“This colony, similar to others established by the Union army, gave African Americans their first tastes of independence and freedom. However, like other sites, it was short-lived and soon faded from the pages of history,” states the park service website.

Although the government had promised land and farming equipment to the residents of the Freedmen’s Colony, with Andrew Johnson as president, those promises were withdrawn and support for all Freedmen’s Colonies severely curtailed. By 1867 the Roanoke Colony was disbanded.

COROLLA — Officials with the Donal C. O’Brien Sanctuary and Audubon Center at Pine Island hope to add to their toolkit for mitigating the effects of sea level rise on marsh environments with help from a recent $3.05 million grant.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded the money to the sanctuary in Currituck County in late 2024, “to fund innovative marsh restoration pilot projects.”

Marsh islands that once protected Currituck Sound shorelines along the Outer Banks and in mainland Currituck County are disappearing. The marsh itself is retreating, and slowly, incrementally, Currituck Banks are becoming narrower.

The marsh, in order to grow as water levels change, needs a steady supply of sediment, but the main source of that supply has been choked off by efforts to control ocean beach erosion.

“By fixing the (Outer Banks) in position, we are limiting these over water dynamics,” Dr. Sid Narayan, assistant professor in the East Carolina University Department of Coastal Studies, told Coastal Review recently. There is still sediment that comes from rivers, but, he explained, “that’s more limited.”

Pine Island Audubon Center Director Robbie Fearn has spent more than 10 years on Currituck Sound, and he has seen the effects Narayan described.

“You don’t get the overwash anymore,” Fearn said. “A lot of what we’re struggling with out here is that we don’t have much sand. It used to be, with barrier islands all being barren, the sand would just blow in. Now it doesn’t blow in, so there’s no sand source from here, either overwash or blown sand. It’s a real challenge.”

Narayan said the situation is not hopeless, but it does require new ways of thinking. Fearn agreed.

“I  think what we need to get creative with is to find ways in which we can start to introduce as much of these ocean-to-sound dynamics as possible,” Fearn said, retrieving a U.S. Geological Survey map from a drawer, spreading it across a table and pointing to a series of small islands of the Currituck Sound marsh called Shoe Hole Bay.

“All of this area out here is falling apart. It’s not much of a bay anymore,” Fearn said.  “Once we lose those, then all of this inner marsh complex gets exposed to that high fetch, and this is where the marsh birds like to nest, in protected high marsh.”

Fearn then moved his finger across the map, pointing to an island opposite from Shoe Hole Bay that forms the eastern boundary of Poplar Branch Bay and the community of Walnut Island that borders it.

“This island, Marsh Island, actually protects all of Walnut Island from storm surge,” Fearn said, noting that on the north end of the island the waters of Currituck Sound are “trying to break through.”

‘Years of hard work’

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, or NFWF, is a nonprofit conservation organization that Congress created in 1984. A 30-member board of directors approved by the Secretary of the Interior governs the private organization.

The NFWF grant is the latest in a series of grants awarded to the Pine Island site for restoration. In 2019, the North Carolina Attorney General’s office awarded an Environmental Enhancement Grant to the Audubon Society that created the framework for the NFWF grant.

“This is the culmination of many years of hard work and partnership across many different organizations and engineering firms and researchers,” said National Audubon Society Senior Coastal Resilience Program Manager Cat Bowler.

Those organizations will be invaluable in moving a project forward that will look to new ways to approach restoring the marsh.

“These projects are some of the first of their kind in Currituck Sound and in some cases, in the state of North Carolina. We want to do everything that we can to learn as much as we can about these marsh restoration techniques so that we can share what works well and what doesn’t work well,” Bowler said.

One of the issues confronting marsh restoration in Currituck Sound is that it is an environment unlike almost any other. Techniques that may have been successful in the Pamlico or Albemarle sounds often will not work at Pine Island.

“The majority of these coastal restoration projects, particularly in North Carolina, have been done in saltier-water environments, so they tend to depend heavily on oyster reefs and that sort of thing. In this very low-salt environment (at Pine Island), nobody really knows what works,” Fearn said.

The grant calls for Audubon to test and evaluate three different approaches. Two of the methods that will be tested are deemed low-tech and inexpensive. For Fearn, that is particularly important. He said that, although the testing will be done at the Pine Island marsh islands, if successful, they could offer less-costly restoration alternatives to surrounding areas.

“We really wanted to pilot some techniques that perhaps a farmer could use to protect their fields or some other landowner could utilize to protect their property that was not at that high price point of a living shoreline,” he said. “If you’re putting in rock or you’re putting in those vinyl breakwaters, the vinyl breakwaters are probably $125 to $250 a linear foot (to build). Well, if you got a lot of shoreline, you’re talking $100,000.”

The two less expensive systems that are being used are, according to information from Audubon, “coir logs, which are made of woven, biodegradable material and are placed on bare mud in front of a marsh to help dampen the force of waves,” and “pine tree breakwater(s) will be created by laying recycled trees between pilings in front of marsh islands.”

The coir logs are a coconut fiber log, and if the technique works, could be a simple method to rebuild the marsh in the right circumstances.

“We are looking at things like the coconut fiber log, because that can be installed, once you have the permit, by anybody,” Fearn said.

The pine tree breakwaters are a more complex installation, but still relatively low cost, especially compared to a living shoreline.

“The Christmas tree breakwater is a little more advanced, but once again, it’s low-tech installation,” Fearn said, explaining that after pilings are in place, “you place the Christmas trees.”

But, he added, there is research that has to be done.

“Does having that much pine in one area create a change in the water chemistry in that area?” was a question Fearn posed.

Perhaps the most ambitious — and expensive — method funded is thin-layer placement.

Thin-layer placement is a “novel technique,” Bowler said, “which has been used successfully in other coastal states, but is still very new in North Carolina.”

Audubon describes the technique as applying dredged sediment in thin layers on the marsh surface. This has been successful in Louisiana and other coastal states, but has not been tested at scale in North Carolina. The process, which requires dredging silt and placing it in the marsh environment, is significantly more expensive and requires far more technical expertise than either coir logs or pine tree breakwaters.

Marsh Island, where it borders Walnut Island and Poplar Branch Bay, was identified as the site to test the thin-layer component. When first conceived, planners looked at Oregon Inlet as a source for silt, but “it was just terrible for the ecology and the cost for moving all that sand up here was ridiculous,” Fearn said.

Instead, the dredging will happen at two locations much closer to the marsh and will have added benefits, Fearn explained.

“We wanted to have community benefits as well. We’re in a place with lots of channels, (and) we found just north of the Poplar Branch boat ramp is a shoal area. In fact, they’ve got markers to warn people,” he said. “If we can lower these shoals, we have a navigational benefit and the Walnut Island community has these channels that are silting in cleared.”

The grant project is still in its initial stages. Permits are still needed and it may take longer than usual because of the experimental nature and because regulators and Audubon want to be sure it is be done correctly.

“The regulators are very much interested in these projects, because they are groundbreaking in many ways, and we need as many tools in the toolbox as we can get to address these changes that are happening to our coast,” Fearn said.

“We’re very much committed to working in partnership with the regulatory community to make sure that we get these projects right, and that we learn as much as we can from these pilot techniques,” Bowler added. “We are planning to have those permits in hand by summer. That’s our goal.”

Featured Image

An immature white ibis nearly blends into its surroundings as it forages just off a Bodie Island trail that ends at a series of creeks southwest of the lighthouse. Photo: Kip Tabb

MANTEO – Members of the Dare County Board of Commissioners vowed a fight Wednesday during a special meeting called to discuss the county’s interest in purchasing land in Wanchese, where residents remain vehemently opposed to a planned densely built residential development and where work has already begun.

Wanchese residents opposed to the cluster home development say it is incompatible with the village’s residential zoning district rules. The board voted unanimously to again attempt to negotiate purchasing the tract, this time making a more personal plea from the chairman.

Residents’ and commissioners’ anger erupted during the meeting over the landowner’s previously rising asking price, with one commissioner saying he wouldn’t rule out moves described by the county manager to condemn the property if negotiations remain at an impasse.

Bradford Alexander of Aria Construction Co. and Development of Cresswell, in Washington County, now seeks at least five times what he paid for the land last year.

“Mr. Alexander is now viewing this community response as a very, very good opportunity to extract an enormous amount of money for a piece of property purchased less than a year ago for a million dollars,” Commissioner Bob Ross said.

Commissioner Carson Creef, who lives in Wanchese, said he was “open to condemnation,” and added that if Alexander wants to fight, “he’ll get a fight. He is the one who needlessly raised the price every single time.”

Aria Construction had already started clearing land last week at the 10.5-acre cluster home site where the firm still plans to build as many as 48 homes, down from the 60 individual homes in the site plan when the county first approved it. Except for a thin buffer of remaining trees, the land has been clear cut.

Craig Parker lives immediately adjacent to the development site in Wanchese. He told the board the property was “really being trashed right now.”

During the meeting, County Manager Bobby Outten explained to commissioners and the roughly 60 others in attendance that Aria had purchased the property in July 2024 for $1 million. Outten recounted how commissioners, responding to Wanchese residents’ outrage over the project, authorized an offer of up to $3 million to buy the property.

“In the fall of 2024 I contacted Mr. Alexander at the board’s request to talk about a purchase, and at that time, he told us he wouldn’t take less than $5 million,” Outten said, adding that the amount was 16 times the assessed tax value. “And so those discussions ended.”

The special meeting was called, Chairman Bob Woodard said, because Commissioner Mike Burrus, who represents Wanchese on the board, indicated there was interest among village residents in creating a tax district to pay the difference between the $3 million the county offer and the $5 million Alexander had demanded.

The tax district would be similar to the county tax districts in place to pay for beach nourishment.

Outten had subsequently approached Alexander to propose that there may be a way to bridge the $2 million dollar gap between the county’s offer and Alexander’s price, but the developer then said $6 million was his firm price.

During the meeting Wednesday, Outten described how such a tax could be implemented and outlined the procedures for condemnation. Under eminent domain laws, the acquired land must be for public use. But, Outten said, if Alexander refused the county’s condemnation offer, a court would decide the fair price.

“Whatever a jury says after we have a trial is what we pay,” Outten said. “If it’s $6 million, we pay $6 million.”

Ross was said he was reluctant to enrich the developer at county expense.

Creef said he would not support the special use tax. He said the tract isn’t worth $6 million, and that he had campaigned on lowering taxes, not raising them.

Wanchese residents, when speaking during the meeting’s public comment period, were adamant that the cluster zoning was a mistake and that the county and therefore, commissioners, had a responsibility to correct it.

Parker, who lives next to the site, said he wants to be rid of the issue once and for all.

“A lot of times your best lesson learned is one that’s going to cost you the most,” he said, adding that he didn’t like the idea of paying off the developer, but, “if that’s what it costs to get rid of him once and forever, that’s what needs to be done.”

“Some mistakes cost more than others,” Mitchell Bateman of Wanchese said. “I don’t think the citizens and the residents of Wanchese should have to form their own special tax district to finance this. It’s not our responsibility to pay for this mistake. It’s yours.”

Bateman’s son, Justin Bateman, also spoke of his frustration.

“I don’t want to put money in that man’s pockets. Nobody in here does, but considering what we could do great with that piece of property is what we really need to focus on,” he said.

Woodard, the board chair, told his fellow commissioners that he was willing to meet with Alexander personally in the hope that, “he’s got a humane side to him that he might reconsider the value.”

Then, the board went into closed session to discuss terms of a potential deal.

In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and in recognition of the continued struggle for civil rights, Coastal Review will not publish on Monday, Jan. 20.

Undergraduate students who spent their fall semester studying Currituck Sound may have broken new ground in understanding the effects of controlled burns on a marsh island.

For the project, students compared vegetative changes to the marsh islands with the Audubon Pine Island Sanctuary and Center in Currituck County that have no history of recent fire, islands that are occasionally burned, and islands that have had frequent controlled burns.

The students presented their findings “The Sound of Change: Responses to Controlled Burning and Other Changes in the Currituck Sound,” Dec. 12 as part of the monthly Science on the Sound lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute, or CSI, on East Carolina University’s Outer Banks Campus.

The students conducted the research project as part of the Outer Banks Field Site, or OBXFS, a semester-long, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill undergraduate program hosted each fall by CSI.

Controlled burns are part of a fall tradition that existed well before the first European set foot upon the North American continent and “has deep historical roots in the South, where the practice was quickly adopted from the Indians by early European settlers,” according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service research.

While there have been a number of studies examining how a controlled burn effects a marsh, delving into a fire’s impact on invasive species, soil accretion, plant diversity and potential of endangering some animal species, this research takes a different approach.

The study “was one of the few that worked in brackish marshes, and the students talking to stakeholders and users of the marsh about the changes they perceived is also something that’s, I think, unique to the study,” Outer Banks Field Site Director Lindsay Dubbs said during the presentation.

The students included a human dimension and interviewed people who use the Currituck Sound frequently about the environmental changes they feel have taken place.

For their field work, the students traveled to marsh islands within the boundaries of the Pine Island site and compared the effects of controlled burning on marsh vegetation.

The islands were divided into three groups. The control islands had “no historical data of any burns happening,” explained sophomore Lily Bertlshofer. “Our occasional sites were last burned in 2021 and our frequent sites have data being burned every year.”

The study was designed “to look at how controlled burns impact the allocation resources within marsh plants and soils, the impacts of controlled burning on the vegetation community of marsh and what the implications for marsh resilience are,” Berlshofer said.

The study confirmed that the long-established practice of prescribed burns benefit vegetative diversity in marsh inlands.

At first glance there does not appear to be a significant difference in plant diversity among the three areas.

“We found that there was no statistically significant relationship between species richness and burn frequency,” said Veronica Cheaz, a sophomore.

That finding was expected. Because the number of plants that can live in a salt-to-brackish environment is limited, diversity is relatively low.

“Generally, we found low species richness at all of our plots, which is not very surprising,” Cheaz said. “We have a brackish marsh in the Currituck Sound, and there’s not going to be very many species.”

What the study did identify, though, was how effective controlled burning of a brackish marsh could be in maintaining the habitat.

“We also looked at salinity tolerance,” Chaez said, which “is going to be influential in determining how effective these sites are at adapting to environmental stressors like sea level rise and a rise in salinity. We found that occasionally burned sites had the highest scores compared to our control sites, and we hypothesized that this is because occasionally burned sites have a balance of the disturbance periods and restoration periods that allows salt water species to move in.”

There was at least one surprising finding. When the living root systems, or the biomass, of the three sites were compared, the frequently burned areas have statistically greater biomass than either the control or occasional burn areas.

Pointing to a graph showing more than double the biomass of an occasional site, senior Katelin Harmon, majoring in environmental studies and political science, described the finding that “frequently burn sites were much higher,” as “one of our most interesting findings…There’s much stronger root systems in our frequently sites.”

Verdant and complex, the Currituck Sound marsh is somewhat unique. The nearest saltwater source is Oregon Inlet some 55 miles to the south of the study area at the Pine Island Audubon site. The salinity there is typically under 3 parts per thousand, or ppt, and at times lower.

“The low salinity makes these places special, and we refer to that as an oligohaline environment,” junior Thomas Ferguson said during the presentation.

Currituck Sound has not always been an oligohaline, or a low-salinity, environment. Throughout the colonial period and into the early 19th century, there were two inlets on the north end of the sound. Currituck Inlet across from Knotts Island was open until the 1730s. New Currituck Inlet just to the south, opened soon after that, closing in 1828. Until New Currituck Inlet closed, the north end of the sound was a high-saline brackish marsh.

With the closing of the inlets, Currituck Sound transitioned to an oligohaline marsh and migratory waterfowl began arriving by the hundreds of thousands, creating a hunter’s paradise.

“In 1828 the Currituck Inlet, at that time composed of salt water, was closed by a storm and the vicinity gradually became fresh water. This change allowed vegetation such as wild celery and eel grass to grow on the marsh bottom and this new vegetation attracted wintering fowl in greater quantities than before,” The National Register of Historic Places noted in its assessment of the Currituck Shooting Club.

The Currituck Shooting Club, founded in 1857 “by a group of business men in New York City,” the assessment wrote, was the first of numerous hunting clubs that lined the shores of Currituck Sound. The building was completely destroyed by fire in 2003.

The Pine Island Club was formed in 1910. In 1979 the last private owner of the club, Earl Slick, a Winston-Salem developer, donated 2600 acres of marsh and uplands to the National Audubon Society. In 2009 Audubon North Carolina assumed full-time responsibility for the managing the club.

Hunting is still allowed on the property, but according to at least one of the hunters the student researchers interviewed, it falls well short of what it had once been like.

“It really doesn’t have any ducks compared to when I was young, when I was your age, this place had ducks. This place doesn’t have anything anymore,” the researchers were told.

In a question-and-answer session following the presentation, Pine Island Site Manager Robbie Fearn noted that the statistical biomass findings at the frequently burned areas was inconsistent with what was visually happening.

“I’m at the Pine Island Sanctuary,” he said. “The areas that are frequently burned from my lived experiences are falling apart, and yet the data says that for longer term management, frequent burning may be better… Is it a question of the plants are responding to the frequent burn by trying to survive and creating more below-ground biomass.”

For Fearn, who was very complimentary of the work the students did, the inconsistency between what he has observed and what the statistics say is a jumping off point for much needed further research.

“The work that these students have done have really set us up to dig in and figure out how best to manage these marshes in the sound and I’m very thankful for their work,” he said.

Coastal Review will not publish Jan. 1 in observance of New Year’s Day.

Sandy Cross, senior planner for Duck, recently brought Coastal Review with her as she walked along the edge of Currituck Sound, where a project to make the Dare County town more resilient was completed in May.

Cross excitedly pointed out signs of continuing progress at the site.

“See this little grass right here? This is a black needle rush or Juncus roemerianus,” she said, growing more excited as the stroll continued another 10 to 15 yards farther along the shoreline.

“Wait a minute. See this grass that looks kind of like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?” she asked. “That’s called Spartina cynosuroides, which is a coastal wetland species. We did not plant that.”

The project funded with local, state and federal money also elevated a portion of N.C. Highway 12 to reduce flooding, and it restored native marsh to protect the shoreline and improve natural habitat.

In October, the American Planning Association recognized the project, honoring the town with its Marvin Collins Planning Award in Sustainability and Resilience.

The award-winning projects and programs were selected for their “high quality, originality, and innovation, as well as a degree of transferability,” according to the association. “They are also impactful, in that they address a known community need and position the community for a stronger, more equitable future.”

Most vulnerable infrastructure

N.C. 12 is the only road that connects Duck to the rest of Dare County to the south and Corolla village in Currituck County to the north. At the north end of Duck’s business district, the highway was prone to flooding. When the wind was strong enough for long enough, revetment rocks that were placed alongside the road were lifted from their bed and strewn across the highway.

“For anyone that’s been in Duck any length of time, they know that a good southwest wind will inundate the roadway,” Cross said.

Town officials knew well that the quarter-mile stretch of the road was at risk. A 2019 Western Carolina University vulnerability assessment, “indicated that this section of roadway was the most vulnerable infrastructure we had in the in the town,” Cross said.

The project cost a little more than $4.3 million, which was mostly paid for with grants, although the town did contribute $398,500 of its own. Construction began in October 2023 and took six months to complete.

Sills were installed to protect a new living shoreline. Marsh grasses were planted after the invasive phragmites reeds that had taken over the nearshore were removed. The small riprap rocks were replaced by Class III Armor Stone, revetment stones that weight more than a ton each and should withstand even the strongest winds and waves.

The roadbed was raised 2.5 feet and a new sidewalk was built, all with resilience features.

“They put in strips,” Cross said of the design, “intended as a small stormwater mechanism. They’re probably about 2 feet deep, and at the base there’s some filter cloth, and then there’s a rock bed, and then there’s bio-retention soil.” 

There is also a wild grass planted between the road and the sidewalk— liriope.

In the past the town had used little bluestem between the highway and sidewalk, but Cross really wanted to find a grass that would work better as a barrier.

“They (little bluestem) get really tall, and they get really floppy when they get wet,” she said.

Liriope is a flowering grass that Cross said, “is probably the only plant that can survive the soot and the very small space in which it has to survive.”

Duck has created a series of vision documents beginning in 2009 with its “2022 Vision” that describes the town as “a pedestrian first community that is safe and easy to navigate by walking and cycling.”

That same document stressed environmental stewardship with an emphasis on living shorelines for protection on the sound side of the village.

Phase 4 of the sidewalk project was to be at the north end of the business district, and plans called for a living shoreline to create additional defense from soundside flooding.

Standing at the south end of the project area, Cross explained how the project went from an ambitious but relatively limited shoreline plan to an award-winning project, a process kickstarted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We were going put in a sidewalk, and we were going to put in a living shoreline. That was all scheduled to begin in 2019,” she said. “Then FEMA came out with their Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities grant program and there was a huge pot of money for resilience projects.”

With possibility of funding for raising the road in conjunction with the living shoreline and sidewalk project, the town paused to “apply for this BRIC grant to raise the road and then really make it a resilience project,” Cross recalled.

The state, Cross said, said the project was a good candidate for funding but advised the town to hold off on the sidewalk and living shoreline components.

“You need to encompass it all in order to really fare well in the scoring of the grant,” she said. “So we started the grant process with BRIC in 2020. Fast-forward to 2024, when we actually saw the money for the grant.”

The roughly $1.9 million appeared to be enough to raise the roadbed and replace the riprap.

“Then COVID happened,” Cross said. “Everything you thought was going to cost one thing ended up costing double that. We were able to apply to the Department of Emergency Management with the state for some additional funding. We ended up getting an additional $1.5 million and change to offset some of the increase in cost of the project.”

There were other grants as well, including the $398,500 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the living shoreline, $148,000 from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau for the sidewalk, and an additional $20,000 grant from the Community Conservation Assistance Program administered through the soil and water districts by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Division of Soil and Water Conservation.

Ricky Wiatt, senior landscape architect with environmental and government consulting firm VHB, which has long worked with the town, wrote on the company’s blog that the project, “was not merely a one-and-done solution but rather a dynamic and layered approach designed to adapt and thrive in the face of ongoing challenges. By embracing the principles of resiliency and incorporating diverse strategies, the Town of Duck is not only safeguarding its infrastructure but also fostering a more sustainable and vibrant community for generations to come.”

For Cross, however, although construction has been completed, there is still work to be done.

“We do expect this to be a case study. That’s one of the things I am continually telling people, and one of the reasons why I want to get some monitoring program together,” she said. “This is all fine and dandy, but if we don’t have a way to track it when it’s done, then what have we done it for?”

The Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station completed in October 1874 was the first of seven new stations to be built that year along the North Carolina coast.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the station opening, the Chicamacomico Historical Association held a two-day event at the site in Rodanthe.

Held Oct. 12-13, the program featured several speakers, including Rear Adm. John “Jay” Vann, commander of the Coast Guard’s Fifth District that includes North Carolina. There were presentations, rescue drill reenactments, and patriotic music performed by the Cape Hatteras Secondary School Band.

Vann called the attention of the about 80 in the audience to the heroism that was part of the job description of the stations’ crew.

He highlighted the Aug. 16, 1918, rescue of the British steamer Mirlo. The rescue resulted in all eight of the crew being awarded a Gold Lifesaving Medal, the Coast Guard’s highest honor.

The Mirlo was carrying gasoline when it struck a German mine and the fuel aboard set the sea on fire.

Vann described the Chicamacomico crew rowing through flaming waters to rescue seamen from an overturned lifeboat.

Rescuers proceeded through the flames to search for a second lifeboat, this one with 19 crewmen aboard, threw a line, and towed lifeboat to shore.

Because of the actions of Chicamacomico Coast Guardsmen, 42 of the 52 crewmen on board the Mirlo were saved.

Those values, Vann noted in his address, are still found in the Coast Guard of today,

“I think that despite the divisiveness we increasingly observe and the doubt some of us had in younger generations,” he told the audience. “You will find that the young American service members in our Coast Guard respect our heritage and those who came before us.”

Station history

When the Chicamacomico Life-saving Station opened in 1874, the maritime rescue response program was a part of the Revenue Marine Division, under the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and was the first to be staffed in the state.

The rescue program became the Life-Saving Service in 1878, and then in 1915, was established as the United States Coast Guard.

Sumner Kimball, who had been appointed supervisor of the Revenue Marine Division in 1871, worked to create a professional lifesaving service because the few lifesaving stations dotting the East Coast were incapable of carrying out an ocean rescue.

“Training and equipment were either poor or non-existent, and many of its ‘lifesavers’ were either incompetent land-lubbers or corrupt political appointees,” the Cape Hatteras National Seashore wrote in 1871 about the conditions.

Even with improvement in personnel and equipment, by 1874 it was apparent there were not enough stations for the Revenue Marine Division to fulfill its lifesaving services.

Kimball convinced legislators to allocate $200,000, around $6.7 million in today’s dollars, to build and staff new lifesaving stations.

Coastal North Carolina was identified as one of the most critical areas needing attention and seven new stations were authorized between Corolla and Avon.

Chicamacomico, went into service in October of 1874, although the official commissioning of the station wasn’t until December.

The building was decommissioned in 1954. In 1974, the nonprofit Chicamacomico Historical Association was founded to preserve the site.

Fisheries researcher Samantha Farquhar has traveled far to learn more about industrial fishing and food security, and the related effects of a changing climate on peoples’ lives. Work that first requires building a level of trust.

Her travels have taken her from the University of Washington in Seattle to East Carolina University in Greenville, with stops in Nepal, Madagascar, Greenland and a small village in northern Quebec. Also included was a stop on the Outer Banks, where she worked as a seasonal fisheries technician with the Department of Marine Fisheries.

“I got to know a lot about what fishermen think of the regulations really fast,” Farquhar told Coastal Review recently.

It was, she explained, time well spent, especially for her chosen field of research.

“You go down to Wanchese, it’s their life. You have to really respect that when you’re doing research. You can’t just go in there asking a bunch of questions,” she said. “You have to take the time to build the right partnerships and develop trust.”

She was in Greenland this summer, spending most of July in Uummannaq, a town on the west side of the country. Although most of her work has been with fisheries, in this case she was working with Hurtigruten Expeditions, a Norwegian company that offers cruises to Greenland.

She was looking into the effects of climate change on the indigenous culture there.

“Greenland is one of the only countries that is (approximately) 80% indigenous people. It’s an indigenous-run country, which is pretty cool, but with strong ties to Denmark,” she said.

Farquhar was studying how climate change was affecting the use of the qajaq (pronounced kayak), which is the traditional kayak of the Inuit people of Greenland. Made of stretched animal skins over whalebone or driftwood, it is a long, narrow watercraft, that, because of its construction, is used only in relatively calm seas.

What Farquhar found was that days with conditions safe for qajaq use were becoming more infrequent.

“I can almost definitely say it’s harder for kayakers, than, say, 30 years ago,” she said. “A kayaker will tell me, ‘I will only go kayaking when it’s between zero and 0.5 meters of wave height. If it’s greater than 0.5 meters, it’s too wavy. I don’t feel safe going out.’”

Farquhar is in an ECU doctoral program administered by the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus that she described as unique in the world of academia.

“I’m in a PhD program called Integrated Coastal Sciences. It’s the only PhD program in the world that has this title,” she said, adding that trying to describe the program is difficult.

“It’s like coastal resource management, but more integrated,” Farquhar said.

“I have to understand the fishery science side of things,” she said, adding that her works demands an understanding of food security, food systems and how people obtain food within the food system. “So it’s really interesting.”

After five years of study, Farquhar  expects to defend her doctoral dissertation next spring.

Aquaculture sans ocean

Farquhar, fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree in biology, began her career in Nepal, where there was opportunity, despite what she describes as a “really funny” experience, “because they don’t have an ocean.”

And it was, she said, a place where the economics of food security, society and fish intersect.

“It was an aquaculture project that was for women specifically, because in a lot of traditional Nepali societies, women are stuck in the household, and they don’t have a lot of options for economic development,” Farquhar said. “That led me to get into fisheries development … to see how fisheries could be tied to people.”

The societal aspects of fisheries became a frequently recurring concept in her work. She later spent nine months living in Madagascar on a U.S. government Fulbright Student Grant Program.

“I was working in a marine protected area,” she said, describing how it was managed by a local community, “small-scale fishers, traditional sailing vessels, that kind of thing.”

Beyond the managed area, industrial-scale fishing was permitted, but vessels from the European Union or Asian countries were entering the marine protected area. “They would get very upset,” Farquhar said. “They’d be like, ‘This boat is stealing all of our fish.’”

Often, industrial-scale fishing operations are described as “really bad for local communities, especially when the industrial fishing is by a different party and not the local community,” Farquhar said. But, empirical proof of harm is difficult to produce.

“If you think about it in terms of data, it’s really hard to prove that industrial fishing happening here is causing this household over here to lose out on meals and suffer,” she said.

Some of the difficulty in showing a link is in the recordkeeping, or lack thereof.

“There is no good long-term data for Madagascar,” Farquhar said. Even in developed nations, it can be difficult to show how food security and industrial fishing are interwoven in the local economy.

Because of COVID-19 travel restrictions, Farquhar was unable to return to Madagascar, but she did find a project in Canada, where she found, there was “much better data.”

The focus of her work in northern Quebec was in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit town on the southern side of the Hudson Straight. The town, with a population greater than 2,600 is the largest town in the Nunavik region of Quebec.

Unlike her work in Madagascar, Kujjuaq residents are developing an industrial fishing economy with the goal of benifitting the Nunavik region.

“The commercial fishery that they’re ramping up in the area is shrimp,” Farquhar said. “Shrimp is not a traditional food in the indigenous community that I’m working in. They like it, but it’s not like something that they’re (saying), ‘Yes, this is important to our culture.’”

What is important to the culture is Arctic char, a fish that looks a bit like salmon, although it has yet to catch on as an export commodity.

“It’s very important to them. It’s a really good-tasting fish. You can never find it in the United States,” she said.

The Kuujjuaq community has been fairly successful, too, exporting most of the shrimp to Asia, Farquhar said, adding although that, “they hit a bit of a bump during COVID.”

There may be a limit to how much shrimp can be harvested, however, if a healthy population of arctic char is to be maintained.

“Arctic char eats shrimp,” Farquhar noted. “So, if you’re fishing your shrimp population, is that going to affect your arctic char population?”

That remains unknown because the local ecosystem has not been well studied, something that, for Farquhar, makes working with the locals even more interesting.

“It’s very innovative work. The community is really interested in the work. They’re asking me questions to look at in my dissertation,” she said.

There is a grippingly real sense of dread that some people feel about the state of the environment.

That’s what Dr. Paul Taillie, assistant professor of geography and the environment at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, told an audience last week during the most recent “Science on the Sound” monthly lecture series hosted by Coastal Studies Institute at the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

“This is a documented term called ‘climate anxiety,’ where this state of the Earth these days is causing people to be anxious,” he said. “It’s hard to avoid these dramatic, very worrisome headlines about super hurricanes and death and destruction, historic flooding. This feeling of anxiety is valid (and) I think it’s very justified.”

He delivered his talk, “Coastal Ecosystems and Rising Seas: Impending Collapse or Conservation Opportunity?” Thursday evening, one day before Hurricane Helene brought unheard of rainfall and destruction to Western North Carolina.

Taillie acknowledged that while there is reason for concern about the environment, he does not share the full-on anxiety others may experience. “I tend to be very optimistic about things.”

There were reasons for his optimism, he explained, adding he hoped attendees left the evening’s discussion with “more of a sense of optimism about climate change and biodiversity than when you came in the room.”

Taillie pointed out that all systems evolve and change over time and that the plants and animals living in those systems adjust to the changes and have been “for a really long time, hundreds of thousands of years.”

Questions remain about the impact of environmental change on certain species, especially those that are threatened by the changes that are taking place.

Taillie said that when he began his graduate studies, he wanted to look at how species, in general, reacted to environmental changes. One of the difficulties he found in wanting to study the possible benefits of those changes was the reluctance to focus on possible benefits.

“It’s easier to publish a paper about a species going extinct because of climate change than it is to publish a paper about a species benefiting from climate change,” he said. “But that’s been kind of a driving force behind my research.”

Taillie’s first graduate work was to investigate the effects of wildfire on plants and animals, and what he found was that wildfire is, in fact, an important part of the ecosystem.

“I started to notice that there’s all these plants and animals that are uniquely adapted to the conditions created by fire, and that these disturbances that we think of as being really bad can often be really good for biodiversity,” he said.

When he started his doctoral work, he had the chance to study the 2016 Pains Bay Fire in Dare County that burned 15,000 acres in Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

“I was super interested to see what happened to this area. As soon as I was allowed to, I went in there,” Taillie continued, showing the audience a picture of burned trees and shrubbery. Just a week later, grass had begun growing among the charred trees.

“These grasses (are) palladium or sawgrass. This is exploding,” he said. “It’s growing superfast and responding to fire very rapidly.”

A year later, he found what was once a forest was completely covered in grasses and fast-growing vegetation.

“This is almost unrecognizable as forest,” Taillie continued. “That fire is catalyzing this transition from forest to marsh.”

Taillie made the point that the grasses that have grown where there was once dense forest are essential for the survival of a number of species.

“These marshes support a lot of really unique animals that hide in these dense grasses,” he explained. “Many birds and small mammals are running around in there. They’re super vulnerable to predation, and so they need this dense grass in order to hide from predators.”

Fire is a relatively spectacular environmental change. The changes that occur in a marsh are more subtle but every bit as dynamic.

“Marshes,” he said, “have these built-in mechanisms of resilience to changes in sea level.”

As sea levels rise, the marsh will often migrate landward, replacing terrestrial systems, especially forest. That movement is apparent in ghost forests, where stands of dead trees immediately adjacent to a live forest.

State and federal agencies, including the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are concerned about these ghost forests. “These were proliferating all over Dare and Hyde counties.”

Taillie continued that he realized while he studied what was happening that “the ghost forest represented a transition from one stage of this transition from forest to marsh. This is not something to stop.”

Bird surveys that were taken of the living forest and ghost forest showed that the ghost forests are an important part of species survival and adaptation.

“We started to notice that there were lots of interesting birds hanging out in the ghost forests, much different than in the live forest. One of those is a prothonotary warbler,” he said.

A highly migratory species, the prothonotary warbler is described by the Cornell University All About Birds website as “a species of high conservation concern.”

The birds prefer nesting sites in standing dead trees over shallow water, a condition that Taillie described as “the exact sort of conditions that you find in those forests.”

He said his work has taken him from the marsh and barrier islands of coastal North Carolina to the Florida Keys, where he has been studying the ability of a subspecies of marsh rice rats to adapt and survive in their environment.

“Everyone always wants to know, well, if all the Keys were underwater, where did they go? I don’t know,” he said and pointed out that, “They have dealt with hurricanes for a very long time.”

There are, he pointed out, a number of similarities between North Carolina’s barrier islands and the Florida Keys. Both are subject, as an example, to periodic flooding, and it was the flooding that brought the silver rice rat to Taillie’s attention in 2017.

At the time, he was working with the Fish and Wildlife Service following Hurricane Irma. The agency was concerned that because of storm surge, “this entire endangered species could be no longer in existence.”

It quickly became apparent that the silver rice rat population was holding its own, even though the storm surge of 2 to 3 feet should have inundated the Keys where the rats lived.

How they survived is a mystery, Taillie said.

As N.C. Highway 32 winds through Washington County, it passes through Skinnersville, an unincorporated township with a population of just over 700.

There isn’t much here; a few homes along the south bank of the Albemarle Sound, but it’s mostly open farmland and forest. Pea Ridge, where the first bridge connecting the south bank of the Albemarle Sound with the north side and Edenton, is about 2 miles to the east. Roper is 8 miles or so west.

There is a historical marker on the north side of the highway that the Division of Archives and History posted in 1974 that reads: “Rehoboth Church — Colonial Anglican congregation known as Skinner’s Chapel. Present church constructed 1850-1853. Now United Methodist.”

Behind the sign, framed by trees and expansive farm fields, is the Rehoboth Methodist Church. A lovingly restored, simple, Greek Revival structure.

The church has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. The evaluation of the structure noted, “The simple yet dignified frame church in its picturesque setting in a grove of trees draped with Spanish moss has been preserved through local efforts as a landmark of the county.”

Many of those trees are gone now, lost to time and weather. The restoration was originally done by the Washington County Historical Society, but the more recent work that has recreated the original look and feel of the church has been done by the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society.

Chris Barber, chair of the organization, is one of the founding members of the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society. She had retired from teaching in 2006 and was looking for something to do, had seen the church, knew it needed work, and “I started calling around,” she said.

What she found were the people who had worked on the church in the 1970s and brought it to the attention of the National Park Service, the organization that administers historic places, were, “either dead, moved away, or they were elderly people.”

Two years later in 2008, she and four others founded the Rehoboth Church Preservation Society as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Grants followed — perhaps the most important was the first $32,000 award.

“It enabled us to raise the church, but because it was sinking,” Barber said. “When you looked at the images, it looked like the brick foundations were failing. But actually what was happening is the sills were rotting, and as they rotted, they were twisting the church on the foundation.”

The grant was the first of a number of funding sources that have brought the church back to a more accurate state of restoration. Some of what has been found as the church has been restored has been surprising.

For instance, the windows are original, Barber said.

“There are no records at any time that the windows were ever changed. I wrote a grant to have the windows refurbished and restored,” she said, adding that was in 2019.

Barber, who has written a book about the history of the church and its significance, “The Tie That Binds: Rehoboth Methodist Church and 300 Years of Worship,” points to some of the more fascinating features and pieces of history housed within the church.

When the church was completed in 1853, the structure did not originally have a ceiling.

“We know from some records that they probably put the ceiling in about the 1880s or so. If you look, you’re going to see the prints of hands. The men in the church did it,” she said.

The church is a time capsule in other ways, offering a glimpse of life in antebellum North Carolina.

Occupying 1.75 acres donated in 1850, apparently by Joseph H. Norman, who is described in the National Historic Places evaluation as, “the owner of fifty slaves and was Washington County’s fourth largest slaveholder.”

There are no records indicating who built the church, although the evaluation suggests it was the enslaved people Norman owned who did the work.

“Local tradition has it that these slaves built the church,” the evaluation noted.

The church, because of its mostly original state, features details seen only in the oldest churches, such as its two doors — men entered on one side, women on the other.

The pews are original and are fitted with a separator between the male and female congregants’ seating.

The doors of the church face away from the highway.

“That road (N.C. Highway 32) wasn’t here when they built the church. The main road was there,” Barber said, pointing toward an open field.

Enslaved people were permitted to attend the church, but segregation was enforced. There was also a separate door for the enslaved families that opens to stairs leading to a balcony where the pews are narrower and not as well built, compared to the pews on the main floor.

The balcony itself is significantly angled toward a high balustrade. When looking into the chapel, only the pulpit and pastor would have been visible from here.

For Barber, the church’s importance extends beyond its architectural significance.

“This is the fourth church in a small area of this county,” she said, noting that the county’s first church was built about a mile and a half to 2 miles away. “That was South Shore Chapel, built somewhere between 1715 and 1733.”

The county’s second house of worship was Skinner’s Chapel, built, Barber writes in her book, probably because, “the first chapel … fell into disrepair.”

“No records have been found that give exact dates, but presumably, Skinner’s was built sometime in the mid-18th century,” she writes.

At the end of the 18th century, the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, who was instrumental in bringing the Anglican Church to North Carolina, became aware of Skinner’s Chapel and that the structure was no longer fit to be used.

“In his travels … Pettigrew saw that old Skinner’s Chapel was in poor condition and dangerous for continued use,” Barber noted.

Acting on Pettigrew’s advice, church leaders purchased an acre for a shilling, and “sometime in 1805 the new church (Swain’s Chapel) was completed.”

By the middle of the 19th century, Swain’s Chapel itself had fallen into disrepair and leaders decided to build a new church to higher standards than any of the previous churches. That church is now Rehoboth Methodist Church.

The history of the churches of Washington County reflects broader societal changes happening here during the 18th and 19th centuries, including growing intolerance.

That first south shore chapel was the result of the Vestry Act of 1715, which was in response to the growing influence of the Friend’s Society, or Quakers, in the region.

Writing about the influence of the Vestry Acts, the first was in 1701, the Nahunta Friends Church in Pikeville noted that, “With the planting of the Church of England and the Vestry Acts of 1701 and 1715, religious tolerance was no longer practiced and problems for Friends increased.”

Pettigrew was an Anglican deacon and minister, but after the American Revolution the Anglican Church was in decline. The Protestant faith, including the Methodist Church, based on the reformist drive of John Wesley in England, took root here.

It is unclear whether the third church here, Swain’s Chapel, began as an Anglican or Methodist church, but by the time Rehoboth was completed, the congregation was Methodist.

For perhaps the first 50 or 60 years of its existence, the Rehoboth Methodist Church thrived, but over time, the primitive, sparse nature of the church may have been behind the loss of parishioners to more modern houses of worship.

“They had wooden heat originally,” Barber said. “Probably by the mid-20th century, or just before, they put in kerosene heaters.”

The church did not have electricity until 1965. There is still no indoor plumbing.

“It was like living in the 18th or 19th century when you came to church,” Barber said.

By 1970, the church was no longer listed as part of the United Methodist Church. Today, there’s no congregation, but the church is available for special events by contacting the preservation society.

The Perquimans River is a narrow, twisting coastal river that never leaves Perquimans County.

It’s rarely more than 50 or 60 feet wide until it suddenly opens up just upriver from Hertford, the county seat. As it passes Durants Neck a little more than a mile south of the town, the river becomes a broad estuarine waterway offering a direct route to the Albemarle Sound.

County Manager Frank Heath stood recently on the edge of a wide, bulkheaded boat basin telling Coastal Review about the Perquimans County Marine Industrial Park that, after more than 10 years of false starts and missed steps, finally completed the first phase of the project last year: The $7 million deep-water boat basin now allows direct water access to the Albemarle sound.

“It’s 350 feet wide, more than a football field in width, and it goes inland 700 feet,” he said. “We do have such spectacular water resources, to me, it makes sense that we start with this.”

For some time, there have been calls to develop the county’s water access. More than 65 years ago in 1958, in celebration of the bicentennial of the founding of Hertford, W.G. Newby compiled “Town of Hertford Bi-Centennial” note, among other historic facts, “One of the very important contributing factors in the growth of a town is transportation. We have here … a great and beautiful river, the Perquimans.”

The author went on to note that by 1958 the river “is only used by a fleet of oil tankers that supply oil of home, U.S. Navy and other uses. However, it could be put to work of industry and we hope some day that this will come to pass.”

The basin, Heath explained, is phase one and it took a while to complete that first step in developing the county’s waterfront for commercial use.

“We spent quite a bit of energy getting the grants for phase one,” he said.

Getting the first phase completed, began Heath said, “12 or 13 years ago” when North Carolina identified Hertford as a secondary marine resource when the Wanchese Marine Industrial Park ran out of space.

It was, Heath explained, a much-needed economic lifeline for the county.

“The textile industry left in the 1980s and ’90s, we had several good-sized factories, those shut down,” he said. “We have an agricultural-based economy, which is very important, and we want that to continue to thrive, but we also want other industries to come in.”

Originally a state project, as plans moved forward, it became apparent that the state was not in position for the grants needed to build the marina project.

“What they found as … a state entity, they weren’t eligible for state grants, like the county would be. So, they transferred the ownership back to the county, and in the past, say, four years, we have been piecing funds together to get this done,” Heath said.

The county’s plan for the marina targets companies that need water access for large scale construction projects as likely tenants for the marina.

“There are builders from this area and outside the region, we’ve talked to companies that are looking to reshore back (return manufacturing) into United States,” Heath said.

At least one company has moved from Hampton Roads to Hertford. East Coast Steel Fabrication, a company providing heavy steel fabrication for barges and marine structures, is located immediately adjacent to the basin, although it is not part of the marina.

Heath mentioned there have been contacts with potential customers for the marina, although any announcement remains months in the future.

“I would think by the beginning of next year, we would have some news, if not sooner,” he said. “I’d love to have something before the end of the year.”

There is still work to be done.

There is not yet a road to the basin. Heath mentions the county is working with the North Carolina Department of Transportation on getting a road built.

“I’ve worked in cooperation with NCDOT. They’ve helped me do cost estimates and preliminary drawings, and I included that in requests that I’ve sent to the General Assembly to try to get funded through a budget process,” Heath said, adding that the budget impasse in the state legislature this session has stalled funding.

As a short-term solution, the county does have the funds to put in a gravel road something Heath said would be done in the next three months.

Phase two of the project will include a substantial extension of the boat basin, although Heath is careful to not get ahead of himself.

“We spent quite a bit of energy getting the grants for phase one. For grants for phase two to open up, getting the current basin leased out, is going to be important, because it proves the case itself. So, my primary goal now is to market to potential companies that need that kind of access,” he said.

Perquimans County is not considered an economically distressed county by North Carolina. The state uses a three-tier rating system, with Tier 1 being the most distressed and counties with a rating of 3 having the healthiest economies.

Perquimans County falls squarely in the Tier 2 category, but at least part of that economic health is created by workers who don’t work in the county.

“Our goal is to create jobs here in Perquimans County,” Heath said. “We have a lot of people that go to Hampton Roads to work, and we’d like to give them a place at home to work.”

That would, he noted, be more convenient for the workers, but there is more to it than that. Workers employed in the county also spend money in the county.

“They could buy gas here, they could buy lunch here. You’re going to stop by the grocery store and stop by the hardware or the auto place where you work,” Heath said. “We want to recapture that leakage.”

Meg Puckett, herd manager for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, was clearly shaken last weekend following the death of Bullwinkle, a 10-year-old stallion struck by the driver of a side-by-side utility vehicle.

Bystanders saw it happen just before midnight Friday on the Carova Beach and alerted law enforcement. The horse had to be euthanized because of the extent of his injuries.

“It is just unimaginable. It’s just hard to wrap your head around,” Puckett said.

The Currituck County Sheriff’s Department said it arrested Porter Williamson, 57, of Chesapeake, Virginia, who was charged with resisting, delaying and obstructing law enforcement. He was placed under a $10,000 bond. The other occupant of the vehicle, Rhonda Williamson, 62, was also charged and received a $5,000 bond for providing false information to law enforcement.

According to a report from the sheriff’s office, deputies received information that the driver had left the scene. Witnesses described the driver, what he was wearing, and the direction he had headed on foot.

During the process of towing the vehicle, a deputy saw Porter who again fled the scene. The deputy ran after Porter and caught him.

Bullwinkle was able to walk away from the accident, Puckett told Coastal Review. He was able to cross the dune where she found him.

“He got himself up over the dune and was tucked back in a little swale when we got there very early Saturday morning. We walked up over the dune and looked down and saw him standing there,” she said. “I had to stop and just collect myself.”

Bullwinkle was still alive, but his injuries were significant. According to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, he had sustained skin trauma over the right side and back; a broken right hind leg with fracture of the lower femur; left hind trauma and lateral destabilization of the hock with collateral ligament injuries, allowing the leg to bow outwards; and evidence of significant internal trauma and blood within the abdomen.

The sheriff’s office reports do not indicate how fast the vehicle was traveling at the time. Puckett points out, though, that even though a UTV is a small vehicle, the force of the impact suggests a high rate of speed.

“He hit on the one side that broke the (left) leg, and then we think the force at which he hit spun the horse around so quickly and so violently that it tore all of the ligaments and tendons on the other back leg,” she said.

Earlier in the week Bullwinkle had been recorded on video challenging another stallion, hoping to take his mares. Although unsuccessful, that behavior is an important part of wild horse behavior, and for Puckett, that makes what happened even more tragic.

“It’s devastating to see a stallion that you saw 24 hours earlier in the prime of his life, fighting, and then 24 hours later to see him standing there like that,” Puckett said.

“Even at the very end, he was still fighting,” Puckett added.

As a stallion in the prime of his life, Bullwinkle represented the future of the Corolla herd.

“Those are the genes that he would pass down,” Puckett said. “The personality traits and all of that — survival of the fittest. We didn’t just lose one horse in a tragic accident. We lost every single foal that horse would have ever started.”

The arrest serves as an important example, she noted.

“Hopefully the next person who decides to drive recklessly in the middle of the night will think about it before they do it,” Puckett said.

Puckett thanked those who helped after the accident.

“Our community rallied Friday night and Saturday,” Puckett said “I had someone help our vet get over across the water (Currituck Sound) in a boat, to avoid traffic.”

The vote to prohibit balloon releases within Dare County’s unincorporated areas was anticlimactic when its commissioners unanimously voted last week to support the ban.

Southern Shores resident Debbie Swick, the force behind the ban, addressed the board before they took up the vote.

When Swick began, she pointed to a large, opaque trash bag filled with pieces of balloons propped against the front of the speaker’s podium.

“This bag was collected by five of us over six months. Just five people (and) there’s several hundred balloons in there,” she said. “The National Park Service last year picked up 1,786 balloons along our 70-mile stretch of coastline.”

Now that the rule is in place, it is illegal to release balloons anywhere along the Outer Banks shoreline, from Duck to Hatteras Village.

The county joins its incorporated towns of Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head in banning balloon releases. Manteo, which is on Roanoke Island, has yet to prohibited releasing balloons, but the town is in Swick’s sights.

Dare County towns are not the only beach towns in the state that have banned releasing balloons. Similar ordinances are in effect in Wrightsville Beach, Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach and Surf City. Ten states have also banned balloon releases.

For Swick, a member of Network for Endangered Sea Turtles, or N.E.S.T., based on the Outer Banks, and Outer Banks Marine Mammal Stranding Network, banning balloons has become a crusade, and she has created Ban Balloon Release NC to accomplish her goal.

Although she is a one-person movement now, she said that may change over time. 

“I will probably just plug along until I can’t do it by myself and then start looking for more people,” she told Coastal Review.

Coastal North Carolina is just a small part of the problem, she noted.

“You release (the balloon), it’s unretrievable, and it’s going to drift upwards of 1,300 miles from where you release it,” she said, adding the state’s beaches are an ideal location to get the word out about the dangers of balloons in the environment.

“Millions of visitors come from places like Ohio and Kansas and Indiana and Pennsylvania. Balloon releases in their states impact our wildlife and our coastline. So, I’m going to use every opportunity I can to get the word out and educate them,” she said.

Her fears for wildlife are based in science. One of Swick’s arguments for banning balloon releases is that the balloons do not break down in the environment.

Mylar, which is a polyester, can take hundreds of years to completely break down in the environment. Even latex balloons that are marketed as biodegradable take five years or longer to decompose. The strings used hold balloons in place until they are released are generally not biodegradable.

Balloons in the water look similar to the marine life that are part of whales’ diets. Once in the digestive tract, the balloons are not digested and can cause blockages and death.

Education, understanding are key

Keith Rittmaster, natural sciences curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, has been responding to reports of dead and dying whales for a number of years, and he has witnessed firsthand the impact balloons have on marine life.

A Gervais beaked whale that beached off Emerald Isle in 2023 was, to Rittmaster, particularly sad.

“(It was) a nursing calf that had no food in the stomach. No squid parts or fish parts. They had mother’s milk,” he said. “This balloon was blocking the entrance to the stomach so no milk could pass. I had to use my imagination to figure out what was going on. I can’t imagine it was anything but this was the first bite that this whale took.”

Whales are not the only marine species affected by the balloons that have landed at sea. Seabirds and sea turtles regularly become entangled in the lines and sea turtles, like whales, will try to eat the balloons.

Rittmaster, whose area of expertise is marine mammals, said that researchers are seeing an unexplained phenomenon regarding whales.

“What we’re learning, which is kind of an ‘oh, wow!’ to me is, we’re finding more plastic balloons all the time in deep-diving whales rather than shallow-diving whales,” he said.

He then sounded a cautionary note about the problem’s pervasiveness.

“It’s going to get worse even if we ended it today,” he said. “If, for some miracle, we could end the releasing of balloons today — I feel pretty confident since these plastics last hundreds of years — this problem is going to continue to get worse, not just the balloons themselves, but the plastic and nylon strings that they are tied to.”

Like Swick, Rittmaster is resolute in calling for action.

“There’s a lot of things that are terrifying us that we can’t even conceive how to solve in generations. This is something we can solve,” he said.

The challenge is often frustrating.

After the city of Greenville voted 4-3 in the fall of 2023 against an ordinance that would ban balloon releases, Rittmaster led some workshops about what happens when a balloon is released.

“A politician was there,” he recalled. “And I gave the presentation and she said, ‘Can we just release the balloons inland but not release them along the coast?’ This isn’t a bad person. She doesn’t really understand, and that highlighted to me what we’re up against.”

Swick believes education is the key, and with that knowledge will come a better understanding of the world around us and perhaps a hope for future generations.

“This is just such small potatoes, so it gets pushed on the back burner…This is one of those things, it’s not going to go away until we decide to make a change,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of educating but my hope is that the generations of children that are coming up, (that they) learn a valuable lesson and take that with them as they grow into adulthood and raise children.”

MANTEO — A two-day program held here last week brought together researchers who study the Indigenous people of the late 16th century who lived in what is now northeastern North Carolina.

Held on the College of The Albemarle Dare County Campus, the two-day program, “In the Spirit of Wingina … and beyond,” was sponsored by the nonprofit Secotan Alliance and focused on what happened when the English first encountered the Native peoples of the Albemarle region.

The event’s keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Oberg, distinguished professor of history at the University of New York at Geneseo, is the author of “The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand,” which details the events leading to the death of King or Chief Wingina of the Roanoac.

Wingina was among those to first greet English captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe. In their account, the explorers reported to Queen Elizabeth I that “The king is called Wingina, the countrey Wingandacoa.”

The captains’ account makes clear that Wingina was initially friendly to the English.

“Hee made all signes of joy and welcome, striking on his head and his breast and afterwardes on ours to shew wee were all one, smiling and making shewe the best he could of al love, and familiaritie,” the explorers wrote.

By the time of the second English expedition, however, under the military command of Ralph Lane, European disease had begun to ravage the Native populations. Wingina was apparently becoming convinced that there was something spiritually out of balance in the lives of his people.

Oberg noted during his talk that the Roanoke were at the time part of the Algonkin, or Algonquin, people and that they operated, “on a belief that bad things happen for reasons often tied to the failure or the ineffectiveness of rituals or the malevolence of spiritually powerful figures.”

The Roanoac attempted prayer with the English, with Wingina and his people going to great lengths to change the horror of the diseases that were ravaging their villages.

“He (Wingina) and some of his people took the Bible, the most physical manifestation in English ritual … and rubbed the book on his body,” Oberg said.

Nothing worked and so the Native people withdrew from Roanoke Island, but before leaving, Wingina told Lane there was a gathering of tribes at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound that were planning on attacking and wiping out the English.

Lane headed to the village of Chowanoac, captured the chief, who under duress said that Wingina was the actual plotter.

Lane then returned to Wingina’s village where he requested a meeting over what he claimed was the theft of a silver cup.

On June 15, 1586, Lane and Wingina met.

“After some time talking, Lane yells out the password, ‘Christ our victor,” and they opened fire,” Oberg said of the incident.

Wounded, Wingina ran into the forest with English soldiers in pursuit. Sometime later “… Edward Nugent emerges from the woods with Wingina’s head.”

With that history of deception and violence on the part of the English, the failure of the Roanoke Colony and the 115 to 120 colonists who arrived in 1587 may have seemed preordained.

There were, however, other factors.

Studies of tree rings show that the colonists arrived during a time of extreme drought, when it was all the area Tribal nations could do to feed themselves.

There was also a diplomatic outreach from the governor of the colony, John White, following the killing of colonist George Howe at the hands of a tribal leader, Wanchese.

The attempted diplomacy ended disastrously, with White, who had failed to get what he wanted from the local tribe, attacking a village, where “he kills the wrong people,” Oberg noted.

“And, like all little men and cowards, blame the victims,” Oberg continued. “‘If only they told us they were there, we wouldn’t have killed them.’”

Oberg, who had attended opening night of the outdoor drama, “The Lost Colony,” on Roanoke Island on the night before his lecture, talked about how the drama interpreted historic events.

“If you went to the play, you’ve seen one version of (what happened). I’m certain I don’t know what happened,” he said. “Whatever happened, Indigenous people decided their fate.”

For the Native people, it was the beginning of a period of change that was traumatic and devastating.

Oberg emphasized that there is a tendency to think of the story of the founding of the United States as a seminal event, but to the Native people it may have simply been a continuation of what they had already been experiencing.

“Was it just one chapter in a prolonged era of warfare that ran from the middle of the 18th century through the first quarter of the 19th century, the replacement of one tyrant imperialist, George III, with another, George the First, Washington?” Oberg asked.

Symposium attendees also heard from Dr. Charles Ewen, East Carolina University Harriet College Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, who explained how few contemporaneous accounts exist and that those accounts are from a European perspective.

He pointed in particular to what the Native tribes described as a village that would be the modern equivalent of a “crossroad where there’s a 7-11 and a gas station.”

North Carolina Central University Dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Dr. Arwin Smallwood was reared in Bertie County and is a member of the North Carolina Tuscarora people. He focused on the history of the Tuscarora Nation and the relationship between North Carolina and New York stat,e where many of the Nation moved after the 1711-15 Tuscarora War.

Dr. Gabrielle Tayac shared a description of Powhatan’s Mantle, a decorative garment that has been in England since the middle of the 17th century. Now housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, it could be worn, although it is so large and heavy it was doubtful that it would have been.

Consisting of four hides sewn together with sinew and thousands of shells embedded in the fabric, the work that went into the piece is extraordinary, as is its artistry. As an example of the skill and creativity of the people of the coastal area, there may be nothing else quite like it.

Also included during the two-day event were the sounds of Native American song, dance and storytelling performed by solo performer IOSDN.

A recently closed land deal years in the making just added nearly 3,000 acres to the Gull Rock Game Lands in Hyde County.

On March 28, after almost two years of discussions and negotiations, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust purchased 2,926 acres — 4.57 square miles — of open marsh, pond pine woodlands and oak hammocks for $4.1 million from the Glenn R. Currin and Sue A. Currin Revocable Trusts.

After completing the sale, Coastal Land Trust officials immediately signed the property over to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

“We don’t want to hold those big properties that have a lot of management responsibility,” said North Carolina Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks. “We don’t have the equipment or the staff, but Wildlife does.”

The process was long and complicated, Marks noted, and it required considerable patience on the part of seller.

“I would say that anybody that goes with a conservation transaction has to have some interest in conservation … It is it is something that’s very difficult for many sellers,” he said.

Marks described a process that includes negotiation, surveys and research, but the most complex challenge was finding the money. He said multiple funding entities came into play, each with different requirements.

“So we’re getting a little bit here, a little bit there,” Marks said. “That’s what we do best, is piece together something for a very high-quality project.”

The Coastal Land Trust said earlier this month that the acquisition was made possible with support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, N.C. Land and Water Fund, Fred and Alice Stanback, and the Eddie and Jo Allison Smith Family Foundation Inc.

The addition to Gull Rock Game Land is about 15 miles west of Swan Quarter. While the new parcel does not border the current boundaries of Gull Rock, it will still be considered part of the Gull Rock Game Land complex. The site is primarily marsh and is bordered by Spencer Bay, Germantown Bay and Rose Bay.

Although much of the property is only accessible by boat, an access road leads to a clubhouse at Willow Point that looks across Pamlico Sound to the mouth of the Pamlico River. The most prominent feature, however, is the 215-acre impoundment.

The impoundment, Marks said, was particularly important to the Wildlife Resources Commission.

“That was a big reason why the Wildlife Commission was interested in being the key holders,” he said, adding that an impoundment allows for management of aquatic plants that are favorable to waterfowl and shorebirds.

At this time of the year, the impoundment has little water, with only small pools and extensive mudflats, but shorebirds fill the mudflats and wade through the shallows. The drawdown of the water is part of the commission’s management practices, explained N.C. Wildlife Commission Coastal Plain EcoRegion Supervisor Nick Shaver.

“That is really valuable habitat to a whole suite of wading birds and shorebirds. We see that in all of the impoundments that we manage that way,” Shaver said. “Once the waterfowl migrate north, we begin to pull those water levels down.”

There is considerable work yet to be done on the property. A diesel-powered generator at one time ran the pump for the impoundment, but that pump is part of an aging infrastructure that will have to be replaced.

“It is quite aged and probably at the end of its useful lifespan,” Shaver said about the pump. “We have brought a tractor and a different pump out there to try to continue to get the last bit of water off of there.”

Wildlife Resources seeks to tap money available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to upgrade the impoundment dike and pumps.

“The Inflation Reduction Act had some allowances for the Wildlife Commission to combat some climate change and sea level rise effects that we’re seeing at places like Spencer Bay and Willow Point. We are applying for that money this summer,” Shaver said.

For an impoundment in a marshland like Gull Rock, the rising waters of Pamlico Sound have had dramatic effects on managing habitat.

“When that place was built, you could just open up the gates and it would drain on its own with gravity. That is no longer the case. It has to be actively pumped out,” Shaver explained.

And, Shaver added, the impoundment is not only the new addition to Gull Rock where steadily rising waters have affected management.

“In Pamlico County (impoundments) are similar in that they’re way out in the sound, with no protection around them and virtually at sea level. We’re seeing the same effects there,” he said. “It’s happened in a very short amount of time. Those impoundments were built in the 1960s.”

The impoundment area will not be available to hunters this year. A better pumping system and a higher dike are only part of the needed infrastructure work. Duck blinds in the impoundment cannot be used in their current condition.

Also, Shaver noted, when a property is added to state game lands, the commission must adopt new rules.

“It takes us a year to put a rule in place to manage these properties. One of our goals is to create not only high-quality waterfowl habitat, but (also) a high-quality waterfowl hunt on the impoundment,” he said.

Although the addition to Gull Rock represents a substantial increase in game lands available for hunters and sportsmen, for Shaver the acquisition represents more. To him, it’s a legacy for the public.

“Land acquisition is certainly one of those hallmarks in your career that you can look back on and say, ‘We were able to preserve a piece of property for the public.’ Everybody benefits, from the species and habitat to the public that gets to use it forever,” he said.

Since 2013 Steve and Sally Gudas have been organizing and hosting a Flat Top Cottage tour in Southern Shores, giving people a chance to see and experience, if for a brief time, an iconic part of Outer Banks architectural history.

This year, that tour was Saturday, and more than 1,000 came out — a record attendance, the Gudases said. It was 1,013 to be exact, compared to 2022, “when we had 722,” Sally Gudas told Coastal Review Wednesday.

Built over a 15-year span beginning in the late 1940s, the houses were simple structures. Designed for a summer vacation, the homes were concrete block construction. There was no foundation really, just a concrete floor on sand. And there was no insulation.

“When, we come in here when it’s cold, it takes one full day to get it warm, including the fireplace. Thank God for that,” Steve Gudas said Sunday, having been too busy to chat during the tour.

The houses were designed by Frank Stick, an artist, real estate developer and, to many, a visionary with a knack for self-promotion. In 1946, Stick had just purchased the 2,600 acres that now comprise Southern Shores, and he had the idea that to sell each lot and home for one flat price.

But to do that, he needed something that was easy to build and used as much locally sourced material as he could get his hands on. The sand came from Outer Banks beaches, until the federal government made that illegal in 1955. The structural beams, the cabinets — any interior wood — were all juniper, which at the time was readily available and the cheapest wood to be had.

Frank Stick also, as his son, David, wrote, “… introduced a completely new cottage style for the Outer Banks … What he came up with was flat-top structures of varying sizes and shapes, using concrete blocks as the primary building material.”

Related: Frank Stick finds success, designs signature Banks cottage

Tours of the homes were held this past weekend and revealed just how varied the flat-top design could be, and how the structures – each uniquely named – evolved over the decades.

Sea Breezes, built in 1956, was originally a duplex, but the common wall was removed some time after it was built, and a sliding pocket wall was put into place. This modification allowed the house to be used as either two, two-bedroom cottages or a single, four-bedroom home.

Pink Perfection, built in 1952, is a rambling four-bedroom Flat Top. Unlike almost all of other Flat Tops, it was neither designed nor built by Frank Stick.

Aside from the obvious design element, there are among the Flat Tops several similarities. Among them, in almost every house, the original juniper beams and trim have been retained. Outside, almost all have wide soffits.

Very few are still in the original owners’ hands. Ashbel Falconer is an exception. The Falconer Cottage his parents purchased in 1955 when he was 4 is situated on a side street, atop a low rise that, at one time, had an unobstructed view of the ocean. Not anymore. Live oaks and other houses block that view now.

“The only thing that was here was sea oats and sand spurs,” Falconer told Coastal Review recently. “It was all sand.”

The tidy homes are a labor of love for the owners, as Falconer noted with a laugh.

“They are maintenance hogs.”

Steve Gudas shares that sentiment. “When you own it, you’re just invested in it,” he said.

Preserving a legacy

Matt Neal, owner of Neal Contracting of Kitty Hawk, has been in love with Flat Tops since his family lived in one when he was a child.

“In the late ’80s, early ’90s, we lived in one for a period of time in Kill Devil Hills, and so it’s always been a childhood memory of mine,” Neal said recently.

He now owns a Flat Top built in the 1950s in Southern Shores, although he describes it as “full-flat roof —  a low, sloped, single shed-style roof.”

His experience in restoring reflected the challenges other owners know from simply maintaining one. “It’s a challenge,” Neal said.

“It was fun in a way,” he said.

“I would take juniper out of the interior closets and use it to refurbish the cabinets. And I had to take the juniper off the wall in the bathroom to update the wiring and then put it back,” Neal explained. “That house had a slab (floor) that had no vapor barrier. We were able to get the old linoleum up, put a vapor barrier on top of the slab (and) put cork flooring down and keep … original doors and hardware. And it still has the original windows.”

The homes are also vanishing. While unclear how many there were originally, some estimate as many as 300, Sally Gudas told Coastal Review that number seems high.

“I don’t think it’s 300,” she said. “I’ve been asked that question. I just really don’t know. But I am working on it.”

She has a reasonable guess as to how many are still standing in Southern Shores.

“I think we’ve identified 25,” she said.

There are attempts to preserve the structures. The town of Southern Shores created a Historic Landmarks Commission that evaluates homes more than 50 years old. If a house meets the criteria, property owners get a reduction in their town property tax.

To date, there have been five Flat Tops added to the program, although additional property owners have submitted applications.

Tax incentives alone, however, are not enough to save the buildings. With property values in the millions along the oceanfront, the economics of preservation may not add up when a property is passed to two or three sibling heirs.

There is increasing concern that the Flat Top legacy will be lost.

Architect Chris Nason of the Kill Devil Hills-based Beacon Architecture and Design is a Southern Shores resident who has for the past seven or eight years been documenting Flat Tops in town.

“It was just a first impulse,” he told Coastal Review. “So we’ve got this moment in time. Let’s just measure it, take pictures.”

Initially Nason wasn’t sure what he would do with his documentation, but since he began the project, it has become a historic record and teaching tool for his interns.

“It was a good learning experience for them. You can learn to take measurements on a small house. It’s a perfect learning experience,” Nason said.

As an architect, Nason would like to see as many of the houses saved as possible, but he acknowledged that it can’t always happen.

“I am both realistic and aspirational about encouraging folks to keep them,” he said. “These things don’t meet any codes. They’re oftentimes too low. They don’t meet the flood zone. There’s all sorts of reasons not to keep them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try, and where we can’t keep it, it’s great to come back with something that is inspired by what was there,” he said.

To date, Nason has measured and created elevations for 34 homes, many of them no longer exist. He has created a website documenting his work, and is hoping more can be done with it.

“Eventually our goal is to do a book on it and put these plans in a book and do some photography with it. That’s still in the works,” he said.

Neal, in addition to restoring the home he owns, is also working to preserve the legacy and has built three homes based on the Flat Top design.

He characterizes the concept as Usonian, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright term to describe a single-story, flat-roofed home with wide eaves using as many locally sourced building materials as possible.

Building a home for the 21st century meant taking the original concept and bringing it to modern standards and efficiency.

“It’s always astonishing to me what people were willing to accept back then, but they’re not willing to accept it this time,” he said. “But it works. I’s very functional and very utilitarian. It’s a throwback to the quietness in sort of a more out-there living of the Outer Banks.”

Post has been updated.

Reprinted from Outer Banks Voice

As the Coastal Resources Commission and North Carolina Rules Review Commission head to court over regulatory language for coastal development and use, Jockey’s Ridge State Park is in danger of losing its Area of Environmental Concern protections.

The Area of Environmental Concern, or AEC, protections, among other things, prohibit removing sand that has migrated off the dune and allows the state to periodically move that sand back within park boundaries. The AEC also has provisions prohibiting some types of development in close proximity to the park.

There is increasing frustration with the rulings of the Rules Review Commission about what would constitute acceptable language for AEC protection.

Coastal Resources Commission is scheduled to hear an update Thursday during its meeting in Manteo on the Rules Revision Commission’s April 8 objection and hold a discussion in closed session.

Related: CRC to consider variances, hear rulemaking update

The Rules Review Commission determines the language that is used by regulatory agencies. It has ruled that some 30 regulations that govern how the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, operates are vague, imprecise or inconsistent with its mandate. Those rules have been removed, including the AEC protections for Jockey’s Ridge.

The Coastal Resources Commission attempted to create temporary rules for the Jockey’s Ridge AEC in March, but the Rules Review Commission rejected those rules earlier this month, using the word “unique” 16 times in the five paragraphs written rejecting the AEC rule.

Although there were other descriptions and language the Rules Review Commission rejected, the word unique was associated with almost every objection.

Rules Review Commission counsel Brian Liebman wrote in part that the Coastal Resources Commission “does not define what degree of exclusivity transforms an ordinary geologic formation into a ‘unique’ geologic formation and does not define the coastal area in which these formations must be found.”

The North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation describes Jockey’s Ridge as “an excellent example of a medano, a large, isolated hill of sand, asymmetrical in profile and lacking vegetation.”

Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon pointed out that there is nothing else like Jockey’s Ridge on the East Coast of the United States, and by that definition, it is unique.

“Jockey’s Ridge, as far as I know on the East Coast of the United States is unique…How many words do you want to use? There’s not another one like it. And it is in fact unique,” he said.

Speaking for herself, former Nags Head Commissioner and Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon, also voiced frustration.

“It’s just mind-boggling that all of a sudden, there’s verbiage use that’s not acceptable to a new Rules Review Commission that has been accepted for every 10 years by previous Rules Review Commissions and that were accepted by the initial Rules Review Commission when we made the rules,” she said.

The Coastal Resources and Rules Review commissions are currently in court over the wording that can be used in rulemaking. The Coastal Resources Commission is responsible for writing the language that is used in its regulations. The Rules Review Commission determines if the language is sufficiently clear and not open to interpretation.

“Because this matter is pending litigation, we are unable to comment,” Nazneen Ahmed, Press Secretary for Attorney General Josh Stein, wrote in an email to the Outer Banks Voice.

An attempt by the Coastal Resources Commission to put into effect temporary rules consistent with what had been in use for some time, was disallowed by the Rules Review Commission.

For Mayor Ben Cahoon, it leaves the town of Nags Head in a difficult position. The town, he said, will do all it can to support and protect Jockey’s Ridge, but there is a real limit to what a municipality can do.

“We’ll do what little bit it can do by ordinance…in the interim, until it’s all resolved,” he said. “But I see at some point, as frustrating as it is, we have to realize it’s out of our hands until either these two agencies come to agreement or the court or the legislature weighs in somehow.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Getting to what remains of Buffalo City on the Dare County mainland isn’t easy.

Walking to the site where there’s not much left but is surprisingly intact, requires hip boots at least, though waders are a better choice, and being in reasonable physical condition since it’s a little bit more than a mile hike — or slosh — through what is truly trackless swamp.

It’s a good idea to go with someone who knows where they’re going, too, and, for good measure, go on a cool or cold day. Water moccasins are prolific in the swamp and there’s a reason the area is called Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge.

Related: As timber declined, Buffalo City loggers made ’shine

Buffalo City gained notoriety for its moonshine production during Prohibition, but there’s more to the now-abandoned town’s story than just logging and liquor. The remnants of two buildings where the mill town once stood are extant evidence of a wildly expensive insurance company fraud case during the 1910s.

Bill Barber of Columbia, in Tyrrell County, is the guide, leading this reporter to what remains of Buffalo City. He’s a retired forester with 40 years of experience, most of his career with Weyerhaeuser.

“I had several hundred thousand acres of land that was under my management,” he said, referring to his time with Weyerhaeuser. “I thoroughly enjoyed my career with them.”

No longer working in forestry, he has since had a chance to follow up on stories he had been told for years. Barber told Coastal Review that his mother had family who lived in East Lake and Buffalo City.

“There’s a lot of legends and a lot of lore about what went on at Buffalo City,” he said. “When I retired, I thought I just need to check into this, to really figure out what the story is. So, I started doing research on it.”

With about seven years’ worth of research behind him, Barber has published three books on the history of the lumber industry in northeastern North Carolina.

“Timber, Land & Railroads: A History of the John L. Roper Lumber Company” is an account of the timber boom following the Civil War; “Tyrrell Timber: A History of the Branning Manufacturing Company and Richmond Cedar Works” chronicles timbering operation in Tyrrell County; and “Buffalo City and the Blount Patent: A History of Logging the Dare Mainland” is history of land use by entrepreneurs and speculators on mainland Dare County.

With Barber leading, we come out of the swamp onto what passes for high ground.

There are the remnants of a substantial concrete building. A series of blocks rest on top of a solid concrete base with metal bolts still anchored to the concrete.

About 50 yards past that is what remains of a brick building. Vines grow up its sides and trees have taken root in what was once the floor.

The brick building was at one time a pulp mill and the concrete building was once a coal-fired generator that powered the mill. The only visible remnants of Buffalo City, they appear incongruous in the setting.

What was once a thriving, if small, lumbering town has vanished.

A map drawn from memory by one-time resident Jesse Basnight depicts about 35 homes, a post office, country store and hotel. The 1910 census records 548 residents in East Lake Township. It is possible some workers were missed if they were in a lumbering camp, but it’s doubtful if there were ever more than 600 people living there.

Every building in the town was wooden and as the town died, Barber said, people took the wood with them. What wasn’t taken, has been swallowed by the swamp. Except for the generating plant and pulp mill, there is almost no evidence it ever existed.

It’s doubtful if Buffalo City would have survived no matter what. It was becoming harder to find good quality trees to harvest immediately after the first World War, then the country went into a recession.

The recession “was very severe and lasted a long time for the lumber industry … over 18 months, and it put a lot of people out of business,” Barber told Coastal Review. “Then by 1920, there was a lot of lumber coming in from the Pacific Northwest … because of the improvements in the railroad.”

By June 1920, the proceeds of the Dare Lumber Co., the company that owned the timber rights to the land, were being sold off. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. bought everything for $900,000.

The reason an insurance company paid the equivalent of $14.7 million in modern dollars for 167,000 acres of swamp is the final, unseemly chapter in the story of what really happened to Buffalo City.

In 1912 there were two lumbering companies operating on the Dare County mainland: East Lake Lumber and Dare Lumber Co. With quality timber getting harder to find, both were ready to get out of the business and agreed to a joint sale of the companies to single buyer.

What would become one of the largest life insurance company scams in U.S. history began with George Montgomery of Jacksonville, Florida, who offered to purchase the companies on what was known as an operating contract. Under the proposed deal, Montgomery would manage the companies and, over time, purchase them using the proceeds.

The offer was rejected.

Undaunted, Montgomery offered a New York City apartment building as collateral and some cash — also rejected.

He then moved to New York City and partnered with New York attorney Clarence Birdseye in a scheme that would shake the insurance industry.

Montgomery had been buying shares of Dare Lumber and “On March 26, 1917, George Montgomery bought enough shares of Dare Lumber Company to gain control of the company,” Barber wrote in “Buffalo City and the Blount Patent.”

Now in control of the company, Montgomery and Birdseye immediately turned to also buy East Lake Lumber Co. The combined holdings of the two lumber companies were more than 167,000 acres and covered all of mainland Dare County.

The price for the two companies was $1.1 million. Then on March 28, 1917, Montgomery and Birdseye issued 600 $1,000 bonds — six times the value of what had been paid for Dare Lumber.

March 28, 1917, was an active day for the partners. That was the day they convinced the board of directors of the Pittsburgh Life Insurance and Trust Co. to sell them the company, offering them a price of $80 per share, $15 to $25 more than the going rate.

The agreement was that the board would receive $10 per share upon acceptance of the offer with the balance to be paid later.

The board agreed to the terms and the partners went to a friendly bank, Commercial Trust of New York, where they were given a $120,000 collateral-free loan. The money was deposited in a Pittsburgh bank, the board was paid off, and a new board was installed composed of Montgomery and Birdseye cronies.

What followed was the quick theft of the $24 million, or around $582 million today, in Pittsburgh Life assets with the proceeds deposited with Commercial Trust. There was $379,000 in cash reserves that went to the Commercial Trust account. The Pittsburgh Life board sold the Washington Life Building that the company owned in New York City for almost $4 million. Although Dare Lumber Co. had been purchased for only $1.1 million earlier in the year, the Pittsburgh Life board accepted a $3 million mortgage on the property.

It was during this time the generating site and pulp mill were built at Buffalo City. Barber noted when looking at the ruins that the partners needed to show something tangible, that there was at least some investment in their properties.

“The problem was keeping both Dare Lumber and Pittsburgh Life solvent for long enough to avoid scrutiny of financial regulators,” Barber wrote in his book.

But the stripping of Pittsburgh Life’s assets was so rapacious and swift that in less than two months the company was insolvent and forced to declare bankruptcy.

Financial regulators reacted quickly with investigations into Birdseye and Montgomery making national news. Referencing the reports, New York City District Attorney Edward Swann planned to investigate what happened, according to the May 3, 1917, New York Tribune story with the headline, “Swann Probes Purchase of Insurance Company.”

The reporting included a statement from Jesse Phillips, superintendent of the New York Insurance Department, describing what his department had found.

“No funds were used for the purchase of the capital stock of the company or for the acquisition of the lumber company except what was the assets of the lumber company,” Phillips told the paper.

It took almost two years for the case to go to trial, but according to a Nov. 22, 1919, New York Times article, the Nov. 21 jury reached guilty verdicts.

“Clarence F. Birdseye, Kellogg Birdseye (Clarence Birdseye’s son) and George F. Montgomery, all of New York, who were placed on trial in criminal court before Judge Ambrose B. Reid on Nov. 10, charged with conspiring to defraud the stockholders and policy holders of the Pittsburgh Life and Trust, and with wrecking that organization, were found guilty as indicted today,” the Times reported.

Metropolitan Life’s purchase of the land and everything else Birdseye and Montgomery had owned, including a sawmill in Elizabeth City, may have been as much self-preservation as it was investment strategy. Pittsburgh Life at that time was one of the largest life insurance companies in the nation.

“MetLife bailed them out, just to keep the life insurance business alive,” Barber said.

For Buffalo City, the end was slow in coming but inevitable. Metropolitan Life sold Dare Lumber Co. to the Dare Corp. of Dover, Delaware, in January 1940. Dare Corp. had hoped to use lumbering as a way to finance developing farmland in the vast holding.

Much of mainland Dare is swamp and unsuitable for farming, and that disadvantage was compounded by a nonexistent transportation network. There were no roads connecting mainland Dare with the outside world in 1940.

“The lack of roads could only be remedied with a massive amount of capital investment dedicated to developing a basic infrastructure,” Barber wrote.

In May of 1954 the Coastland Times reported the final curtain for Buffalo City under the headline “Cedar Mill at Buffalo City Finishing Work.”

“The Buffalo Cedar Mill, which has been operating from Buffalo City since 1949, has about two weeks of work left before their operations will be completed,” the newspaper reported. “At that time, it is reported by C. C. Duvall, the company will move their operations to Lake Drummond in the Dismal Swamp … This takes away from Buffalo City the last of the big milling businesses.”

Featured Image

A mallard strikes a semaphore-like pose signaling the letter “R” as viewed over the weekend from the dike at the Roanoke Island Marshes Dedicated Nature Preserve. Covering almost 1,900 acres of marsh and wetlands, the preserve is possibly the least well-known of the protected natural areas on the Outer Banks. Although most of the preserve is impenetrable, a 1.3-mile trail along an impoundment is, at times, a birder’s delight. Photo: Kip Tabb

There was little doubt that North Carolina would vote to support the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.”

The state had been dry since 1908. The first Southern state to go dry.

It was the Volstead Act passed into law in 1919 that allowed enforcement of the amendment. The law was challenged in the courts, and on Jan. 5, 1920, when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling upholding the act, prohibitionists were overjoyed.

“Supreme Court’s Action Hailed as a Sweeping Victory,” exclaimed the headline in the Jan. 6 Wilmington Morning Star, with a subhead telling readers, “Dry Forces Jubilant at Upholding of Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Act.”

If the dry forces of the state saw Prohibition as the dawn of a new and healthier society for farmers and lumber workers in northeastern North Carolina, who often lived in remote and barely accessibly areas, Prohibition offered something entirely different.

It was for them, a government-sponsored golden parachute. The once seemingly inexhaustible supply of lumber had, in fact, been exhausted. In 1920, farm income was roughly equivalent to household incomes nationwide, but over the next decade and into the 1930s, as commodity prices fell and foreign competition became more robust, farm income lagged even further behind the rest of the country.

It’s unclear how much moonshine liquor was being distilled in northeastern North Carolina before the Volstead Act. Following a 1919 raid in Currituck County, W.O. Saunders, publisher of the Elizabeth City Independent wrote, “Prior to the inauguration of Bone-Dry prohibition the illicit manufacture of liquor in the Elizabeth City territory was unknown. The news in this paper last week telling of the capture of stills in Camden and Currituck counties came as a shock to the thousands who had a vague idea that ‘moonshining’ belonged to the mountain fastnesses of western North Carolina.”

The rare discovery of a still in these parts seems to have become more regular after the Volstead Act took effect, although it was not solely the Volstead Act that created the change.

Chris Barber, whose book “When Ghosts Made Moonshine: Prohibition in the Albemarle,” examines Prohibition in northeastern North Carolina, recently told Coastal Review about the factors involved and how the illegal practice may have started here.

“This was just making a little bit of money to feed their families originally,” she said. “There was a small depression following World War I when soldiers came back. So people needed to make money,” and Buffalo City, a logging town near East Lake in Dare County long since lost to the forest, “that was a remote location.”

Barber’s title was drawn from a 1931 New York Herald Tribune article, “A Ghost That Makes Booze,” by Ben Dixon MacNeill. The story was picked up by a number of papers including the Independent where the story ran with the headline, “Buffalo City Written up in N.Y. Newspaper.”

“The ghost makes liquor,” MacNeill writes. “Makes liquor with a prodigality and completeness that is without parallel anywhere else in this country, and liquor of an exceedingly high and desirable quality.”

By 1931, the East Lake area had become a thriving center of liquor production — mostly rye whiskey, but corn whiskey, as well.

Back in 1920, production had been small and distribution limited, although that would soon change. The federal government was unprepared to enforce the new law.

“The government provided funds for only 1,500 agents at first to enforce Prohibition across the country. They were issued guns and given access to vehicles, but many had little or no training,” the Mob Museum in Las Vegas notes on its Prohibition webpage.

Although there would eventually be more agents assigned to the area, when Robert Tuttle, the first federal Prohibition agent, arrived in Elizabeth City in February 1920, he was alone covering all of northeastern North Carolina. 

Even after more agents arrived, it remained clear how ill-prepared the government was.

“The government paid them poorly,” Barber said, referring to the work that needed to be done. Cars were not provided.

In order to raid a suspected site in Camden County that borders Elizabeth City, agents had to hire jitney drivers, the equivalent a taxi. When the they arrived at the location, “It was obvious that the people they were going to raid knew it,” Barber said.

What was happening in counties close by Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County was dwarfed by what was happening on the Dare County mainland.

In the 1920s, there were no roads in the East Lake District. The main connection with the outside world was a dock at Buffalo City on Milltail Creek. The area was a virtually impenetrable swamp and sparsely populated. The people who lived there were self-sufficient and tightknit, and they had one other advantage — a well-established connection to Elizabeth City, at that time a transportation hub.

In her 2019 Eastern Carolina University master’s thesis in marine archeology, Reconstructing Buffalo City (1887-1986), Sara Mackenzie Parkin, points to the remoteness of the location and a well-established transportation network as key to an explosive growth in bootleg whiskey production.

“The strategic advantage of their remote location coupled with the proximity of well-traveled trade routes lent itself well to the illegal manufacturing and sale of Buffalo City’s newest trade good,” she wrote.

Federal Prohibition agents were aware of East Lake and in June 1922, with the help of the Coast Guard, they made their first raid.

“By nine o’clock Saturday morning they captured two sixty-gallon corn whiskey plants and destroyed nine hundred gallons of mash at East Lake. They arrested no one,” Barber wrote in her book.

Less than a year later, they agents returned. Again they arrested no one, but Barber writes, “They discovered buildings and equipment. This was more than a still; it was a large, well-organized operation.”

The agents found a still capable, they estimated, of producing 100 gallons of whiskey a day and 7,500 gallons of beer in containers ready to be shipped.

A pattern was emerging. As more federal agents arrived in Elizabeth City working with county sheriffs, they were often able to surprise bootleggers at their stills in areas accessible by car.

“Local Sheriff Found Still Running,” announced the headline in the Sept. 22, 1922, edition of the Independent. The article goes on to report the arrest of “Bruce Burgess, Henry Hughes and a 19-year-old boy named Jones.”

But at East Lake, although the agents could often seize equipment, the men who possessed the knowledge and expertise required to make whiskey were never there.

“Part of the story is the underground network and spies and informants. So agents could rarely go to East Lake and surprise anybody. It was just not possible because (East Lake residents) already knew,” Barber said.

The spies were not always successful, though. To get to East Lake, federal agents had to rely on the Coast Guard for water transportation. The AB-21, the 65-foot-long boat the Coast Guard used to cross Albemarle Sound from Elizabeth City, had a top speed of 6.5 knots, or about 7.5 mph. Almost any motorboat would be able to get to East Lake before it did.

But in August 1927 the AB-21 left after dark and anchored off Durant Island off the north end of East Lake, waiting for daylight. The strategy paid off.

“Sudden Federal Raid at East Lake Brings in Men and Liquor” according to the Aug. 27, 1927, Elizabeth City Daily Advance headline.

In the two-day raid, agents were able to arrest three men and seize “distilling equipment and supplies valued at $33,000 to $36,000.” That would be $585,000 to $638,000 in today’s dollars.

It was apparent that what was happening on mainland Dare County was distinct from anything happening in other areas of northeastern North Carolina.

“Eastlake (and) Buffalo City, liquor became more of an industrial style production. They had bunkhouses left over from timber days,” Barber said. And sometimes, “they had generators and they ran stills around the clock.”

To sustain production on that level, there had to be a way to get the product to market and the product had to be good enough to create demand. East Lake whiskey, apparently, checked both boxes. From Elizabeth City north up the East Coast to New York City, East Lake whiskey was renowned.

“Its smoothness and quality allegedly drove up demand for the product,” Parkin wrote.

This distribution network’s success relied on the active collusion of law enforcement officials here and elsewhere.

The city manager of Norfolk, Virginia, I. Walk Truxton, had learned that honest city officials were seemingly being intimidated by dishonest police and bootleggers and in 1926 he took his suspicions to Prohibition Officer Leighton Blood.

Blood came up with the idea of opening a speakeasy in Norfolk, buying illegal booze from bootleggers there. His plan did snare some 22 people, according to Barber in her book, but the speakeasy was only phase one of the plan.

Agent David Mayne came from upstate New York and he was tasked with breaking up the distribution network. To do that he set up his own still and bootlegging operation at Pierceville in Camden County. Mayne, however, was working from the Virginia Prohibition office. North Carolina Prohibition officers did not know his still had been bought and paid for with federal funds or that it was producing whiskey as part of an ongoing investigation.

On Sept. 15, 1926, North Carolina agents raided the still.

As facts emerged of what the Prohibition agents had been doing, the public was outraged.

“Facts Support Startling Charges That Government Dry Agents Had Moonshine Still Near This City,” read the front-page Daily Advance headline on Jan. 14, 1927.

The outrage, though, was not confined to local papers. Rep. Fiorello Henry LaGuardia, the prominent New York Republican, brought the actions of the agents to the attention of Congress.

On Jan. 10, 1927, Sen. James Read of Missouri introduced a measure demanding that Internal Revenue Commissioner David H. Blair, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lincoln C. Andrews furnish to the Senate “copies of all orders and correspondence relative to the employment of what is known as undercover agents employed in the enforcement of the prohibition statutes.”

Included in Read’s resolution was an article in the Washington Star Ledger describing in detail the agents’ actions.

In Congress there was growing uncertainty about Prohibition. As early as 1924, Samuel Gompers, head of the powerful American Federation of Labor, sent a letter to Congress. Citing, “the lawless vender of forbidden liquor on the one side, and the lawless enforcement officer on the other, the public has suffered irreparable damage,” Gompers declared. He asked for a modification of the Volstead Act.

A 1931 congressional report showed the failure of Prohibition operations over the previous decade, concluding that, “The evidence before us tends to show a great increase in the number of stills and a universality of operating extending all over the country. The amount of moonshine liquor in this country per year can not be estimated within reasonable bounds.”

In late 1932, with newly elected Franklin Roosevelt about to be sworn in as president, Congress bowed to the inevitable. Both the Democratic and Republican party platforms called for the end of Prohibition. Support in Congress grew for a joint resolution to repeal the 18th Amendment, which the 21^st Amendment did the following year.

The future now looks brighter for a badly deteriorating structure that, despite its condition, remains an iconic symbol of mainland Hyde County’s heritage and a former gathering place for special events.

An event was held Feb. 13 and billed as the Mattamuskeet Lodge kickoff, a way to celebrate the $6.5 million in the 2024 North Carolina budget earmarked for the restoration of Lake Mattamuskeet Lodge.

The building was closed in 2000 when damage to its foundation was discovered during renovations. The foundation has subsequently been stabilized, and in 2020 the roof was repaired using many of the original clay terra cotta tiles.

After not being used for 24 years though, the interior is in need of restoration and there is landscaping and exterior work that also has to be addressed before the building can be used again.

The 2024 funding is an important first step and the path to get the money into the budget was difficult, Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, told an audience of around 200 gathered at the celebration.

“It’s been a long, hard road with a lot of ups and downs and some obstacles we never thought we would overcome,” Hanig said.

The total cost for renovating the lodge, according to a report issued by the Mattamuskeet Lodge Society, will be $14.4 million. The society is a nonprofit established to manage the lodge after work is completed.

The speaker’s podium was shared by the North Carolina Wildlife Commission Executive Director Cameron Ingram, Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, and Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Craven. Hyde County Manager County Manager Kris Noble and County Commission Chair Earl Pugh delivered personal remarks.

“We’ll be focused on this great land that surrounds us and the history that has been such a great part of all of our lives,” Noble said. “The lodge will once again be a center for events. We will once again host weddings. We will have proms and class reunions and other private events once again. As we breathe life back into the lodge, the lodge will also bring life back into our communities.”

Noble had earlier outlined for Coastal Review what she hoped the lodge will represent once renovations are completed and it reopens.

“One of the ultimate goals is to promote economic development. Mainland Hyde needs something like this, that will drive that economy,” she said.

Pugh, the county chair, described the lodge’s role in Hyde County during his remarks.

“Some of my memories here include proms, weddings, anniversaries, Ducks Unlimited banquets,” he said.

The lodge for many wildlife management students, including those from East Carolina University, was part of their college experience.

“I was in this building in 1992 as an ECU student in natural resource management,” Ingram said. “I didn’t know that I was going to eventually become a wildlife officer. But I knew that I wanted to serve public concern conservation in the state. So I was studying that here.”

Failed endeavor

Mattamuskeet Lodge was not originally a hunting lodge. It housed, when completed in 1915, what was purportedly the largest steam-powered pumping station in the world, capable of pumping a million gallons of water per minute. Its purpose was to drain Lake Mattamuskeet and turn the lakebed into fertile farmland. What is now an observation tower was originally the smokestack for the coal fires that fueled the steam.

In 1909, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Drainage Act, “an act to promote the public health, convenience and welfare by leveeing, ditching and draining the wet, swamp and overflowed lands of the state.”

The measure created drainage districts throughout North Carolina, the most extensive of them was Lake Mattamuskeet. The rights to the lakebed were sold to the Southern Land Reclamation Co. for $100,000, with the proceeds going the state Board of Education.

The plan for the lake was based on a Dutch model, Farmer and Mechanic reported in November of 1914.

“In Holland the Haarlem Lake was drained by the government. This lake was not so large as Mattamuskeet and yet today 16,000 people live in this old lakebed and it is one of the most fertile and prosperous districts in Holland,” reporter R.R. Cotton wrote.

By 1918 the lake was pumped dry and the land was being sold to farmers.

The land was as fertile as advertised, but the cost of keeping the lakebed dry was becoming ever more expensive. By 1924 North Carolina Farms, the company formed to manage the land, was in receivership and all pumping activity stopped.

In 1926, with new investment, a second attempt was made to turn Lake Mattamuskeet into farmland. That too failed.

“Factory Farm Doomed by Nature, Millions Wasted,” the Associated Press reported in April 1931.

“Dixie’s greatest ‘factory farm’ apparently has failed,” according to the report. “Six years and $6,000,000 spent in an effort to reclaim for agriculture the 48,000 acre bed of Lake Mattamuskeet seems to have come to naught.”

As early as the mid-1920s, there were reports that the federal government was interested in Lake Mattamuskeet as a wildlife reserve, but the drainage district was still owned by private investors.

By the 1930s with the lake once again filled, word came that another plan to drain the lake was in the works. W.O. Saunders, publisher of the Elizabeth City Independent didn’t hold back in his assessment.

“Another Damphool Plan to Drain and Colonize Lake Mattamuskeet Acres,” the Independent’s front-page headline screamed.

In the article Saunders explained why draining the lake was a foolish plan.

“It is not practical as Lake Mattamuskeet is below sea level which would necessitate these pumps going continuously to prevent the farm crops from being inundated and destroyed,” he wrote.

According to the 1933 report, the pumps had failed in August 1932 and crops were lost.

Saunders goes on to note that Lake Mattmuskeet is a “Natural feeding ground for migratory water(fowl) and game fish, and proposes it be turned over to the Federal Government.”

He reported that the federal government wished to purchase the lake and turn it over to the U.S. Biological Survey, which was combined in 1940 with the Bureau of Fisheries to form the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

By 1935, the Henderson Daily Dispatch was reporting that the old pumping station was being remodeled as a hotel and administration building.

The renovations took two years and, according to the website Living New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps was heavily involved in the work. CCC Co. 424 did much of the work, “with 17 to 23 year old ‘CCC boys’ working side by side with civilian contractors.”

Memories of migratory waterfowl

Sidney Britt, 88, was at the event. He owns a house on the lake now, but he lived in Raleigh when he first came to Lake Mattamuskeet as a boy.

“I was 10 years old. I was probably easy to impress,” he said. “You could stand in one spot and the horizon would just be dark with birds. It was just beautiful. And the sound. It was just beautiful.”

By the 1970s, though, hunting had dwindled as geese flight patterns had evidently changed. The Perquimans Weekly in a July 1973 article noted that, “Surprisingly, the total population of Canada geese in the Atlantic Flyway has increased at the same time that Mattamuskeet’s population has declined.”

In 1974 the Mattamuskeet Lodge was closed, but U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices were still in the building, which had become a gathering place for Hyde County events –high school proms, weddings and the like.

The Mattamuskeet U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office is now located on an adjacent property.

The lodge also included a dormitory for ECU students with 16 beds available.

“I was the lodge coordinator,” Annette Gibbs told Coastal Review at the celebration. “I had an office here, and I booked all parties and the people that came and stayed in the ECU wing. We had something going on almost every week.”

It all came to an end in 2000.

The building had been deteriorating for some time, and money finally became available for needed repairs. A close look at the foundations, however, revealed that the bricks holding the building up were disintegrating.

“We had the money (for renovations) and we were pulling out bricks and they found some that were down low would actually break off,” Gibbs said. “The problem was they used sand from the sound (to make the bricks). And there was salt in the sand and it had just disintegrated.”

The structural problems were repaired, but it used all the money that had been earmarked for the renovation. In 2020 the roof was replaced.

Structurally, the building is sound, but there is considerable interior work that has to be done. Many of the touches the Lodge created are still there — the balcony surrounding what could be a ballroom, rooms are still divided, but walking through the building, there can be no doubt the interior is an empty shell.

Plans for the structure

It may take years to completely renovate the building.

Legislators at the event explained that money allocated in a budget must be spent during that fiscal year. They were optimistic that once the project began, funding to complete the renovation would continue to be available.

Once renovations are completed, the Hyde County Extension Service will move their offices to the building.

“Hyde County’s cooperative extension will have their offices here in the lodge and they will provide the abundant programming and resources that they already provide,” Noble said during her remarks.

Related: Hyde County agency’s future home may be key to saving it

The Mattamuskeet Lodge Society will manage the facility when it opens and its planning documents call for extensive outreach to area schools for educational opportunities.

“The Lodge will offer educational programming through the MLS (Mattamuskeet Lodge Society), 4-H Youth Development Program, Family & Consumer Sciences, Agriculture Extension, NCWRC, and FWS,” the society notes in its Restoration Initiative document.

The lodge will also be available once again for special events and the Lodge Society will also manage a retail store on premises.

“It will all be focused on this great land that surrounds us and the history that has been such a great part of all of our lives,” Noble said.

It may be hard to overstate the influence, creativity and genius of Max Roach.

The famous coastal North Carolina native’s instrument was the drums, but calling him a drummer is roughly akin to comparing the Atlantic Ocean to a pond.

The subject of a PBS documentary that premiered in October 2023, Max Roach was born in 1924 in Newland Township, about 12 or 13 miles north of Elizabeth City. It might be a stretch, though, to claim Roach as a product of North Carolina. His family moved to New York when he was just 4.

If he didn’t grow up in North Carolina, it does appear as though he maintained his connection to the area.

“He wasn’t raised here. He wasn’t educated here. But he has cousins that are still here, and my understanding is that he would come back every once in a while, and they’d have a big family party out in Newland,” said Douglas Jackson, professor of music at Elizabeth City State University.

Jackson was keynote speaker at the centennial celebration of Roach’s birthday Jan. 10 at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City. Jackson, who plays trumpet, was aware of Roach, but as he went deeper into researching him, his appreciation grew.

“I started listening to more of his recordings and what people were writing and saying about … the influence on how he maintained tempo, his cymbal technique, where he’s he’s feathering the cymbal, and it’s so fast and it’s always so consistent,” Jackson said. “People were referring to him as a lyrical drummer. He used all of the different pieces of the drum set to complement the musicians, but he never got in the way.”

Roach died in 2007 at his home in Manhattan, but during his lifetime, he received a number of accolades. These include a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1988, Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1989 and the International Percussive Art Society’s Hall of Fame and the DownBeat Hall of Fame. In 2009 he was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

Roach was a musical prodigy. In an interview recorded in 1984 at Howard University, he described growing up in Brooklyn and his earliest musical experiences.

“When I was about 8 years old, I joined the marching band in Concord Baptist Church,” he said. “My first instrument in that band was a bugle. And I had a problem with that and later switched to the marching drum.”

Roach had an aunt who taught him to play piano and read music, but his love was always the drums, and by the time he graduated from high school in 1942, he was already in demand when a drummer was needed in New York City.

At age 17 he sat in with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, perhaps one of the most accomplished jazz orchestras of its day. Ellington’s regular drummer, Sonny Greer, was sick and a substitute was needed.

But, as he told NPR’s Terry Gross, host of “Fresh Air,” in a 1987 interview, Greer played by ear and by watching what was happening around him.

“I couldn’t play by ear at that time. I was about 17,” Roach said. “So Mr. Ellington, before the curtain came up, he looked at me and saw the fright of fear in my face and said keep one eye on me and one eye on the acts on the stage. And I made it through.”

That night, in spite of the fear, was also a defining moment for Roach.

“I made up my mind I wanted to be in this area of music because Duke had (it) all, the theater and the drama and the pageantry was just surrounding him when he presented a show. And that’s when I really decided that was what I wanted to do,” he told Gross.

The big-band era was coming to an end, however. There were a number of factors that led to that, but a World War II tax in particular may have been the death knell as Roach recounted in his Howard University interview.

“The Second World War, we had an extra 20% cabaret taxes,” he explained, pointing to already existing federal, state and city taxes. “On top of that (a club owner) had to pay a 20% government tax called entertainment tax. If he had a singer, if he had public dancing or dancing on a stage or a comedian, this really heralded the demise of big bands during that time.”

What did not face the cabaret tax, however, were small improvisational groups. It was a time when some of the finest jazz musicians in the world were gravitating to New York, and Roach was in the middle of it.

“Right after high school, of course, I went into New York and started working with people like Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) and (saxophonists) Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins,” he recalled in his Howard University interview.

The improvisational sound of the small groups had challenges, Roach told Terry Gross.

“When you played in a small band, more was required of you because there were less people. It was like playing in a string quartet is vis-a-vis symphony orchestras,” he said. “You heard more drums, you heard more piano, you heard more this then that and the other to fill it out.”

He was 18 and 19 when he first began playing with Gillespie and Hawkins and sometimes Parker. From those sessions a new form of jazz music emerged that continues to influence how jazz is performed.

“What we hear in clubs today is a manifestation that came out of the whole bebop period, when small bands took the place of big bands and people came into these smaller clubs, sat down and listened to instrumentalists perform,” he said in his Howard university interview.

One of the most distinctive features of bebop is how the cymbal is used to keep time instead of the kick drum — it was a technique the Roach pioneered. In his first recordings in the late 1940s and 50s, there is almost no bass drum at all, but in an article written for the Percussive Arts Society, Roach is quoted from an interview published in the 1998 book “The Drummer’s Time” in which he clarified why the bass drum wasn’t heard.

“We played the bass drum, but the engineers would cover it up because it would cause distortion due to the technology at the time. There were never any mics near our feet; they would have one mic above the drum set, and that was all,” he said.

Over his career Roach went far beyond the sounds of bebop.

“The creative mind is always turning and Max had a creative mind and he kept it turning,” Jackson said, and that creative mind led to some intriguing and compelling use of percussion instruments. His 1980 album, “M’Boom,” features only percussion instruments — no stringed instruments, brass or woodwinds. The sound is complex, haunting and at times surprisingly melodic.

Music does not exist in a vacuum, Roach commented in a number of interviews, and he specifically saw jazz as an expression of the Black experience in America, and that experience is very much a part of the fabric of life in this country.

“When I look around and listen to most anybody… they have been touched by, and I mean profoundly touched, by what came out of the Black community culturally. That’s what America is,” he told his Howard University interviewer. “It reflects the whole democratic aspect, improvisation. Collective improvisation is democratic.”

He was also a powerful advocate for civil rights and African American equality. In 1960 he released “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” featuring his wife Abby Lincoln as vocalist and Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax, with lyrics by Oscar Brown. In 2022 the album was selected into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

Writing about the album for the Library of Congress, writer Christa Gammage noted the album was not widely praised when it debuted.

“The album received mixed reviews; some critics claimed the album displayed a ‘bitter mood’ and felt it was ‘new-frontier club stuff and most likely a little too far out in uncut timber for most tastes,’” Gammage wrote.

Asked by Gross in the NPR interview if the album was a result of the growing Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Roach drew attention to the music Black artists had already been performing.

“I go back to Bessie Smith with “Black Mountain Blues” and then to Duke Ellington with his “Black, Brown And Beige.” It’s always been there,” he said.

He went on to tell Gross that the inspiration for his activism was what the future would hold for his children.

“You’re always thinking about … their future as well,” he said. “If they’re going to come up and be responsible human beings, they have to have education and the things like everyone else has. And the society has to accommodate that.”

The First Colony Foundation has published a book tracing what the nonprofit group has learned since forming in April 2003 about the fate of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony.

Edited by the foundation’s Vice President of Research, Dr. Eric Klingelhofer, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery: The Map, the Search, the Discovery” is a compilation of essays and writings intended to bring the significance of the “La Virginea Pars” map and Site X into perspective. Klingelhofer is professor emeritus of history at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.

Published by the foundation and the University of North Carolina Press, the book that includes contributions by historians, archaeologists and other experts is an exploration of science, research and history.

By design, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery” is intended to be read by everyone, Klingelhofer told Coastal Review.

“(The book) is not a collection of symposium papers for an audience of scholars,” he wrote in an email. “I chose those papers that most fit the story of what we did, why, and how, and the context of that story. I told each author about this, and that I would be editing all for the general public to follow. No footnotes to be used.”

For Sir Walter Raleigh, the New World represented economic opportunity and an opportunity for scientific discovery. Thomas Harriot, a mathematician and scientist, and artist John White were part of the scientific exploration of the new lands, and the pair created the Pars map, more properly Virginea Pars map, in 1585 during the second expedition to the North Carolina coast.

In 2012, a request by the foundation to the British Museum where the map is housed was made to examine two paper patches on the map. What researchers found was the symbol for a fort under one of the patches — what has now become known as Site X.

Located at the confluence of Salmon Creek and Chowan River in Bertie County, the Site X finding has led to a series of discoveries and new information about the more than 100 English men, women and children who disappeared from Roanoke Island sometime between 1587 and 1590, when the long overdue relief ship returned to find the site abandoned.

The only clue to their disappearance was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a tree.

In “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery,” Klingelhofer takes the reader on a well-organized journey of discovery, beginning with Phillip Evans’ contribution, “The search for Raleigh’s Colony,” which gives an overview of known factual information, the false starts, pseudohistory and hucksters who have laid claim to certain knowledge of the fate of the Lost Colony.

The reader hears from the British Museum’s Curator of British Drawings and Watercolours Kim Sloan about when she realized how important what was hiding beneath that patch of paper could be, and foundation member, archaeologist Nicholas Lucketti in “The Prima Facie Case for Site X” chapter that details why there is good reason to think some, but not all, of the Colonists settled on the bluffs at Salmon Creek.

What adds to the story is the very human reaction even the most dedicated scientists and researchers share in the book.

Here is Sloan on realizing the significance of what she found beneath that patch of paper.

“I could see that the marking resembled what I thought to be the symbol for a fort. I said to Alice (Alice Rugheimer, a paper conservator at the British Museum), ‘I think we just discovered the intended site for the ‘Cittie of Ralegh’, the colony that John White was sent to Virginia to found.’ And then I think I swore,” she wrote.

In Lucketti’s introduction for “The Prima Facie Case for Site X,” he highlights the sensationalism of the press.

“Bold headlines and excited press reports in 2016 told the public about the First Colony Foundation’s amazing discoveries at Site X — equal to finding the Ark of the Covenant or Jimmy Hoffa’s body,” he wrote.

Like the Ark of the Covenant or Hoffa, the union activist who disappeared in the mid-1970s, what ultimately happened to the Lost Colony may remain unsolved, something Klingelhofer acknowledged, while also noting that the research may yet hold the answer.

“And yet the story of Raleigh’s colony continued to stir the public’s imagination. National Geographic Magazine had recently published (2013) One Hundred Greatest Mysteries, listing the Lost Colony among them. Site X and Mettaquem (the Native American village adjacent to Site X) would prove to hold important new clues toward a resolution of that mystery,” Klingelhofer wrote in his chapter “Science in the Search,” introducing the science behind the hunt for the fate of the Colonists of Roanoke Island.

The book does not provide definitive answers, and the writers go to some length to make it clear nothing conclusive has been discovered.

“We do not have a smoking gun — no artifacts undeniably of sixteenth-century European origin,” Luccketti wrote. “No features from English buildings, no burials. We did not find a fort. Nor did we claim that we had found the site of the main group’s relocation …”

What researchers did find suggests that the colonists left in small groups and coexisted with Native residents, especially the Chowanoke Nation who occupied much of what is now Gates, Hertford, Bertie, and Chowan counties. Site X is well within the boundaries of what would have been the Chowanoke Nation.

Asked in an email if it is reasonable to conclude that the Roanoke settlement broke up into small group, Klingelhofer answered, “Yes, that is exactly what we think, though do remember that the book only covers Site X. We are not ones for puerile speculation.”

“Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery” is a detailed chronology of how the conclusion that the Colonists left in small groups was reached and the discoveries along the way.

For example, the reproductions of White’s paintings are depicted as dull, almost two-tone images. But originally, the paintings were not dull at all, Sloan writes while describing the research British Museum Department of Conservation and Scientific Research Janet Ayers uncovered.

The point Janet Ayers made in her article was about John White’s use of gold and silver in his work. “Fish, for example when they are alive are iridescent, and in order to capture this, John White used these precious pigments,” Sloan wrote.

The historical research that the writers recount brings the men who explored the Albemarle region of what they had designated Virginia into focus.

Capt. Ralph Lane served as governor for the first attempt at a colony in 1586. Soldiers under his command beheaded King Wingina, the ruler of the Algonquian Indians on Roanoke Island. That action is often seen as a primary reason the closest Native nation to the colony would not help the colonists.

“Roanoke Colonies Illuminated” in East Carolina University’s Digital Collection, notes that although Lane returned to England in 1586, his actions impacted the 1587 attempt to settle Roanoke Island.

“It is likely that the bad blood fostered by Lane did not work much in the favor of Raleigh’s subsequent Roanoke expeditions,” the website points out.

But, James Horn, in his chapter, “Into the Maine: Why They Went West,” seems to question if Lane had complete control of the soldiers under his command in 1585-86, citing Lane’s description of them as ‘wylde men … whose unrulynes (was) suche as not to gyve leasure to the goovenour.’”

And according to Horn, who is president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation and on the board of directors for the First Colony Foundation, Harriot confirmed that observation.

“They killed Indians, he wrote, ‘upon causes that on our part, might easily enough have been borne,’” Horn recorded Harriot as writing.

Yet for all the detail there is a feeling as though the book has barely scratched the surface of what has been learned and is still to come.

It is, as Sloan writes at the end of her “Paper Patches” recounting of how Site X was identified, “the best kind of historical quest, one that just keeps asking us to try to find further truths about the past in order to learn from it for the future.”

Disclosure: Coastal Review correspondent Kip Tabb also serves on an informal citizens advisory board for the Outer Banks Field Site.

WANCHESE — Artificial light at night did not adversely affect sea turtle nesting north of Oregon Inlet from 2014 to 2022, undergraduate students found this fall during a four-month study.

A University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Institute for the Environment program, the semester-long Outer Banks Field Site combines environmental research and community engagement into the collaborative capstone research project. Coastal Studies Institute, a multi-institutional research partnership, and the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus, host the program.

In addition to measuring the affect of artificial light, which they call ALAN, on sea turtle nesting, the students examined what the public thinks about artificial light at night.

The students presented their findings Dec. 12 during the monthly “Science on the Sound” program on campus.

Senior Drew Huffman, in introducing the study, noted that artificial light at night studies are often focused on inland areas, rather than shorelines.

“There’s a scarcity of existing literature on artificial light at night and coastal systems, as opposed to what we know about more terrestrial systems,” he said. Adding that’s another aim of their research, “to try to expand that knowledge so that we have of a grasp of what things are like for coastal systems and artificial light at night.”

Numerous studies show a repeated pattern of sea turtle hatchlings crawling toward artificial light, such as a street light, rather than toward the ocean.

The students wanted to gauge the effects of artificial light on nesting.

“Is there a relationship between sea turtle nesting and artificial light at night across the Outer Banks over the last nine years? And if so, what is it?” Those were the questions senior Laura Montague posed in describing the study.

The study area extended north from the north side of Oregon Inlet to the north end of Corolla, but did not include Carova, because, as one student explained, no one had a four-wheel-drive vehicle able to navigate the oceanfront area with no paved roads.

Reported sea turtle nesting data from 2014 to 2022 shows a trend of increasing nesting activity, although overall activity, including false crawls and nests laid, fluctuated during that period, the students found.

During that period, activity hit a low point in 2017 where only about 35 active sites were reported, comparted to 100 active sites in 2022.

“False crawls refer to instances when a female sea turtle comes ashore on a beach but instead of nesting, turns back around to re-enter the ocean,” according to the paper.

Although there was no clear reason for the trend toward more activity, junior Kenza Hessini-Arandel told the audience that she and the other students felt conservation efforts could account for the increase in activity.

“(The) Endangered Species Act that protected a lot of these species and also management efforts that organizations like (the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles) and the National Park Service perhaps helped increase the number of turtles that we’re seeing along the coast,” she said.

There was at least one anomaly in sea turtle activity that the students could not explain.

The Outer Banks is at the north end of the range where sea turtles nest, and Corolla, at the north end of the study area, saw significantly less nesting activity than sites at the south end near Oregon Inlet, which is considered to be a more compatible nesting area for turtles.

Though the number of Corolla nesting sites was significantly less than those on the south end of the study area, the number of false crawls was the same there as areas where activity was greater, representing a much higher percentage of false crawls compared to nests.

“However, we do not see the same pattern when looking at false crawls; there seem to be more false crawls in the northernmost and southernmost areas compared with areas in between,” the paper noted.

“There are a lot of variables that come into play with false crawls and we don’t know exactly why we are seeing this trend,” Hessini-Arandel said.

The students included environmental research in the study, as well. They explored the social science of artificial light, whether people attach significance to artificial light, and their perception of how it affects the environment.

The public perception survey included about 500 responses, with respondents divided into residents, seasonal residents and visitors.

The students found a strong indication that the public perception is that artificial light has a significant impact on the environment, and regardless of age or sex, or even where people lived, they were concerned about the effect.

Although there were small variations in the degree of concern among the groups, the overall response showed a clear level of unease with the amount of artificial light on the Outer Banks.

Junior Julie Yakaboski noted that a significant majority of people said they were either concerned or very concerned.

“Taking these two together, that’s about 70% of our responses,” she said.

Significantly, almost no one – fewer than 5% — said they were “not concerned about it at all.”

That attitude appears to correlate closely with whether respondents felt artificial light should be reduced. Asked whether they felt artificial light on the Outer Banks should be reduced, 90% of respondents said they either agreed or agreed strongly. More than 60% said they “agreed strongly.”

Because of the timing of the recent survey, answers were somewhat skewed by the number of full-time and seasonal residents, students said. However, the results would seem to indicate there is support for local governments to implement regulations or ordinances controlling artificial light.

“Public perceptions of ALAN have the power to affect the development of policies that regulate it,” according to the paper.

There are wild cranberries along the highway, U.S. 264, as it passes Stumpy Point in Dare County heading west to Engelhard. 

It is a small patch, according to Bob Glennon, retired Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge planner, and largely inaccessible without hip boots and a guide to find them.

“The cranberries are on the part of the refuge with the deepest muck soil,” he wrote in an email. “The site has very deep organic soil that will not support a person’s weight.”

The cranberries that exist in the pocosin are Vaccinium macrocarpon, the same botanical name given to the cranberry that has become a part of Thanksgiving and holiday traditions. They’re smaller than their cultivar cousins, but it’s the same cranberry. 

The first European settlers did not mention cranberries, but Glennon is confident the plants were there.

“Because they are present where there is very deep organic soil, I would guess that they have been there for centuries, just as other plant communities in extreme environmental conditions … have existed for centuries,” he wrote.

What may be one of the most remarkable features of where the cranberries are found is that the area does not seem to have changed much at all.

“Stumpy Pointers on Excursion” the headline reads in the Nov. 13, 1914, Elizabeth City Advance. The excursion — a cranberry picking expedition that included crossing open water and hiking through pocosin — is described in detail.

“After a twenty minute row across the lake and a hundreds yard hike through dense woods, the party came to an open savanna which must needs be crossed before the cranberries were reached,” the paper reported.

That description is remarkably similar to how Michael Schafale, North Carolina Natural Heritage Program terrestrial ecologist, got to the site.

“That 1914 description really fits,” he wrote in an email. “Lake Wirth, near Stumpy Point, is on the edge of that low pocosin. I went in that way once, walking around the lake rather than rowing across it.  It is not too far to low pocosin that way, though the ‘hike through dense woods’ and ‘savanna’ is understated.”

It does not appear as though the earliest Colonists left a record of the fruit, but North Carolina newspapers’ reporting on the crop dates back to the 19th century. 

The headline on page two of the Oct. 30, 1883, Elizabeth City Economist simply reads “Cranberries” and tells readers that the Massachusetts cranberry harvest was not very good in 1883 and “that the price will probably be higher than any time in recent years.” 

The observation was followed by advice for Dare County residents.

“We hope it will be appreciated by our friends at East Lake and other cranberry sections of Dare County. The dwellers in Dare County by the side of the wild cranberry ponds have no idea of the mine of wealth around them, and which they can so easily gather,” the paper noted.

Knowledge of the potential wealth of the bogs seemed to come and go. If the East Lake cranberries were well enough known in Elizabeth City in 1883 to note their abundance, by the 1930s they seem to have been forgotten.

A July 1, 1938, Dare County Times full page spread extolling the wonders of Dare County as the first show of the second year of “The Lost Colony” theatrical production neared, seems to indicate the existence of the cranberries has just been discovered.

The article describes the bogs with what may be hyperbole, writing that what exists between Alligator River and Stumpy Point “surprisingly enough, constitute the greatest cranberry bog in America.”

The next paragraph then describes how the cranberries had just been discovered.

“Nobody knew very much about the cranberry bog until they began to excavate a road through the unexplored jungle … that lie between the Croatan (Sound) and Alligator (River).”

That road today is U.S. Highway 264, but according to a History of Stumpy Point published in NCGenWeb Project, that road was created in the 1920s. The NCGenWeb Project is part of the national USGenWeb Project and a volunteer-collected genealogical and historical content repository for each of state’s 100 counties.

“One of the biggest milestones in the history of Stumpy Point was the creation of the roads connecting the town to Engelhard and Manns Harbor. The first was the road to Engelhard in 1926, built for Dare County by the H. C. Lawrence Dredging Company,” Harold Lee Wise, the story’s author wrote.

The cranberries seem to have been a good quality crop. Theodore Meekins, a Dare County resident, entered the cranberries in a statewide horticulture competition in 1908 and took home a bronze medal. In November 1939, according to the Dare County Times, Theodore Meekins “suggested that cranberries be cultivated on the Dare County Mainland.”

What is not clear is the extent of the commercial cultivation of the cranberries.

Alan Weakley, director of the University of North Carolina Herbarium at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, responded in an email that if a commercial harvest did exist, it was probably taking advantage of natural conditions. 

“I’m quite strongly inclined to think this was at most commercial exploitation of a natural local population,” he noted. “Maybe they manipulated the habitat some. But I find it really hard to believe that Dare County folks would have the idea of planting cranberries in pocosin habitats in Dare County, where they actually grow naturally and natively, and acquired plants or seeds and set them out.”

Newspaper accounts would seem to confirm Weakley’s opinion. By 1952, according to a Coastland Times article from Dec. 12 of that year, there was no commercial harvest of cranberries in Dare County.

“There was a time when gathering wild cranberries was a profitable venture for persons living in the bogland of the Dare Coast,” the paper reported.

In that same article, the harvest of the cranberries is then described in detail.

“Thomas Hunter Midgett is one person who still gathers wild cranberries in the same method as his parents and grandparents harvested them from the boglands many years ago,” the article noted. “The wooden scoop he uses is one his grandfather used.”

Charles Brantley “Aycock” Brown (1904-1984) was an Outer Banks resident and journalist.

Coastal Review will not publish Thursday and Friday in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Writing in his just-completed Frank Stick biography published here, author Gilbert M. Gaul wrote of the genesis of the modern tourist industry on the Outer Banks.

“Like Stick and others, (Congressman Lindsay) Warren saw the future of the isolated barrier islands as tied to tourism,” Gaul noted.

Speakers at a tourism summit sponsored by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Nov. 2 in Kill Devil Hills focused on that prescient vision from decades ago.

The summit opened with a reminder of why Stick and others of his era believed that the Outer Banks offered an ideal location for a national park, illustrated in the bureau’s recently produced “Raw OBX” video site highlighting surfing, fishing and birding and urging “Keep OBX OBX,” a plea to “responsible travelers.”

Summit organizers promised an in-depth look at the health of the area’s dominant industry. Presentations showed an economy that has been outperforming numerous state and national trends, but one that’s also showing signs of slowing.

In 2022, Dare County recorded $1.98 billion in tourist spending, according to figures from Visit NC, the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina’s website. It was the fourth-highest level of tourist spending of any county in the state, trailing only Mecklenberg, Wake and Buncombe counties. If the $549 million generated by Currituck County is added to the Dare County’s spending, visitor spending here represented 7.6% of North Carolina’s total visitor spending.

The Outer Banks counties also showed a significant rebound from pandemic lows with occupancy tax collections up well more than 50% as of October.

That increase exceeds national and state trends in tourism, said Erik Evjen of Tourism Economics, a global tourism forecasting and analysis firm.

“Here in North Carolina, travel spending has been elevated above the national average throughout,” Evjen told summit attendees. “I know you have a lot to do with that.”

But 2020 and 2021’s double-digit revenue increases are not sustainable, he added.

“I know in this market, you’re interested in hitting year-over-year (increases), but for context, I think it’s important to remember how far you’ve come,” he said, adding that a slowdown is “more of a correction than anything else.”

Dare County’s 6% occupancy tax and 1% food and beverage tax collections slowed to about 5.7% in 2022, compared to 2021. As of September, revenues were up about 3%.

The past year’s revenue increases were generally lower than the inflation rate, Outer Banks Visitors Bureau Executive Director Lee Nettles told Coastal Review, but he noted that it’s important to look at trends over several years, “because the collection growth exceeded inflation then.”

Evjen, whose company works with a broad spectrum of clients in the tourism industry, noted during the summit that comparing revenues to 2019 was important in evaluating progress.

“We heard from a lot of clients, they wanted to stop comparing to 2019. They wanted to just focus on year-over-year (comparisons) because that’s what their stakeholders and partners want to focus on,” he said. “We said, ‘just hold off for four to six months … It’s going to start coming down and you’re going to want to compare back to ’19 levels just to help put things in context.’”

Evjen said that as a destination, the Outer Banks is different than most markets. Generally, destinations are more dependent on hotel and motel lodging, whereas multi-bedroom rental homes dominate here, lodging he defined as a short-term rentals.

“Short-term rental demand had been performing extremely well throughout the pandemic,” he said. The upward trend is likely to continue, in terms of both demand and revenue, but competition for tourist dollars is growing.

Coastal North Carolina is considered a drive-to destination for many visitors. As the economy continues to show strength, leisure travel is becoming more diverse, with international travel beginning to rebound and urban areas again showing signs of growth.

“You have increased competition now from some of the larger markets again, that people quite frankly avoided for a couple of years,” said Evjen.

Know who’s coming

Understanding where visitors are coming from and why they are making the choice that they have is important information, summit presenters said.

Adam Zappia of Zartico, a data-collection company specializing in travel and tourism, outlined what data can do.

“It’s understanding where people go, and why they go where they go, and when they’re spending their money,” he said.

Realizing that people have concerns about data collection, Zappia clarified the limits of what his company can do. He drew a distinction from surveillance such as the federal National Security Agency.

“We’re not the NSA. We don’t tell you how many people came to a Taco Bell on a Tuesday,” he said.

But knowing what should be considered important data is useful.

“We need to focus on where people are coming from that are spending more money in destination,” Zappia said. “That is more important than understanding how many people came to a destination.”

He said it was especially interesting that visitors from other North Carolina cities or nearby places such as Norfolk, Virginia, visit more during winter months than they do in the summer.

Zappia said the visitor numbers are down from a 2021 peak, but revenues have remained relatively stable because the average daily rate of spending has increased.

“The reason that we’re not seeing a decline in collections is because that ADR is going way up versus occupancy that’s starting to come down a little bit,” Zappia said.

Zappia’s data appeared to confirm Evjen earlier statement about long-term economic trends here. Whenever you’re looking for growth, you’re looking for where to grow, he said.

“Leisure is stable, even though it’s slowing down,” Evjen said. “You can add overseas travel, business travel, and group travel slight increases from those markets year over year and you’ll continue to be in good shape.”

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Friday in observance of Veterans Day.

As the overwhelming firepower of the 40 boats of the Union Navy in the Roanoke Sound approached Feb. 10, 1862, Midshipman J.L. Tayloe, captain of the CSS Fanny, left his command and blew up the ship at Cobb Point, just south of Elizabeth City.

It was an ignominious end to a small but valiant vessel that had served forces on both sides of the Civil War.

Fanny’s time with Southern forces was short-lived. The ship had been captured by Confederate forces mere months before on Oct. 4, 1861, at Loggerhead Inlet, a now-dry strand of beach about a mile north of Rodanthe.

At the time, Union forces had secured their first significant victory of the Civil War when they wrested Hatteras and Ocracoke inlets from Confederate control in late August 1861.

Soon after securing the inlets, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler, who led the expedition, returned to his headquarters at Fort Monroe, leaving command of the Hatteras garrison in the hands of Col. Rush Hawkins, commander of the 9th New York Zouaves.

By late September, it was apparent that Confederate forces were growing in number on Roanoke Island. Writing in his 2018 East Carolina University master’s thesis, “Detecting Archeological Signatures in Shallow Water: A study of the Chicamacomico Races,” James Kinsella describes Hawkins’ reaction to the news that enemy troop strength had increased to his north.

“In response to the capture of Hatteras and Ocracoke Inlets, the Confederate Army sent reinforcements to Roanoke Island. Hawkins, hoping to counter the threat from the north, sent the 20th Indiana Regiment to Chicamacomico (Rodanthe) to counter the move,” he writes.

The plan to move the regiment 40 miles north to what the documents of the time referred to as Loggerhead Inlet was flawed. The USS Spaulding, a troop transport ship, was given the task of moving the regiment. But the Spaulding’s draft was too deep for Pamlico Sound and most of the men had to be transferred to smaller vessels. Although the men were transferred, the supplies they needed to operate 40 miles from their own lines did not go with them.

“Three armed steamers (the Fanny, the General Putnam and the Ceres) were ordered to take them from Hatteras to Chicamacomico. All but 75 men were transferred to the armed steamers. They arrived at Chicamacomico with few tents and only two days’ food and supplies,” Kinsella wrote.

Hoping to quickly resupply the Indiana Regiment, the Fanny was rapidly loaded with supplies – food, ammunition, medicine and clothing – and sent to Chicamacomico.

“I left in the steamer Fanny at 6 a.m. for Chickamicomico or Logger Head Inlet arriving there at 1 p.m. We anchored in about 8 feet of water and waited there two hours and a half before we got communication from shore,” the civilian captain of the Fanny, Master J..H. Morrison, wrote to Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy.

That two-and-a-half-hour delay in unloading the Fanny was critical and may ultimately have been the reason Confederate forces were able to capture the vessel.

Christopher Olson, in his April 2006 article, “The Curlew: The Life and Death of a North Carolina Steamboat, 1856-1862 ” written for the North Carolina Historical Review, describes the reaction to the Fanny on Roanoke Island.

“Word of the Union steamer’s appearance reached the Confederate commanders at Roanoke Island. After loading 150 men of the Third Georgia Regiment on the Curlew and two other Confederate gunboats, the fleet sailed against the Union outpost. The Confederate fleet surprised the Fanny at anchor at 4:00 P.M,” he wrote.

Under the command of Commodore William F. Lynch, the three boats of the Confederate fleet, the CSS Curlew, Raleigh, and Junaluski, moved quickly into position.

“The Curlew arrived first and steered to cut off any escape attempt,” Olson wrote.

On the Fanny, the 20th Indiana had finally made it to the boat and had just taken off the first load of provisions when the enemy fleet was first seen.

“When the boat had shoved off and got about two thirds of the way on shore we saw a steamboat to the westward about 4 p.m which proved to be one of the enemy. She was standing to cut off our retreat and in a short time two more appeared steering directly for us. The first one then stood in and commenced firing upon us and as soon as the other two came up they did the same,” Morrison wrote to Wells.

Leased for service in the war by the federal government, the Fanny was no warship, as Morrison recounted in a letter published in the Oct. 18, 1861, edition of the Cincinnati Daily Press.

“The powder I had on freight was stored in a house on deck forward of the boiler, and a shell exploding into it would have blown the vessel to atoms. Besides this, my boiler was on deck and insufficiently protected against shot from cannon,” he wrote.

There were other problems as well.

“Sending supplies aboard Fanny was a risky venture as there was a shortage of capable navy men and officers,” Kinsella notes.

That shortage led to the Fanny being crewed by Army personnel who were unfamiliar with the armament on board, as Morrison’s letter in the Daily Press made clear.

“The gun crew knew nothing of gunnery, and I think the Indiana troops on board knew little better,” he wrote.

The commanding Union officer on the boat was Quartermaster Isaac Hart of the 20th Indiana Regiment, who had made the decision to surrender, according to Morrison. As that decision was being made, there seems to have been considerable confusion onboard the Fanny.

“The mate of the boat and a few soldiers turned to and threw over board some thirty cases of ammunition and Captain Hart forbade them to throw any more overboard. We likewise requested the sergeant major to throw the cannon overboard which he refused to do saying it would be worse for them if they were taken prisoners,” Morrison told Wells.

Hart ordered the boat run aground and by 5 p.m., the Fanny was in Confederate hands with most of the crew prisoners. Morrison and his first mate, who were civilian employees of the U.S. Navy, escaped in a skiff. Also on the skiff was Morrison’s son, who was, Morrison wrote, ill and in his berth at the time of the attack. There were no casualties in the engagement.

In his report to Wells, Morrison was critical of the slow response of the 20th Indiana, writing, “… they had plenty of time from our arrival to that of the enemy’s boats to have got everything on shore from the Fanny…”

In his letter published in the Daily Press he was even more critical.

“We had enough time from one o’clock to half-past four to have discharged every portion of the cargo of the Fanny … had we received assistance from the Indianians on shore. I cannot but feel that it was their neglect to assist us that the loss of the Fanny may be attributed,” he wrote.

The slow response of the Indiana regiment to unload its supplies is but one part of a larger picture leading to the capture of the boat.

The USS General Putnam was a 103-foot, sidewheel gunboat that met the Fanny off Loggerhead Inlet. One of the Fanny’s guns was transferred to the Putnam, evidently because the Putnam was part of the Croatan Sound blockade force.

“Fanny was at a further disadvantage as its Sawyer gun was transferred to the USS General Putnam. General Putnam was ordered to stay in Croatan Sound to enforce a blockade, leaving Fanny vulnerable and without naval support,” Kinsella wrote.

But according to the report by Cmdr. S.C. Rowan, captain of the sloop of war USS Pawnee, the Fanny should never have been left alone.

“The Putnam, that should have been there to give countenance and support to these panic stricken people, left her station on the arrival of the Fanny and arrived at the bulkhead at sundown the same evening where she grounded for the night. I asked Captain Hotchkiss why he left without orders. He replied that he came down for coal. I told him he could have obtained coal from the Fanny,” he wrote.

Precursor to modern aircraft carrier

If the capture of the USS Fanny was perhaps inglorious, it stands in contrast to its earlier service in the war.

The Fanny could be the first true precursor to the modern aircraft carrier.

Writing for the U.S. Naval Institute, W.T. Adams, in his article “The Birth of the Aircraft Carrier,” suggests the Fanny may hold the distinction of being the first watercraft to serve as a platform for aerial observation of the enemy.

“The veteran and daring balloonist J. LaMountain has been at Fortress Monroe making ascensions and examinations of the secessionists’ positions in that vicinity. On the 3rd instant he tried a new scheme in aerial scouting, by taking his balloon on board of the steamboat Fanny, and went out in the middle of the river ascended 2,000 feet, with the balloon secured by a rope to a windlass,” Adams wrote.

There is one more twist to the story. According to Morrison, the Fanny that the Confederacy captured was not the original Fanny that the U.S. Navy had leased.

He writes that after “… various expeditions … she became disabled and her crew was transferred to the P.T. Hart. As it was advisable to retain the prestige of the Fanny’s name, the sign upon her stern was transferred to the P.T. Hart. and she afterward sailed under the name of the Fanny — so in reality it was the P.T. Hart, and not the Fanny that was captured.”

NAGS HEAD — Standing Wednesday at the end of a short path lined with beautyberries and seaside goldenrod at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, North Carolina First Lady Kristin Cooper told a gathering of about two dozen that, although she was here to celebrate North Carolina Native Plant Week, Oct. 16 to 22, it wasn’t plants that first drew her attention — it was her fascination with birds.

And because native plant species are so vital for North Carolina’s birds and pollinators, Cooper has been a vocal advocate for planting native species of trees, flowers and vegetation almost from the time her husband Gov. Roy Cooper took office in 2017.

Birds, she explained, began to thrive and increase in numbers at the North Carolina Executive Mansion soon after a project that stripped away dozens of nonnative ornamentals that had choked out other species in the garden there and replaced them with native plants.

“We put it (a native plant garden) in October, and the next spring, we had the kids come out and do a bird count,” she said. “Then a couple of years later they came back … and we saw a 25% uptick in the variety of birds that we saw — just in those two years.”

In July, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources instituted a policy that required all landscaping and planting at state parks, including Jockey’s Ridge, historic sites and other facilities the department manages to use only native plants in their landscaping.

“This is government trying to lead by example, by doing this, we’re trying to encourage businesses, homeowners, homeowners associations, other government agencies to embrace native plants as well,” said Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson, who, along with Audubon North Carolina Executive Director Curtis Smalling, were at the event.

The project at the mansion had sprung from a conversation Cooper had with folks with Audubon North Carolina when her husband was still the state attorney general.

“I’ve got to give a lot of the glory to the Audubon Society,” she said. “Some very astute person must have been at some place hearing me talk about how much I like birds.”

Cooper wasn’t here just to talk about plants. She also joined in planting a persimmon tree by the visitor center at the state park. Persimmon trees are abundant among the dunes and maritime trees of Jockey’s Ridge. The trees are a magnet for wildlife with innumerable birds and mammals gathering at the trees when the fruit ripens.

After the event, Cooper told Coastal Review why she is so passionate about native plants.

“Birds, even hummingbirds, mostly what they eat are bugs,” she said.

And while birds do eat seeds, insects make up the bulk of their diet, she noted. “A native oak tree might have 250 insects they can eat. A crepe myrtle maybe has two.”

It’s not just birds that thrive among native plants.

“I had a problem with a rabbit just eating my native plant, and that’s the point — they won’t eat that (other) stuff. They just hop right through it (nonnative plants) and come over and eat the plants you want there,” she said.

Wilson, during his remarks, also extolled the virtues of native plants.

“They are part of our natural and cultural heritage,” he said. “They are better able to survive and thrive because they’re adapted to our weather and to our soils.”

Smalling, with Audubon North Carolina, said the organization had begun the initiative 10 years ago as a collaborative effort among a group of volunteers including state park staff, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, aid groups and others. It was Cooper’s advocacy, however, that really moved the idea forward.

“One of the significant things that happened early in the process was First Lady Cooper stepped up and really became an important partner for us. Elevating the role of native plants and what they do for birds was really critical to understanding the connection,” Smalling said.

But a big issue that could hurt the campaign to get more native plants in the ground is nurseries’ inventories.

“Now that we want everybody to be planting native plants, we’ve got to make sure they’re available,” he said.

Smalling told Coastal Review that 2014 had been the first year that Audubon North Carolina began the native plants push. He said that initial effort illustrated what can happen when an idea gets too far ahead of inventory.

“The first year we did this, we said everybody needs to plant a spicebush because it’s great for migratory birds,” Smalling said. “Immediately, everybody was sold out of spicebush. We created the statewide shortage.”

Audubon North Carolina has subsequently developed a short list of six or seven plants it recommends each year so that nurseries can plan accordingly. Nonetheless, there are still supply chain issues, but now, Smalling noted, to the state’s native plant initiative is critical to making native plants more available.

“That’s why the policy that Secretary Wilson was talking about is really important. If you can drive that demand, as long as the growers see that there’s built-in demand, they can start ramping up,” he said.

On the other side of the Outer Banks, away from the beaches and palatial homes, there is another story to be told of life in a beach community. Scattered within the dense maritime forests that line the western shore of the sounds is an occasional makeshift campsite, or a tarp strung between two trees. 

For Shari Fiveash, the new executive director of the OBX Room in the Inn, the campsites and tarps tell a story that is common throughout the world, but is, in some ways, unique to the Outer Banks. 

“This community is really blessed in the fact that you don’t see the homeless here,” she said. “I’ve been all over the world and they’re…at your doorstep. Here, for some reason, they’re parked there camping in the woods. So I think people don’t realize that need.”

The need to confront the problem on the Outer Banks, however, is real, Fiveash noted, and the resources are very limited.

“We’re (Room in the Inn) the only ones that provide housing (for the unhoused) in Dare County,” she said.

OBX Room in the Inn was established in 2009 to support people experiencing homelessness in Dare County. It is a faith-based organization that works with churches, government agencies and other groups. The ability of the organization to offer shelter, though, is very limited. 

Housing for those experiencing homelessness is only offered from Nov. 1 through April 30 and even then who is able to use the shelter service the organization offers is restricted. 

“We have one facility and this year we lost more beds for several reasons. We’re very thankful to the people that do let us use that facility but it’s tough to take the idea that we’re going to have less rooms this year than we did last year,” Fiveash said.

She explained that some of the space that had been used for shelter was being converted to office space. The space itself was already restricted in how it could be used. There is no way, as an example, for OBX Room in the Inn to house a family.

“We can’t take families just because we separate by men and women for security reasons,” Fiveash said.

The schedule of when the shelter is available highlights an ongoing and growing crisis in housing on the Outer Banks, and Dare County specifically.

During the busiest time of year, including the peak season months of June through August and the shoulder seasons of April, May, September and most of October, the building that Room in the Inn uses is reserved for seasonal workforce housing.

Although there is wide agreement that there is a critical housing shortage, finding a place to build workforce or essential housing has become a highly charged political issue.

Responding to overwhelming opposition from residents, the town of Manteo’s Board of Commissioners recently turned down a request from the county to use the town’s sewer system for a planned workforce apartments on county land. 

In January of this year, the town of Nags Head changed its zoning to prevent a planned 54-unit housing project that would have been located across from Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

After a 10-acre cluster home development in Wanchese received tentative approval pending a wetlands permit, the outcry from residents forced the county to remove 22 cluster development plats from county ordinances in May.

The workforce housing need is extraordinary in Dare County.

In an Outer Banks Voice article on the Manteo vote against permitting the county to use the town’s sewer system, County Manager Bobby Outten noted how dire the need for housing was, “We’re lacking 2,500 (units),” he said.

The lack of housing has been felt by Room in the Inn and Fiveash is quick to indicate that many of the people they are serving are working.

“We have people that are employed that stay with us because they can’t afford or find housing. And that’s last year and this year,” she said.

And she added, it is uncertain just how many people living in the county are without housing.

In looking at how many meals were provided over the past year as well as intake for beds, the number of homeless that the organization provided shelter for was 45. That figure, though, does not tell the complete story.

“There’s numerous we have to turn away because we only have a limit to how much we can house. And we just don’t have a place or facilities for children,” Fiveash said.

“Ideally, if we had our own facility, that would be key,” although that would take a level of support that currently does not exist for Room in the Inn, she continued. There is community support and Dare County does help, but the individual towns have not contributed to the organization.

“We do get about $15,000 a year from the county,” Fiveash said, adding that she’s never been in a situation where each town or municipality also contributed.

Some of that may be that the towns and the people who live and work on the Outer Banks do not know there are people experiencing homelessness, and that helping people to understand that could be what is needed to garner more support.

“I think awareness is going to be key. You don’t see them, but if you look for them, they’re there,” Fiveash said. “I know about families sleeping in their car. A lot of ladies seem to call more than men. They’ve been through a bad situation and now they’re in their car. And I hate to tell them that we don’t start housing folks until Nov. 1.”

Last in a series.

Stretching north from the Wright Memorial Bridge at Kitty Hawk to the Back Bay of Virginia Beach, Currituck Sound was, at one time, the crown jewel of the Atlantic Flyway.

A large, freshwater estuary teeming with subaquatic vegetation and dotted with innumerable low-lying islands and marsh habitat for ducks, geese and swans, migratory waterfowl by the hundreds of thousands flocked to its waters every fall and winter.

By the early 20th century, market hunting and dozens of hunt clubs that placed no limit on the number of birds that could be taken sprang up and wiped out the population of waterfowl that migrated to the sound’s waters.

Those days are now the stuff of history and legend. Migratory waterfowl counts have plummeted. But now, researchers and conservationists from different organizations and fields are working together with a plan to restore the marsh habitat and make it more resilient – a blueprint that resulted from several years’ worth of pilot projects.

Audubon North Carolina, the state affiliate of the National Audubon Society, notes that at the Donal C. O’Brien Jr. Sanctuary at Pine Island, “waterfowl populations in the 1970s were around 300,000, recent surveys in Currituck Sound have counted only around 30,000 birds.”

Although bag limits have been in place for some time, balancing the take of hunters with the ability of waterfowl to repopulate, migratory waterfowl have not returned to their historic numbers. The reasons are complex, intertwined with an ecosystem that is unlike almost any other estuarine system anywhere.

Robbie Fearn, director of the Pine Island Sanctuary, recently described Currituck Sound for Coastal Review, noting how different it is from other estuarine systems.

“I don’t like to use the word unique, but it’s an unusual system in that it’s primarily freshwater,” he said, adding that the nearest ocean outlet for the sound’s waters is some 25 miles south at Oregon Inlet.

“The dynamics of the system are very unusual in that it is a giant shallow bathtub. And the water is sloshing around in it all the time. Most marsh systems don’t have this level of dynamism,” Fearn said, adding that it is “a really unusual system to be working in and exciting because every question is still ready to be answered.”

The environment, however, is not the only complex system to navigate in addressing how restore Currituck Sound’s restoration. Its shores include lands that are parts of Currituck County, the town of Duck and those managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Commission.

To navigate the issues involved among multiple entities, Audubon in 2019 formed the Currituck Sound Coalition, a partnership that includes 14 members representing local governments, state and federal agencies, and research and educational institutions. The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is part of the coalition.

In 2020, the North Carolina Attorney General’s office awarded Audubon North Carolina a $98,000 Environmental Enhancement Grant, or EEG. The work on the grant has been completed, but the grant was invaluable in creating a framework for marsh restoration and resilience, said Audubon Senior Coastal Resilience Program Manager Cat Bowler.

“The EEG funds allowed us to work with the Currituck Sound Coalition to develop the Marsh Conservation Plan for Currituck Sound. It also helped us to conduct a site analysis at Pine Island Sanctuary and start to develop the project concept for the marsh restoration pilot projects that Audubon is still working on with partners to this day,” Bowler said. “It really laid the groundwork for us to launch this work.”

The Currituck Sound Coalition Marsh Conservation Plan is a working publication that outlines how the group will work together to restore the waters of the sound. In the document’s “process overview,” the role the EEG played is specifically cited.

“In 2019, Audubon received funding from the North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grant Program to support the coalition in developing a marsh conservation plan for Currituck Sound. A working group was formed to lead the planning process with partner members,” the plan’s authors wrote.

The plan outlines a wide scope of objectives to address sea level rise, erosion, invasive species, declining water quality, and loss of biodiversity — some of the issues listed that are known to affect Currituck Sound marshes.

“The beauty of the EEG funding was that it allowed us all to work together to share the knowledge we’re all developing separately and come together,” Fearn said. “I think it creates shared understanding. It created this connective tissue.”

The grant funding did more than create a communication network. The Audubon Society was also able to examine and compare different methods of marsh rehabilitation.

“The EEG actually funded a series of four pilot projects,” Bowler said. “Pilot marsh restoration projects looking at different types of living shoreline techniques, but also looking at more innovative restoration techniques like thin layer placement, where you take sediment and put it in thin layers on the surface of the marsh to help it accrete with sea level rise over time.”

Those research projects may prove to be critical in how much funding Currituck Sound restoration and resilience projects will be able to access. One of the partner organizations of the Coalition is Dr. Reide Corbett and the Coastal Studies Institute.  Corbett, the institute’s executive director, explained the significance the research that is now being done will have in the future.

“When it comes to any sort of resilience, some of it’s education, but a lot of it’s going to come down to funds, (and) the fact is, you can’t get those funds until you really understand what the problems are and where the problems really need to be addressed,” Corbett said.

The EEG projects, though, are not close-ended programs, rather the nature of the projects and the way in which the money has been administered has created additional opportunities to develop strategies for marsh restoration.

Bowler said the EEG funds in combination with money from other state sources, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund and the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, as well as from Northwest National Coastal Resilience Fund, “and all three of those grants supported different elements of this project,” Bowler said. “To be able to bring the three different funding sources together to help enhance our partnerships in the region and also get some of this work planned and designed on the ground, I think that’s been a huge success.”

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice.

Citing overwhelming opposition to allowing Dare County’s proposed essential housing project to connect to the town’s wastewater treatment system, the Manteo Board of Commissioners on Wednesday voted unanimously to reject the county’s request.

The Sanderling project at the end of Bowsertown Road envisioned a 46-unit apartment complex that the county had contracted with Woda Cooper Companies to build. Although the complex would be on county property, according to Woda Cooper officials there is not enough land on the property for a septic system to support the complex.

If built, the 46 units would represent a small step toward remedying the housing shortage for year-round workers in the county.

Manteo Commissioner Sherry Wickstrom, in her remarks at the meeting, indicated the county needed 1,200 housing units. Chair of the Dare County Commissioners Bob Woodard, in an interview the following day, told the Voice that number was low. “She said 1,200. We’re lacking 2,500 (units),” he said.

The decision by the Manteo commissioners continues a trend of county-based essential or workforce housing proposals being rejected at the municipal level. Back in January 2022, Manteo commissioners also turned down a county request to connect with the town’s wastewater treatment system for what was then envisioned as a 120-unit development.

In August 2022, Kill Devil Hills commissioners rejected an effort to rezone the 44-acre Baum tract to potentially pave the way for a high-density multifamily housing site backed by the county. And early this year, Nags Head commissioners opted to rezone an area that would have potentially housed a 54-unit Woda Cooper housing development.

At the Sept. 6 Manteo Commissioners meeting, County Manager Bobby Outten noted that the county and the town had a history of working together.

“We want to work with you and anyone else to solve the (housing) problem, much as we did when you had a parking problem,” he said. “We took down some buildings, donated some land, and we all worked towards solving a parking problem in your downtown.”

Outten also stressed that every concern the commissioners had voiced about the project had been addressed.

“We were told by you that (the original proposal) was too big,” he said, adding the project they’re proposing is 46 units.

Outten continued that there were concerns voiced during discussions about impact fees, annexation and setting aside teacher housing. He explained that the county agreed to pay what the town requires for the impact fees, would annex and set aside 10 housing units for the teachers.

In public comment, though, every resident who spoke about the project was opposed to the proposal. Pointing to two issues in particular, speakers felt traffic in Manteo had become a significant problem and the addition of a 46-unit housing complex would exacerbate that. Residents were also concerned about the effect the development would have on the existing wastewater system and expressed concern about losing the small town feel of Manteo.

The commissioners described their vote as heeding the will of their constituents.

“I think tonight,” Commissioner Tod Clissold said during the meeting, “You’ve heard that (Manteo residents) are not in favor of a connection to the sewer plant.

“At this time, I just think we have to listen to our voters,” he continued.

Echoing Clissold’s comments, Commissioner Ruth Stetson said, “I can’t find a lot of support for this development. I can’t find any support, actually.”

Woodard, when interviewed the next day, told the Voice that “I fully understand their position. They listen to their constituents. I don’t fault them for that.”

Nonetheless, he had hoped the project could move forward.  “It’s just very disappointing,” he added.

For his part, Outten told the Voice that the county will continue to work toward building essential housing in spite of the setbacks.

“I’d say we’re disappointed in the Manteo decision, but we’re going to continue to work to bring workforce or essential housing to the county,” he said.

Woodard agreed. “We’re looking at multiple options in other places in the county, as well as towns and municipalities.”

HATTERAS – Researcher and island resident Kate Sutherland’s work studying the chemical isotopes of the feathers from black-capped petrels may lead to better understanding of the foraging habits — if not the varied physical appearance — of this difficult-to-study, endangered Gulf Stream bird species.

Sutherland is set to present her findings in October at a joint Waterbird Society and Atlantic Marine Bird Cooperative conference in Florida.

“That’s exciting,” she said. “It’ll be my first time to get to go to a conference and present something that I’ve done.”

Black-capped petrels, or Pterodroma hasitata, are pelagic birds, a species that lives most of its life in the open waters of the oceans — the pelagic zone — returning to land only long enough to reproduce.

There are numerous challenges in studying black-capped petrels. The open ocean that is their habitat is part of the difficulty in field research. Equally daunting is the mountainous terrain of the island of Hispaniola where they are known to nest. Compounding the challenge, they are burrowing nesters, and their nests can be difficult to find or identify.

They are one species of a wide variety of pelagic birds, and are one of the most endangered. At one time they were numerous throughout the Caribbean, but extensive hunting in the 18th and 19th centuries and, more recently, loss of habitat have diminished the population. At one time it was thought the species was extinct.

In 1961, ornithologist David Wingate found nesting sites in Haiti. To date, the only known nesting sites for black-capped petrels is on Hispaniola, although there may be other sites in mountainous regions of the Caribbean islands. There are an estimated 600 to 2,000 breeding pairs remaining, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Sutherland has made black-capped petrels her focus, but pelagic birds in general have caught her imagination.

“They are like little superheroes. They live in this environment that is so foreign to us. You go out there on a boat. People are seasick and holding on and it’s really rough. And they’re just totally at home,” Sutherland said.

The black-capped petrel, though, is special to her.

“From the beginning I have been interested in all of the seabirds we see offshore, but the black-capped petrel is specific to this area, the Gulf Stream, and our offshore environment, so they are our signature species,” she said.

As a species, black-capped petrels have characteristics that set them apart.

“It’s the order Procellariiformes, the tube-nose seabirds,” Sutherland explained. “They have these tubular structures on top of their bill (that are) their own little desalinization plants. They need fresh water, they drink saltwater, they excrete this briny thick solution from those structures on their bill.”

The tube nose has another function as well.

“They also focus the scent molecules on their olfactory bulb, which is quite large. They have a highly developed sense of smell. It’s pretty amazing. That’s how a lot of times they find their food,” she said.

The first trip to the Gulf Stream was more than 20 years ago, and it was not a meticulously planned adventure. She and a friend from birding class at the western Virginia community college where she earned her associate’s degree in wildlife management were looking for something different to do and a pelagic birding trip was recommended.

“We came down here in 2000 for a winter trip, and it was weathered out,” Sutherland recalled. “So we went the next day, and she (the friend) was sick all day. And I was in the wheelhouse all day. They were keeping the numbers and the data and transect information, identifying all these birds and I was hooked.”

That was with charter boat Capt. Brian Patteson, who is now the captain of the Stormy Petrel II. At 61 feet long, it is a large, powerful craft. Sutherland still works with Patteson and is still keeping records.

She commuted that first year from Virginia to Hatteras Village, the Stormy Petrel’s homeport. A year later she moved to Hatteras Island.

It took her a while, but in 2015 she enrolled at University of North Carolina Wilmington, graduating in 2019 with her bachelor’s in marine biology, but as COVID-19 took hold, Sutherland reassessed what she was going to do with her degree.

“I had a bunch of work lined up on research vessels, which is kind of what I thought I wanted to do at the time. And then COVID happened. Everything was canceled,” she said.

Instead, she enrolled as a graduate student at the UNCW Department of Biology and Marine Biology, working with Dr. Steven Emslie as her adviser. The project she proposed was to analyze black-capped petrel feathers of specimens housed at the North Carolina State Museum of Natural History. The samples had been gathered by the late David Lee, who had been curator of birds at the museum.

Lee died in 2014.

Sutherland proposed analyzing isotopes of nitrogen, sulfur and carbon found in the specimens that could be used to profile the birds’ diets to see if what they were eating could account for color differences in the species.

A characteristic of black-capped petrels is the color variations among different birds.

“Two variations of Black-capped Petrel occur, a light form and a dark form, with some individuals displaying intermediate characteristics between the two,” she wrote in the introduction to her master’s thesis.

Where or why the variations occur is not understood. At present, the few nesting burrows that have been identified are exclusively dark or intermediate-colored birds.

“Burrows hosting light-form birds have yet to be discovered,” she wrote.

Sutherland had proposed that an analysis of the bird’s diet might explain the color differences, but that was not supported by the data.

“This study did not show any statistical differences … among the color forms in Black-capped Petrels,” she wrote in her conclusion.

But the study did suggest that male and female black-capped petrels forage for food in different parts of the Gulf Stream, and that the chemical analysis of the samples “… enhances our interpretation of foraging areas with females feeding in areas with prey having generally higher (sulphur) values, but lower (carbon) values, possibly due to using areas farther offshore than the males.”

Although she did not find the differentiation in diet she had suggested might exist between light and dark black-capped petrels, her work is nonetheless significant, Emslie, Sutherland’s adviser, noted.

“Overall, Kate has provided important baseline data that can help direct future studies of this and other seabird species for which we know little about their diet and foraging behavior,” he wrote in an email.

Third in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Persistent algal blooms on the Chowan River are nothing new, but there was a time when the problem, one affecting public health, the environment and the coastal economy, got better. Then the blooms returned, and researchers are still trying to determine why.

Blue-green algal blooms return each summer to rivers in northeastern North Carolina and linger. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality on July 18 issued a warning to avoid the Chowan River from Tyner on Indian Creek in northern Chowan County to Edenton.

Related: Lingering Chowan River algal bloom prompts state advisory

A 30-month program administered by the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council is more than a year into looking at why the Chowan, Perquimans and Pasquotank rivers are so prone to the blue-green algal blooms that are caused by cyanobacteria feeding frenzies on nutrient-rich waters. These bacteria are potentially toxic to humans and animals and are associated with hypoxia, or deprivation of oxygen, in the water, leading to fish kills.

Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council Executive Director Elizabeth Bryant, a longtime resident of the Edenton area, said the problem is significant and real, and affects the area’s most important resources.

“With blue-green algal blooms in Edenton Bay and then farther north on the Chowan River,” Bryant said, “They’ve been severe to the point where warnings had to go out about people not swimming, that if they’re boating, they should steer clear of algal blooms. And not touch the fish in the area. Obviously, that restricts tourism.”

The council serves 10 northeastern North Carolina counties: Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington.

Bryant said the algal blooms can be breathtaking and affect towns across the region.

“If you get out of your car, and you can hardly breathe because of the scent of algal blooms, you’re going to get back in your car,” she said. “That will inhibit tourism to Edenton to Elizabeth City.”

Some of the region’s smaller towns’ economies depend on the summer travelers to or from the Outer Banks, Bryant added.

The 30-month-long study, Bryant noted, will yield data for the council’s entire service area. The grant requires gathering samples consistently throughout the year and, importantly, water samples are collected at tributaries and streams, and not necessarily the larger rivers.

The study is funded through the Environmental Enhancement Grant program administered by the state attorney general’s office. The program is part of a 25-year agreement that resulted from the state’s hog waste pollution case settlement with Smithfield Foods.

Attorney General Josh Stein, speaking at an event in May in Bertie County, said that in the 22 years since the agreement was signed, about 210 projects had been funded with awards totaling more than $40 million. Numerous awards have supported different strategies to improve water quality, Stein said.

Colleen Karl is the chairperson of the Chowan Edenton Environmental Group. She and others in the organization are among the numerous amateur, or public, scientists who are gathering samples for analysis as part of the program.

“It’s a very large watershed and we’re sampling on a lot of back roads,” she said.

The Chowan Edenton Environmental Group is sampling the waters of Potecasi Creek, a tributary of the Chowan River that joins the river at almost the same location as the Meherrin River.

“Some of those tributaries that come off Potecasi Creek, were earmarked as pretty high in nitrogen,” she said.

Nitrogen and phosphorous have long been known to contribute to cyanobacteria blooms, but other factors have also been identified, including those related to climate change.

Dr. Hans Paerl and Dr. Nathan Hall of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences are analyzing the samples. Paerl, who has published papers on climate change and how it affects blue-green algae, explained that the organisms are influenced by changing weather patterns.

“These bloom organisms are particularly sensitive to climate change, including overall warming of the globe’s atmosphere and water, but then also more extreme events, like bigger storms and bigger droughts,” Paerl said. “Those things have come into the equation to more or less complicate factors in terms of coming up with recommending management strategies.”

Paerl has been studying the Chowan River watershed since the 1980s, when herring was still abundant in the river.

“When I first started working there, they had big herring pickling places (where) I used to buy my herring over in Colerain,” he recalled.

He was part of a team that came up with an early management plan for reducing the nutrient load entering the Chowan.

“When I first got hired to look at the blooms on the Chowan River, that was back in 1980, I believe. We did a good job. We identified both nitrogen and phosphorus and came up with some recommendations for how much reductions needed to take place in terms of input of those nutrients, and it proved to be pretty effective,” Paerl said.

It was a temporary reprieve.

“Then 15 or 20 years later, the blooms returned to the Chowan — pretty much the same players. So now we’re trying to figure out what has happened in the interim,” he said. “We’re still really aiming for nutrient reductions. We may need to reduce them even more now than we did before. The additional thing is climate change.”

But climate change does not completely explain why there has been an increase in algal blooms in rivers like the Chowan. As Hall explained, when the Albemarle Resource and Conservation Development Council first approached the researchers, they wanted to know where the nutrients had originated. In reviewing data and literature on nutrients in the rivers, a sudden spike wasn’t apparent.

“We have flow gauges (on the rivers) and the Division of Water Resources measures the concentrations. So, we have flow, we have concentrations, we can calculate loads,” Hall said. “Those major rivers don’t look particularly spectacular as far as how much load. The concentrations in the rivers really aren’t that high.”

What was apparent though was that relatively minor tributaries to the Albemarle Sound where gauges were in place or were otherwise monitored seemed to have significantly higher nutrient loads.

“For the few small streams where we do have concentration data, like the Scuppernong River, the Pasquotank River, the Perquimans River — these are smaller tributaries to the Albemarle Sound area — the concentrations are really high,” Hall said.

Those concentrations are also being found in the tributary streams — concentrations so high that they may be a significant contributing factor to algal blooms.

“A lot of the smaller streams are three times higher concentration than the big rivers. So if they’re carrying a proportional amount of flow and they’re about 15% of the watershed, they’re carrying three times higher concentration, they could be 40% of the load,” Hall said.

The study recently passed the 12-month mark, and there are still a number of unanswered questions. It remains unclear, for example, where or how the nitrogen is entering the river system.

“The organic nitrogen component is something that’s increasing in a lot of the streams in North Carolina. And it’s been kind of a head-scratcher as to where it’s coming from,” Hall said.

He explained that one of the goals of the project is to look across some of the streams that have different watershed and land-use characteristics, that are higher agriculture use, or include urban development, and try to investigate what the dissolved organic components look like.

Land use may be the key to mitigating extreme algal blooms, but to date the role of land use, how it affects nutrient loads, is not completely clear. To North Carolina State University researcher Dr. Chris Osburn, who is analyzing the data, the information is by no means definitive.

“Preliminary evidence points to changes in land use and climate (especially extreme rainfall events) that can mobilize DON (dissolved organic nitrogen) from wetlands and forested landscapes into tributaries, which could be driving some of the increases in DON observed in the Chowan River. Research into the sources of DON to these tributaries is ongoing,” Osburn responded to Coastal Review in an email.

Even if the sources of nutrients that are creating algal blooms in the Albemarle Basin are identified, Paerl said limiting the blooms is about the best that can be accomplished.

“We’re probably never going to be able to get rid of cyanobacteria in these slow-moving systems, and even in Albemarle Sound,” he said. “But we can keep it from getting worse.”

He said that’s essentially the point of mitigation strategies: holding back an issue or a problem from getting worse. “After all, cyanobacteria have been around on Earth for 2 billion years. They’re not going to go away.”

In 1860, Edmund Ruffin described the Corolla wild horses, the Banker horses, in his book, “Sketches of Lower North Carolina, and the Similar Adjacent Lands,” in unflattering language.

“These horses are all of small size, with rough and shaggy coats, and long manes. They are generally ugly,” he wrote.

Ruffin’s description is apt: The Corolla horses are small, and they tend to have rough, shaggy coats and long manes. Beautiful and ugly are in the eyes of the beholder, but even Meg Puckett, herd manager for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, agrees they are not show animals.

“Some of them are, we call them marshy, swampy ones. But those are the ones that survive, and they look like that way for a reason,” she said.

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund is the horses’ protector.

The Corolla wild horses are feral animals, a species that has been introduced into an environment and is not native to it. They are certainly horses, but their behavior has little in common with domestic horses, something Puckett knows from experience.

“I’ve had domestic horses my whole life,” she said. “And they’re so different. The way they think, the way they behave, just everything. Nothing is the same.”

How or when they first came to coastal North Carolina is unknown. Genetic testing has shown a direct link between the Corolla herd and the mustangs of the Conquistadors, although there are other genetic influences in their makeup.

Whatever their origins may have been, the Banker horses long thrived. Writing for the National Geographic in 1926, Melville Charter estimated that, “Between 5,000 and 6,000 of these wild horses roam the sandy banks of the North Carolina coast …”

After the 1920s, however, the population plummeted. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which was worried that the herd would compete with migratory waterfowl for resources when it established the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1938, placed a bounty on the horses.

Other factors, including a change in North Carolina open range laws that required the once free ranging horses to be penned, also contributed to a steep decline in the population.

The last remnants of that herd now live on the Shackelford Banks on Onslow Bay or Carova, the area that stretches 11 miles north of Corolla to the Virginia state line. Carova is an area with no paved roads, although large vacation homes dot the landscape.

A landrace breed

Banker horses have adapted to their environment. More than 160 years ago, Ruffin noted that the herd could survive where other breeds would die.

“To introduce horses of more noble race … if turned loose here, would scarcely live through either the plague of blood-sucking insects of the first summer, or the severe privations of the first winter,” he wrote.

The ability of the horses to survive in an environment that would most likely kill other breeds differentiates the Banker horses.

“They are considered a landrace breed, which means that they are a breed that has developed in a specific region and has developed adaptations, physical and behavioral adaptations, based on where they live,” Puckett said. “That sets them apart, regardless of anything else. And that’s what makes them Banker horses and culturally significant.”

It’s a hot and humid day on the Carova beach north of Corolla. On the dunes lining the beach, there is a small harem, a stallion, two mares, and a colt grazing on the sea oats.

The sea oats and other grasses that grow in the dunes are part of their adaptation. Puckett points out that what grows in the sandy soil of Carova would not sustain a domestic horse.

“They couldn’t process it and it also wouldn’t be enough calories,” she said. “That’s the big thing with these horses, they just do not need the calories.”

The reverse is also true — the Corolla horse cannot process the nutrient-rich grass that most horses eat. As development continues in the Carova area, some homeowners have planted grass. For the horse, it’s another place to graze, but Puckett notes, “that green grass is not that great for them.”

There are times a horse must be removed from the herd, usually to save its life, and after recovery from an injury or illness, the animal cannot go back to the wild. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund has a 10-acre farm where rescued horses are placed.

“You can’t put them out in the pasture at first because it’s just too much. They go out in the dirt paddock … because the grass will kill them,” Puckett said.

Managing the herd

Because a significant portion of the land where the horses roam is in the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge, the size of the herd is limited to 130 horses by a management agreement with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Puckett said the current population is 101, although there could be some uncounted animals in the marsh islands on the north end of Currituck Sound.

Recently a mare and her foal were added to the herd, and Puckett, who has named well over half the herd and knows them all by sight, is certain the pair had not been seen in the past.

“The mother of this foal has a very distinctive marking on her face, so I am positive that she’s not in our file,” she said.

That illustrates how difficult it is to get an accurate count of the herd.

“From what we’ve seen, there were five total out on that island. But you know, the horses go back and forth between those islands all the time,” she said.

Difficult decisions

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund has two goals with the herd, and Puckett said the two objectives can be at odds with each other at times.

“Managing a population of wild animals and also managing breed conservation do not always go hand in hand,” she said. “Not only are we trying to allow a wild population of animals to stay here and remain wild, but we have to make sure that they can do that. We have such a small population that every individual is critically so important that we can’t afford to lose them. So, at what point do you step in? And at what point do you let nature take its course? And it can be tricky.”

Puckett said the horses can survive injuries that a domestic horse does not encounter, such as after a fight between stallions.

“They can survive injuries and issues that a domestic horse would just lay down and die. You’ll have a stallion with a neck bite or something like that, but they’re tough. It’s very, very rare that you need to intervene when it comes to natural injuries. My general rule of thumb is, if something happened to it naturally, I’m not messing with it. It doesn’t need me giving antibiotics. That’s a part of life for these horses,” Puckett said.

There are injuries and diseases in which a horse must be treated, and sometimes difficult decisions must be made.

Equine pythiosis is almost always fatal to a horse if untreated. Sometimes called swamp cancer, the pathogen that causes it is Pythium insidiosum.

The Louisiana State University Ag Center website describes the disease as, “traditionally thought of as an aquatic fungi or water mold and typically occurs in wetland conditions.”

It begins at a small cut. The wound does not heal and develops into tumor-like lesions. Over time, the pathogen will infect the animal’s entire system, eventually killing it.

Since 2020, there have been four cases of the disease among the Corolla herd …

“… that we know of,” Puckett stressed.

The first case that was detected illustrates the often-difficult decisions that must be made balancing herd management and breed conservation.

“The first mare that got it, she had just had a foal. So we said, ‘Alright, this is fatal, but it’s not immediately fatal.’ The quality of life really doesn’t begin to deteriorate right away,” she said.

The options were to take the mare in for treatment immediately at the North Carolina State University College for Veterinary Medicine or allow her to raise her colt.

Although quality of life for the mare was not yet affected, Puckett and the vets who were aware of the situation decided the disease was too far advanced for a successful outcome. But, if they pulled the mare from herd before the colt was weaned, the colt would also have to be taken from the herd and raised at the farm.

“The chances of us being able to save her at this point were pretty slim,” Puckett explained. “We’ve now lost her and the foal from the herd, or we can leave her here, let her raise him and then next year when he’s old enough, we’ll take her and see what we can do about treating her. That’s what we decided to do. She unfortunately did not survive.”

“But the colt is still here. He has a harem of his own now,” she added.

Human interaction

Many of the people who encounter the Banker horses do so when the animals come out of the dunes and wade into the surf.

“Especially when it’s really buggy and hot,” Puckett said.

The beach is a crowded place, with four-wheel-drive vehicles lined up for miles. On this recent day, a stallion and two mares can be seen walking along the wet sand. A Currituck County ordinance mandates a 50-foot separation between people and the horses, and on this day, the beachgoers are doing a good job of keeping their distance.

The horses don’t seem to be bothered by the families and all the cars.

“They don’t care about people,” Puckett said. “They’re going to go where they’re most comfortable. But, do I think that it does change their behavior? Some. If it’s really, really crowded, that could certainly deter them from wanting to go out there. But at the same time, they’re used to it.”

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund is a mostly volunteer operation, and Puckett noted that in the summer there are almost always two volunteers on the beach trying to let people know about how to avoid interacting with the horses.

“I think that people don’t understand how lucky they are that these horses are so generally good-natured. There could be a lot more pain and suffering that could happen if they were more reactive,” she said, adding, “It can happen in a heartbeat. They are very wild. Last Sunday we had a group of stallions that were fighting, and they ran over the dunes and ran right through people on the beach.”

She looked over at a harem grazing on sea oats and the sparse grasses. The colt stayed close to his mother and Puckett smiled.

“It never gets old,” she said. “Never, never gets old.”

Last in a series on pollinators.

KITTY HAWK — Denise Deacon inspects her bees. This year she only has one hive, although in years past she has had more — as many as eight.

She gently pries the lid off and points to the dark brown resin that lines the top of the inside of the hive.

“That’s the propolis,” she says, explaining that it’s resin the bees collect from trees and other plants that they use to weatherproof the hive.

She slides a frame out and looks at it critically. It’s still early in the season for honey production — they’ll get around to that later in the summer. Right now, the bees are concentrating on foraging for food, building the hive and reproduction.

The bees in this frame have been working on the honeycomb for some time and the comb fills almost the entire frame.

She pulls out another frame and in this frame the honeycomb is clearly a work in progress, the comb filling perhaps a third of the frame. Each cell appears to be identical, although they are not. The largest are reserved for the drone bees, smaller ones for workers and the queen bee gets her own shape and size.

The comb, the wax the bees produce to seal the honey in the combs, and the honey are unique to the honeybee. Other bees die off in the winter and emerge as the weather warms. Honeybees stay active in their hive all winter and the honey is their food source.

They produce more honey than they need for the winter, although beekeepers vary in how much honey they’ll harvest. Some, like Deacon, leave enough honey for the hive to get through the winter. Others take all the honey and feed the bees sugar water as a substitute.

“Some people do take off honey and then feed them sugar water, to make it through the winter. They will survive but they won’t be as healthy is my understanding,” she said.

This is Deacon’s 10^th year raising her own bees, although the idea had been in the back of her mind since childhood and the onetime attempt by her father.

“In my teens, my father started beekeeping,” she recalled. After a weekend away, “We came back and the house had been broken into and they had kicked over the beehive. He didn’t continue from that point forward. (But) that was just something in the back of my mind that might be a cool thing to do.”

She is a member of the Outer Banks Beekeeper’s Guild, one of the founding members, although she downplays that role.

“In my mind. I may have made phone calls to people to say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and talk about getting a group together,’” she said.

The guild is part of the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association, an amateur beekeeping organization that may be the largest in the country.

“We do have the largest state (bee) association, with nearly 5,000 paid members,” said Dr. David Tarpy, apiculture professor and extension specialist at North Carolina State University. “Compared to even large states like California and Texas (we have) more beekeepers. In Texas and California, those are large-scale commercial guys so they have more colonies but fewer beekeepers.”

There are some large commercial beekeeping operations in the state, but Tarpy, when comparing North Carolinas commercial beekeepers to other states, said they are, “vanishingly small.”

The number could be fewer than a dozen.

Not all the commercial operations take place in the state; they are, in fact, somewhat migratory.

“There are large-scale beekeepers that reside here full time and go out to California every winter for the almonds and up to Maine for the blueberries and things like that,” he said.

There are 4,000 or so species of bees that live in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and the honeybee is not even native to the continent. The first shipment of honeybees arrived in the Virginia Colony in early 1622. By the end of the 17th century, they were part of everyday life, although beeswax was the more valuable commodity at that time.

As an introduced species, there is controversy surrounding honeybees. Deacon pointed out that even her lone hive could have an effect on the local ecology.

“The problem with honeybees, you’re bringing 40,000 insects into this realm of 3 to 5 miles and all these other native bees that are all out there competing for the same plants,” she said.

Tarpy sees the issue of competition with native species as overblown and, perhaps, one that misses more significant questions.

“Whatever competition has happened, it’s been going on for 400-plus years. Ecology responds a lot faster than that,” he said. “There probably has been competition and certainly when beekeepers move their hives into a very fragile area like a desert, they can swamp whatever species are there. So it certainly is an issue and one we need to be cautious about. But is it driving the extinctions of these other bees? I think there are bigger fish to fry for that: pesticides, those kind of things.”

The pollinator population in general is under stress. And, although careless pesticide use does threaten honeybees, the most significant natural peril is the varroa mite.

It is not the mite itself, though, that is the threat, rather it is the disease the mites carry.

“I would say that public enemy No. 1, 2, and 3 are all called the varroa mite,” Tarpy said. “They’re like little vampires, sucking the bees until they’re so anemic that other stressors start to compound. But the biggest thing that we’re actively researching is that it’s not really the varroa mites that kill bees. It’s the viral pathogens that they’re vectoring. They’re like little dirty hypodermic syringe needles.”

There is no easy way to protect bees from varroa mites. The N.C. State Apiculture Program is concentrating on two areas of research: strengthening hives so they can better withstand stress and early detection of infection.

“We offer this service that if you send in your bees, we can … look at all of these different pathogens and see if we can identify if you have an overwhelming pathogen load within the colony,” Tarpy said.

Tarpy’s research is finding ways to identify the strongest queen for a colony. The apiculture lab has developed empirical measurements that can be applied to queen bee health, and Tarpy’s research has shown healthy queens correlate to a healthier hive.

“If you have a bad queen, your ceiling is low. If you have a good queen, your ceiling is high. The queen is this singular thing that beekeepers have control over,” he said.

The work is currently conducted in a dilapidated building on the N.C. State campus.

“Research is being conducted in one of the worst facilities in the University of North Carolina system,” according to the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association’s website. “There is inadequate room for instruction, storage and research … The teaching classroom is in the former kitchen and dining area where long leak stains adorn the sheetrock ceiling. During rain showers, buckets are strategically placed in order to catch rain water that drips through the sheetrock.”

The association lobbied state legislators for funds to replace the building and the North Carolina General Assembly responded in 2019 with $4 million for a new apiculture center.

“We’re on the downhill slope of the design phase, which is the fun part for me because we get to decide what kind of rooms we want, what we’re going to put in it and how we’re going to use it. We’re building this facility exactly the way that it would really work well for apiculture, science and extension. It’s having all the elements that we could ever want,” Tarpy said.

Construction is estimated to be completed in August 2024.

MANTEO — The Juneteenth celebration at the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum was held two days early this year, an event that focused on the African American experience as part of the fabric of our nation and that included the announcement of a new effort to help tell part of the story.

A glimpse into the Freedmen’s Colony experience may soon be brought to life thanks to a planned Fort Raleigh National Historic Site project, Ranger Isabel Gonzalez announced Saturday.

She said that the National Park Service is creating a 1.2-mile interpretive trail to help visitors understand the short-lived colony where formerly enslaved people of Roanoke Island got their first taste of freedom during the Union occupation early in the Civil War.

The trail project planning is still in its earliest stages, Gonzalez noted.

“Right now, there’s nothing out there. If you’re walking on it, you’re going to get bit by mosquitoes and that’s it,” she said.

The work, though, has begun on recreating the history and lives of the people who lived there, and Gonzalez described the stories that will be told along the trail once it is completed.

“We’re going to establish seven outdoor exhibits on the Freedom Trail that talk about not just what life was like in the Freedmen’s Colony but also present individual stories, actual people that lived there, because while we don’t have many pictures, we do have enough narratives to build stories for these individuals, to give them a voice,” she said.

Viewed as different

The Pea Island Cookhouse Museum is a small building on the west side of Manteo that has been meticulously restored and contains memorabilia and artifacts illustrating the Black experience in the U.S. Life-Saving Service. The building was, at one time, the cookhouse for the Pea Island Life-Saving Station, the only all-Black crew in the history of the Life-Saving Service, a tradition that continued even after the service became the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. The station was deactivated in 1947.

The Pea Island Preservation Society is the organization that moved the cookhouse to Manteo and renovated the building.

During the Juneteenth event featuring lyric tenor and native son Tshombe Selby, a member of the Metropolitan Opera of New York, the society’s outreach director, Joan Collins, described what 19th century life was like for the Black crewmen.

Calling attention to Capt. Richard Etheridge, who in 1880 became the first Black captain of a Life-Saving Station, Collins described his history with the service and how it was defined by race.

“Before the all-Black Pea Island Life-Saving Station was formed, Richard Etheridge himself was part of what was called a checkerboard crew, a lifesaving crew that had both white and Black surfman,” she said.

“Why was there even a need to make a racially mixed station have a different name?” she asked and then answered her question. “Because they were viewed as different. These men frankly existed at a time when being white was right. And being Black meant you were looked at and you were viewed differently. But certainly, the heroes of this history, they were no different than anyone else.”

For Collins, the lessons of the checkerboard crews and the Pea Island Life-Saving Station continue to be relevant to understanding the call to freedom.

“Learn about it, share it, embrace it, challenge others to do the same,” she said. “Learn the powerful stories, the heroic stories, the sad stories, the complicated stories, the hopeful stories, the stories that remind us of the sound of freedom.”

Selby, as the featured performer, began the event with his a cappella interpretation of “The Star Spangled Banner,” staying true to the traditional melody while also displaying his operatic skills, range and nuance.

Performing with pianist John Buford, Selby also performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Written and composed by James Weldon Johnson and his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson in 1900, the song has become known as the African American national anthem.

In past years, Selby’s selections at the Juneteenth Pea Island Cookhouse celebration have focused on traditional spirituals, and some were included this year — “Give Me Jesus” and “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands” among them. But he also brought more contemporary songs describing the Black experience, including Sam Cooke’s “Long Time Coming” and a rousing arrangement of “I Wish I Knew how It Would Feel to be Free,” a song made famous by Nina Simone.

The day’s events ended with the unveiling of Nags Head artist James Melvin’s most recent painting, “The Freedmen’s School,” depicting children and adults at a Freedmen’s school learning how to read.

Second in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Attorney General Josh Stein was at the Tall Glass of Water county park in Bertie County last month to meet with four groups whose projects had benefited from the Environmental Enhancement Grants that his office had awarded in eastern North Carolina.

The EEG funds are through a 25-year agreement the state and Smithfield Farms entered into in 2000 as part of a settlement stemming from hog waste pollution caused by company farms. The grants have been awarded since 2002.

Although advocates say EEGs have had an effect wherever they have been awarded, for Tall Glass of Water, the impact was particularly significant.

“The environmental enhancement money helped with the outdoor spaces that needed to be repaired,” Robin Payne told Coastal Review in an interview shortly after the Stein visit. Payne has been the facilitator for the project for the county since late 2019.

Those funds are what enabled Dr. Bo Dame, professor of biology and physical sciences at Chowan University, to bring his students to Tall Glass of Water as part of an ongoing restoration and study program of the site’s environment.

“We were asked to help with planning for wetland restoration … establish an ecological monitoring program. That program has a very strong water quality component to it,” he told Stein, adding that he hoped the program could eventually be a part of the local school system’s curriculum. “The idea is that we would implement that monitoring program until the restoration was done and a little bit beyond that, and then hand it over to the (local) schools.”

Sometime next month, the first phase of the Tall Glass of Water park is expected to be completed. The restrooms will be ready, the wheelchair-accessible ramp to the beach will be built, picnic tables in place, and a site the Tall Glass of Water website describes as “unlike anywhere else in Northeastern North Carolina” will be fully opened to the public.

The next phase is to feature an outdoor performance area.

It is a lush, scenic site. An open field gives way to high bluffs that overlook the river. There is a sandy beach that extends for 2,200 feet. Looking south along the beach, the Chowan River has carved deeply into the soil, creating shear bluffs 20 feet high in places. Tree roots are exposed, looping out of the dirt then back into the bluff.

The county purchased the property in 2016 in part thanks to a North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund grant. With its natural beauty and setting, it is, Payne said, the best possible fit for a county park.

“Bertie County looked at their assets, and they’re all nature-based assets,” she said.

It is a point of view that marine geologist Dr. Stan Riggs addressed during Stein’s visit.

“When I came in here, what became obvious, is that this is a world-class water system that surrounds Bertie County,” Riggs said. “So let’s look at the resources here … and what can we do with these with respect to long-term ecotourism and sustainability.”

Asked about Riggs’ contribution to Bertie County, Payne told the Coastal Review that his vision for the county extended well beyond the 147 acres at the site.

“Bertie County has such a wealth of natural resources and their geological history, there’s just so much there that’s worth protecting and (Riggs) has been a dynamo in helping the county do it,” she said.

Walking with the attorney general along the bluff, Riggs explained the geographical and ecological history of the area. As Stein and the other group members came to a trail that would eventually cut through a heavily forested part of the site, Riggs explained how important it was to understand what the county and state had at Tall Glass of Water.

At the base of the hills, the dark waters of a swamp reflected water tupelo, common spatterdock and other trees that thrive in a wetland environment.

“These are incredible ravines and they’re so steep that they could never be logged,” Riggs said. “This is probably one of the most perfect examples of a mature North Carolina hardwood forest. You’ve got a few big trees, you’ve got middle-sized trees, you’ve got new, young growth. This has probably never been logged, because there’s plenty of wood out here on the flatlands.”

Especially at the north end of the site where the swamp lies, the Tall Glass of Water project has been called ambitious.

“The TGOW Wetlands Restoration Northern Boundary project goal is to reestablish pre-agriculture hydrology and plant communities that support the healthy functioning of the incised ephemeral stream for improved water quality and habitat,” the Tall Glass of Water website states.

But for Bertie County, the Tall Glass of Water project represents more than environmental rehabilitation.

Some 2 miles of trails wind their way through the forests and wetlands. Almost surrounded by Salmon River Natural Area, the trails on the north end connect with a trail leading into the natural area.

The beach is relatively narrow, but the sand is soft and with 2,200 feet along the Chowan River, public access to water activities on the river are available for the first time in the county’s history, something Bertie County Board Chair Ron Wesson who grew up in the county, said is particularly important.

“I’ve never had access because there’s never been a public access on the Albemarle Sound,” he said. “There’s been a lot of private beach clubs, but kids like me when I grew up here, you could never access any of those. So having a public source access to the sound is very important for us.”

Although the EEG award has been invaluable in completing the first phase of Tall Glass of Water, Payne emphasized that it is not the only grant or source of funding for the project. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was also involved.

“The USDA paid for planning money and then the Environmental Enhancement (Grant) helped with the outdoor spaces that needed to be repaired,” she said. “And then the county, through legislative appropriation, and some of their ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds were able to cobble together the entire picture.”

The money to complete the project though is just one part of the picture. Asked about the long-term maintenance of Tall Glass of Water, Wesson, the board chair, was emphatic that the county understood that it would take a commitment on their part.

“We would not have gone down this road unless we were sure that this is something that was not a just a short-term venture, but a long-term venture, decades really, because we need to make sure there is a reason to come to Bertie County,” he said.

Next in the series: Testing the waters.

First in a series on the Albemarle region’s environmental-economic connections.

Standing on a bluff overlooking the Chowan River at Bertie County’s Tall Glass of Water outdoor education site, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein spoke last month about the North Carolina Environmental Enhancement Grants, or EEGs, what they have meant to communities, and what they have meant to him personally.

Stein, speaking during the May 4 event, said awarding EEGs is one of the most fun things he gets to do as attorney general. Addressing organizations selected for the EEGs, he said being able to support the good work of community organizations and civically minded folks was tremendous.

“To see these funds pour back into North Carolina … using a whole variety of different strategies … It’s my privilege to be able to do this work and it’s certainly my pleasure to do this work,” Stein said.

Earlier this year: State announces millions for park accessibility grants

The EEG program was part of a binding agreement in 2000 between Smithfield Foods and the state calling for the hog producer to phase out the use of open-air hog lagoons. As part of that agreement, Smithfield agreed to provide up to $2 million per year for 25 years of environmental projects across the state.

The EEG program began distributing grants in 2002.

“So far, we’ve done something like 210 projects in excess of $40 million,” Stein said.

Stein noted in his remarks that most, though not all, of the Environmental Enhancement Grants have been focused on eastern North Carolina, and the grants he came to Bertie County to talk about are specific to the area. The Albemarle Resource Conservation and Development Council received a grant to study algal blooms on the Chowan River, and the Audubon Society is applying a $98,000 grant to wetland restoration in Currituck County.

For many of the grants, the most apparent outcomes are visible. That is the case at Tall Glass of Water, as trails are cleared and much-needed unimpeded access to the beach becomes a reality.

For Bertie County, a Tier 1, or most-distressed county on the North Carolina Department of Commerce’s ranking of counties’ economic well-being, and facing a recent spate of violent crime, six murders this year, at least one of the grants may come to represent the human benefits of environmental enhancements.

The EEG funding for the Bertie County Hive House Virtual Learning Center at 103 Mitchell St. in Lewiston Woodville will create a green space from 4 acres of meadow, overgrown with invasive species and with limited access. But for Vivian Saunders, executive director of the Hive House, the grant, she explained to Stein, is more than just open space for the small town on the west side of the county.

Saunders spoke about “the unfortunate deaths” in Bertie County in the last couple of months, referring to the six homicides in 2023.

“What we’re going to try to do is … get our young people involved in some outdoor workforce-development training so we can get them outside (instead) of playing games and being on video games,” she said. “We’re trying to transform our young people’s minds from sitting in the house staying on video games to being back outside and around nature.”

Saunder’s remarks sparked an almost immediate response from Stein.

“That’s a wonderful articulation of the relationship of kids and mental health and nature,” he said.

Lewiston Woodville was once a small but thriving crossroads town. That was a long time ago. The few businesses that once lined the streets are now closed and falling into disrepair. The only open business by the crossroads is a gas station and convenience store. The paint on the front of the building is chipped and fading. On the west side of town is natural gas infrastructure where maintenance work in May produced a seemingly ceaseless din of venting gas and flame that resembled the sound of a jet engine.

The Bertie County Hive House, at the corner of Mitchell and Cashie streets, is just off the town crossroads. It is a rambling old house that Saunders has made into a gathering place for anyone who wants to come.

The house, Saunders said, was donated to her by her pastor, Dr. Gary Cordon. When she first got it, the house was not in very good shape, but a grant from Perdue Farms, the largest employer in Bertie County, paid for its rehabilitation.

“Perdue, they did the total renovations,” she emphasized.

The Hive House, as Saunders describes it, is a safe place, a shelter where people can come for whatever reason, and she added that space is available at almost any time, day or night.

“If you need somewhere to work, or chill, you can just give me a call: ‘Vivian, can I get into the Hive?’ And my people will come and unlock it,” she said.

For Saunders, the issues confronting the county have their roots in poverty and the hopelessness it creates, and she is uncompromising as she paints a picture of the impact on the county’s youth.

“You’re telling me, sitting in school, that I’ve got the whole world ahead of me. And then I go home, and some folks don’t have toilets. I’m in a mobile home, where I can see the dog running underneath. I don’t have lights on. Sometime my mom and dad are working so hard, I don’t get to see them,” Saunders said describing the county’s poverty.

She points out that the county has one of the state’s highest rates of juvenile diabetes related to obesity, an observation that is confirmed in the 2018 Bertie County Community Health Assessment, and to her the key is getting young adults and kids off social media and back outside.

“We got to get these babies back outside, loving nature, loving the community,” she said. “Kids don’t go outside. They want to be on MacBooks, phones and computers. One of the things that I’m going to require (on the green space work), you’ve got to leave that phone alone. You’ve got to go outside. Our project is to actually build that park.”

The work is still in its earliest stages. The design for the 4-acre green space is being handled by North Carolina State University landscape architecture and environmental planning professor Kofi Boone. He agreed that there is concern about the overall health of the community.

“The health disparities facing Bertie County broadly and Lewiston-Woodville specifically are alarming,” he wrote in an email response to Coastal Review. “That includes all sectors but especially seniors and young people. Vivian Saunders and Hive House have also expressed the need for young people to belong to the process and the transformation and see opportunities to look at workforce development associated with green space transformation.

Asked what the potential impact of creating a community green space could be, Boone was cautiously optimistic.

“The issues facing towns like Lewiston-Woodville are complex and beyond the scope of what one green space can solve on its own,” he wrote. “However, green space that can reflect and reinforce community values can engender a spirit of stewardship and care that can offer safe, and healthy open space for people to enjoy.”

That sense of cautious optimism is shared by Bertie County Sheriff Tyrone Ruffin.

“If people utilize it, yes, it will be a good thing for our county,” he said. “But do I think that is the solution to (all) issues? The answer’s no.”

Boone, however, does see the outdoor space as an important component in addressing the overall health of the community. He noted that the health concerns raised by Saunders could potentially be affected by an outdoor area for the community.

“The town does not currently have a public green space. From research, we know that a lack of access to green space can contribute to a lack of physical activity and poorer health outcomes. We know that well designed green space can help support improved physical health and mental wellbeing,” Boone wrote.

The field is going to take some work to create something usable. There are numerous ways to remove invasive species and Boone has not yet come to a decision on the best method.

“We’re going to be working with a number of partners to determine the right approach to handling invasive species. The treatments can vary,” he wrote.

There is also, evidently, material from what was once the West Bertie Elementary School that closed in the 1970s, according to Boone.

Graduate students from the N.C. State School of Landscape Architecture will be on hand to supervise the work, at times spending the night at the Hive House. Saunders mentioned that they are donating their time, and that the only request they made was, “all they’ve asked us to do is keep the fridge full for us.”

The project is still in its earliest stages, yet for Saunders even as the initial steps are taken, she sees hope in the willingness of people to work together to improve conditions in a troubled county.

“I want to thank everyone involved in helping us transform and take back our county from all the negativity that’s been going on,” she said.

Next in the series: A Tall Glass of Water.

When 85 men, women and children lost their lives Jan. 31, 1878, as the Metropolis broke into pieces in the Currituck Banks surf, it was the final chapter in the story of a ship that should not have put to sea and, according to new research, may still rest on a Currituck beach.

In his recently completed master’s thesis, “From USS Stars and Stripes to Metropolis (1861-present): Modeling the Life, Loss, and Archaeological Site Formation of a Currituck Beach Shipwreck,” East Carolina University researcher Matthew Pawelski details the history of a once-proud Civil War naval vessel from its launch to its final voyage. Taking that information and using historical records, computer-aided design and 3D imaging, he found strong suggestive evidence that wreckage from the Metropolis remains on Corolla Beach.

The sinking of the Metropolis with its horrific loss of life came just two months after the USS Huron broke apart and sank 200 yards from the Nags Head Lifesaving Station that was closed for the season. Ninety-eight men lost their lives at that time. The combination of the two tragedies brought national attention to the shortcomings of the Lifesaving Service and prompted Congress to fully fund the service that was the predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Stars and Stripes

The Metropolis began life as the Stars and Stripes. Launched in spring 1861, the ship was described in Pawelski’s paper as a “smart looking three masted steamer.”

With the surrender of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces on April 13, 1861, the U.S. needed to quickly expand its naval fleet, and the Stars and Stripes, at 150 feet long with a beam of 34 feet, was exactly what the U.S. Navy needed.

Over the next four years, the ship was engaged in numerous battles, including significant action in North Carolina waters.

“All told, USS Stars and Stripes captured or destroyed six blockade runners, destroyed numerous supply sources and land-based units, and engaged in two battles of note, those of Roanoke Island and New Bern,” Pawelski writes.

Time as a merchant ship

After the war ended, the Stars and Stripes was decommissioned and sold as surplus, spending the next six years as a merchant ship until it was purchased by the Lunt Brothers, an East Coast shipping company.

After 10 years of hard use, the ship badly needed work, but rather than repair their new purchase, Lunt Brothers surrendered the ship’s registration, claiming it could not be salvaged. The company then took the unsalvageable vessel to Newbury, Massachusetts, shipbuilder Eben Manson, owner of Manson Shipbuilding.

Manson cut the ship in two and, “added 56 feet amidships, bringing the vessel to around 198 feet in length …(and) another deck was added,” Pawelski writes. The ship’s rated tonnage increased from 484 to 878.

When launched in August 1871, the ship was renamed the Metropolis, and although rebuilt, questions about its seaworthiness persisted.

It took Manson less than eight weeks to complete the work to lengthen the Metropolis to 196 feet. Pawelski told Coastal Review that was not enough time to properly rebuild the Stars and Stripes.

“In order to make that ship go from (approximately) a 500-ton to 1,000-ton (vessel), you’d have to take it all the way down to the studs, and you don’t have time for that in five to eight weeks,” he said.

The rebuilt ship needed extensive repairs on two separate occasions, the second time in December 1877 after the Metropolis ran aground off Hampton, Virginia.

Final voyage

Nonetheless, the Metropolis was in Philadelphia Jan. 22, 1878, loading 700 tons of cargo, including 500 tons of steel rail for a railroad project in Brazil. There were also 248 passengers and crew on board, most en route to Brazil to work on the railroad project.

When departing Philadelphia the next day, seas were calm, but as the morning wore on Jan. 24, 1878, the ocean became turbulent. That evening, as the ship passed Norfolk, seas continued to rise, and 500 tons of steel rail that was improperly stored began to shift in the hold.

Water was discovered in the hold, and the crew determined that the leak was coming from a damaged sternpost. Capt. J.H. Ankers ordered coal jettisoned to lighten the load. After 50 tons of coal was thrown overboard, pumps began to gain the upper hand. But the steel rails were still shifting below deck and the ship’s seams were splitting.

The incoming water overwhelmed the pumps, and they stopped working. Passengers and crew formed bucket brigades.

Little progress could be made before a large wave hit the vessel around 5 a.m. Jan. 31.

“This wave tore off the smokestack, the vessel’s lifeboats, parts of the saloon deck, steam whistle, and after-mainsail. In addition, the wave also put out the fires in the boilers, completely disabling the vessel,” Pawelski writes.

Ankers, the captain, knew the Metropolis was lost. Hoping to save lives and possibly the cargo, he steered the ship toward land, grounding on the outer bar of Currituck Beach, 300 yards from shore at 7 a.m. Soon after the grounding, a large wave struck the ship and carried it to the inner bar, about 100 yards from shore, about 3 miles south of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse and 4 miles south of Lifesaving Station No. 4.

When told by locals that the Metropolis was on the sandbar, the Lifesaving Service crew immediately headed out. Hauling heavy rescue equipment across a sometimes overwashed beach and toiling into the teeth of a storm, the crew did not arrive on the scene until noon, even with the help of a resident, John Dunton, who loaned them his pony.

The Lifesaving Service’s standard practice in rescuing stranded crews and passengers was to use a mortar to fire a round shot with a heavy line attached to it. The line would then be secured to the ship and affixed on land so that a breeches buoy could be used to bring people to safety.

The first shot fired from the shore went long, but according to Capt. JH Merryman’s report on the incident to the Secretary of the Treasury, first shots were rarely accurate.

“However, familiar or skillful the station men may be in the use of the mortar the failure of the first shot is not unusual as the distance to be reached and the force of the wind are difficult to estimate,” he wrote.

The second shot was on target, but it, too, failed. According to Merryman and Lifesaving personnel, the line was not attached properly to the ship, and as the Metropolis pitched and rolled in the surf, the line snapped.

One of the passengers rescued that day later gave a conflicting account that appeared in newspapers at the time, claiming the problem was the Lifesaving Service crew.

“Owing to the stupidity of the crew on shore, the line was cut off against the jib stay,” according to a report in the Feb. 8, 1878, edition of the Wilmington Post.

Keeper Capt. John Chappell had only brought two charges for the breeches canon, and firing the canon with nonstandard gunpowder borrowed from Currituck residents failed to achieve an accurate shot.

Merryman was especially critical of Chappell, writing that it was an “… inexcusable neglect of the keeper in having but two charges of powder in his flask.”

However, he also noted that Chappell and the personnel of Station 4 risked their lives to rescue people who were desperately trying to swim ashore in the surf.

Still, his most damning criticism was directed at the Metropolis itself, pointing out even the most rudimentary warning system was unavailable.

“If the Metropolis had carried as I am informed she did not, a small gun … for making sound signals of distress … as she neared the land, its reports would have been heard at the light house and also at the station … and there would have been time for the life saving crew to have reached the wreck before the hour they were notified by Mr Brock,” he wrote. Brock was the resident who informed the crew of the wreck.

Merryman also called into question whether the Metropolis was seaworthy.

“I submit herewith two pieces of decayed wood from different parts of the vessel’s frame,” he wrote.

Even though testimony raised doubts about the work Manson had done in 1871 and the general state of the vessel, Pawelski notes, “The only person who took any fall was Keeper Chappell,” who lost his job.

Identification

The Currituck Banks shoreline is part of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and the skeletal remains of ships are part of the beach, as the sand, wind and tide alternately reveal and then cover the flotsam – remains of ships that floundered offshore.

In winter 2022, Pawelski and a team from the ECU Maritime graduate studies program, including Director of Maritime Studies Dr. Nathan Richards, examined a half-mile stretch of beach, evaluating known archeological sites and identifying a new item of interest. The general onshore location of the 1878 rescue attempt is believed to be about 3 1/2 miles south of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.

In the past, the archeological sites along that stretch of beach from Albacore Street south for about 2,500 feet have been noted and marked, but rarely have meticulous examinations of them been done. Access to the sites is weather-dependent. The ECU team was on the beach soon after a nor’easter had exposed some of the shipwreck material not regularly seen.

Pawelski, using computer and imaging technology, made detailed on-site measurements, photos, a half model of the Stars and Stripes at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, and historic paintings of the Metropolis, was able to create a 3D model of the ship’s interior framing and exterior. His work strongly suggests that some of the material on Currituck Beach came from the doomed ship.

The ECU team identified 15 potential sites for additional investigation in the half-mile of beach where they were working. Some were buried sites that instruments had detected, and others clearly could not have been associated with the Metropolis. There were three sites, though, that they found warranted additional examination.

On the north end of the field, the O’Keefe site, CKB (Currituck Beach) 0015, is well known as home to the frame of a ship that has at times been cited as the remains of the Metropolis. Pawelski found the size of the wreck to be close to that of the Metropolis’ known measurements, but the framing at the site is too small and the wood does not match insurance records for the vessel.

The other two sites, one previously unidentified and the Ray Midgett CKB0023 site, revealed more striking similarities to the structure of the Metropolis.

“The unidentified CKB site is potentially part of the bow construction of a ship. Measurements of the site’s timbers made it a prime candidate to be related to Metropolis,” Pawelski found.

The Ray Midgett site, CKB0023, features a large piece of material believed to be decking. This site, when overlaid with a 3D rendering of the Metropolis, appears to match far more precisely than the O’Keefe site.

Pawelski was guarded in his conclusion.

“With the model evidence in mind, it is likely that CKB0023 is a section of Metropolis. However, given the inability to account for the actual deck structure and density of deck beams on Metropolis … along with the presence of so many wrecks along its coast, it is impossible to conclusively say that CKB0023 is a part of Metropolis without specific period correct artifacts or something with the vessel’s name on it,” he wrote.

This story was updated to clarify information on the tentative date of a public hearing on a proposed zoning amendment unrelated to the Wanchese cluster home decision.

By a unanimous vote Monday, the Dare County Board of Commissioners approved a special use permit for a proposed cluster development on about 10.5 acres along Old Wharf Road in Wanchese.

The vote was 5-0 with Commissioners Ervin Bateman and Jim Tobin recused.

The proposed project site will feature 60 two- and three-bedroom homes, according to plans submitted by Brad Alexander, owner of Aria Construction & Development of Creswell.

The vote followed a sometimes noisy and angry public comment period with residents of the unincorporated village of Wanchese telling county commissioners they believed they had been betrayed. Frustrated that zoning changes made in 2018 allowed for cluster, or high-density, development in the village, residents directed their frustration at commissioners, telling them numerous times during the meeting that they had lost their constituents’ votes.

“I’m only one vote but it can be multiplied,” Wanchese resident Nan Willis told the board.

The 2018 changes were geared toward addressing the county’s shortage of affordable housing.

Wanchese residents Monday repeatedly pointed to the Wanchese Village Residential Zoning District ordinance passed by the county in 2006 that they believed would preserve the “village feel” of the community. Several speakers noted that the 2018 zoning amendments were poorly advertised and that residents were not aware of the changes.

Residents, however, were concerned about more than whether the cluster development would change the nature of the village. Of particular concern was stormwater in an area that historically has poor drainage.

Rex Mann noted that during periods of heavy rain Wanchese was prone to flooding and that “the county has had to pay to have low-lying areas pumped. Even with retention ponds the ground can only accept so much water and when it can’t accept any more, it comes up in a different area.”

The project site is forested, and a number of residents brought up the impact of losing so many trees.

Their concerns were buttressed by Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate and environmental economist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wanchese office. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review. Flynn asked the county to withhold issuing special use permits until a county engineer could be hired to approve the developer’s plan, as stipulated under the stormwater management heading in the county development ordinance.

“Specifically tonight, the Federation requests that no approval be granted for special use permit applications falling under the cluster home ordinance for unincorporated Dare county until an engineer is on staff or at a minimum contracted on behalf of the county,” she told commissioners, noting that the planning department in issuing a permit was relying on engineers hired by the applicant.

Despite the concerns, the commissioners may have had no choice regarding the permit. County Manager Bobby Outten, who also serves as the county attorney, advised commissioners that, under state law, if a special use permit meets all the established requirements, the board must vote to approve.

Stormwater plans are not a condition of approval. Nonetheless, commissioners in their comments expressed unease at the density of the planned development.

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the kind of density that is being proposed,” Commissioner Danny Couch said.

His observation was echoed by Vice Chair Wally Overman.

For Alexander, the developer, the vote was a relief and a chance to perhaps change the village residents’ perception.

“Hopefully everybody’s emotions will kind of die down and down the road they’ll see that it’s not as bad as they think it is,” he said.

In the wake of the Wanchese cluster development controversy, Dare County is reevaluating the 2018 cluster home development in unincorporated areas, with possible revisions and deletions of districts where cluster homes may be built, according to a memo in the agenda packet for Monday.

Public comment was initially set for the June 5 commissioner’s meeting, but the board instead set May 17 as the tentative date for the hearing.

The African American Experience of Northeast North Carolina trail that winds its way through the northeastern part of the state is a trail of triumph and tears. 

The self-guided tour of more than 30 sites in nine counties follows the history of the African American experience in the region.

The counties that are part of the trail – Dare, Currituck, Camden, Pasquotank, Gates, Perquimans, Chowan, Washington and Martin – encompass much of what was Albemarle County when the northeast corner was the property of Lord Proprietor George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle in the mid-1600s. 

Created as a cooperative agreement among the tourism departments and commissioners of the counties to market the history of the region, the idea for the trail began with the Jarvisburg Colored School, a simple white, wooden building along U.S. Highway 158 in Currituck County. 

Founded in 1867 with a land grant from a freed formerly enslaved man, William B. Hunt, the historic school, now a museum, has been meticulously restored, and is generally thought to be the oldest African American school still standing in the state. On the National Register of Historic Places, the building is a rare example of a pre-Rosenwald school.

The school is where the idea for the trail began, when Currituck Travel and Tourism Director Tameron T. Kugler started thinking about how to let people know about the building.

“I was sitting there one day thinking, ‘I’ve got this beautiful little school called the Historic Jarvisburg Colored School. How do I market it?,’” she said. “It’s one asset that we have that’s amazing and…it’s kind of singular. Then I thought, ‘Camden (County) has the Dismal Swamp and a Rosenwald School, and Elizabeth City has a bunch of assets, and Eden has assets and of course Dare does. I got everybody on a call and said, ‘What about marketing all this together?’ And they were all for it.”

In addition to the school, other stops include the Pasquotank River, Pea Island Cookhouse in Manteo, Roanoke River Underground Railroad Signs, Colonial Waterfront Park in Edenton and the Colored Union Soldiers Monument in Hertford. The website has an interactive map of all the sites on the trail.

There were seven counties originally and they developed a financial plan where they all paid into a fund based on their ability to do so.

“I would call it a cooperative,” Kugler said. The funds are administered by Martin Armes, a marketing and communications consultant that has worked with Currituck and Dare counties in the past. 

Armes recommended that the counties work with Kemah Washington, president of BRANDilly Creative Group to create the website. The website launched in time for Juneteenth Day, June 19, 2020. Washington and Martin counties joined the trail later.

For Washington, the opportunity to work on the project has been personally rewarding.

“Certainly for me as an African American I can appreciate the personalization of the history, but also just exposing other folks to it,” he said.

The trail has two components: the actual trail and the online stories of the sites.

It was the stories that Washington found compelling and sometimes troubling.

“I knew that slavery was a business,” he said. “I was not anticipating just how scientific the business of slavery was … You had different industries and different types of slaves they would import. If you were in Charleston, folks that knew how to work with swampy waterlogged lands so that they can grow rice and other things were (imported) there. Versus if you were a little more north, maybe in the D.C. area, there were more skilled trades and tradesmen.”

There were moments of discovery as well.

“(There are) these really significant things that I just didn’t know about. The Underground Railroad, I don’t necessarily think of someplace like Edenton or some of the smaller towns,” he said.

There were also moments of inspiration.  

“The unsung heroes, these folks who did these really brave, courageous, things. How did you pull this off in the late-1800s (during Jim Crow)?,” he wondered. “I think about me and my kids and how we complain about all this little stuff. These people had nothing, yet they scraped money to put a school together.”

There are currently 35 sites along the trail, although more could be added. One of the requirements for the sites is that there has to be something tangible for people to see or experience to be included, a condition that may have come from Kugler’s childhood experiences.

“My father was a Civil War buff. I remember going to Gettysburg. My dad is in his element. He says,’Imagine Picket charging over this field and blah, blah, blah.’ And my sister and I looking at it, and it’s a bunch of cows. We wanted to avoid that kind of experience,” she said.

What the trail does represent is a glance at one small part of American history, sometimes warts and all in view, something Kugler feels is important in telling the story.

“We didn’t leave any stories out and some of them are unpleasant,” she said. “But you have to hear those things. You can’t gloss over something. For me, it’s been a fascinating journey.”

Correction: This report originally misidentified Justin Bateman of Wanchese.

Wanchese residents and others in Dare County say a proposed 60-unit cluster development at the intersection of Old Wharf Road and Brinkley Drive would forever change the coastal village’s tight-knit community character.

Turnout was heavy Monday for the lengthy Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting in Manteo, where many spoke out during the public hearing against the requested special use permit for the development.

The board delayed its decision until next month to allow time for gathering more information, particularly regarding updates to a traffic study that had been conducted when there are far fewer vehicles than during vacation season.

In addition to traffic worries, those in attendance expressed concerns about whether the 10.5-acre site was suitable for the proposed density and about the adequacy of sewage treatment and stormwater management plans.

Issuance of a special use permit requires a quasi-judicial hearing in North Carolina and a vote to approve by, in this case, Dare County commissioners. But after five and half hours of discussion, commissioners voted instead to table the decision until the May 1 meeting.

Developer Brad Alexander of Aria Construction & Development Inc. of Creswell was present for the hearing. His company has been active in Outer Banks construction for almost 20 years. During that time, Aria has built numerous single-family dwellings in residential areas of Dare County and rental properties as large as 7,000 square feet. But that history didn’t allay Wanchese residents’ concerns.

Several speakers addressed Alexander directly in their comments.

“After all this uproar and pushback from the community, why do you still continue to want to do this?” Asked Justin Bateman, the first speaker of the evening, who described himself as an “eighth-generation Wancheser.”  

Residential cluster developments are seen as a way to maximize the number of homes possible in a limited space. Lot sizes are small, theoretically allowing for shared infrastructure and more efficient use of emergency services.

Often in suburban and rural communities, cluster developments have their own green space requirements. However, the Dare County cluster development ordinance includes no such requirement.

Alexander said his firm would retain a thin buffer of trees.

The proposed Villages at Old Wharf Road cluster home development features 36 two- bedroom homes at 960 square feet and 24 three-bedroom homes of 1,120 square feet.

Alexander said during the hearing that the two-bedroom homes would be tentatively offered at $299,000 and the three-bedroom homes at $399,000.  However, he noted, prices could change due to market conditions.

Windsor attorney Lloyd C. Smith III, who represented Aria Construction, called a number of witnesses to the stand including the site engineer and the owner of the septic system that would be installed.

During the legal proceedings, Alexander was asked about the homes themselves and he pushed back on a recurring complaint that they were mobile homes on stilts.

Asked by Commission Chair Bob Woodard if the construction was to be “…just like other beach boxes…” Alexander was emphatic in his reply.

“They will all be stick-built houses,” he said.

In 2006, Dare County approved the Wanchese Village Residential Zoning District as a way to preserve the village feel of the unincorporated community. At that time, residents believed zoning would protect the village from overdevelopment.

Cluster development was added as a special use in the Wanchese district in 2018. Residents and representatives of the Wanchese Preservation Alliance claim the zoning change was put into place without the knowledge of the residents of the village.

Several at the meeting were worried that the proposed development site, which is now undeveloped, has poor drainage. Some voiced concern about stormwater runoff from the site and whether the on-site sewage system would pollute groundwater.

Smith, the attorney, asked site engineer Rick House to the podium to testify during the hearing about stormwater management and sewage treatment.

House said the planned stormwater collection system for the development would collect twice the amount of stormwater required by state regulations.

House also pointed out that the sewage system to be used for the development was a TS2 system that produced significantly cleaner effluent than a typical system used for a single home. The TS2 system uses drainfields more efficiently, he said.

Coastal Advocate and Environmental Economist Alyson Flynn based at the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wanchese office said during the public comment portion of the meeting that the state’s stormwater rules did not adequately address Wanchese residents’ flooding concerns.

“The North Carolina coastal stormwater program only regulates water quality impacts from stormwater runoff. The state program is not designed to protect people our property from being flooded … by this or any or future projects,” she said.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Commissioners themselves did not raise specific concerns about the project until Jody Lewis, senior project manager at engineering firm VHB, presented his traffic analysis.

Chairman Woodard wanted to know how frequently and when the traffic counts for the study were done. When told that the counts included two days in February and another, March 1, Woodard and other commissioners expressed dismay about the timing.

“I would seem to think that we would have a lot different findings in May, June, July, August and September,” said Woodard.

Lewis agreed the timing would likely change the numbers.

There’s a new trail to hike in North Carolina, appropriate for a state where legislation was passed making 2023 the Year of the Trail.

The 50-mile Jockey’s Trail does not (yet) have the panache or cachet of the more well-known Mountains-to-Sea Trail or perhaps the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. It is fashioned much like the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, with a combination of forest trails, roadways and some beach hiking, but this new trail is different.

It begins at the entrance of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, which is also the eastern terminus of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and heads due north to a 19th-century boundary marker at the border of North Carolina and Virginia, the unincorporated community of Carova.

But perhaps what is most unique about this new trail is how it came to be. The Jockey’s Trail was not the work of a committee or group of like-minded hikers. It was just Luke Halton and his vision of a through-trail from Nags Head to Carova.

Halton grew up in a Marine Corps family stationed in North Carolina. He graduated from Catawba College in Salisbury in 2001 with a degree in information systems. It was at Catawba that a focus of the school’s program stuck with him.

“One of their their major efforts for all their students — they actively promoted lifelong learning,” he said. “That is something that has stayed with me.”

The idea for the trail originated from more than one experience Halton had over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic, he readily offered, played an important role, although, he also noted, he was just ready for a change – and to take a hike.

“For me with COVID, I just wanted to be outside. I didn’t want to be locked down. And I just started the Mountains-to-Sea Trail,” he recently told Coastal Review. “I was just going to do a week or two, but I just kept going.”

He found that, much like for other through-hikers, the trek was just one part of a larger experience.

“Somebody doing a through-hike, a lot of times, is looking for a change of lifestyle or an escape or a restart. And that was kind of the same thing for me,” he said.

Then he got a message from a friend who was getting married in Spain. Halton was still on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, but, “There was no way I was going to miss the wedding.”

In a twist of fate, pandemic travel restrictions created time for Halton to explore the trails of Europe.

“That was absolutely awesome,” he said.

When he left for his friend’s Madrid wedding, he could not fly directly to Spain. He could, however, fly to Ireland, spend a month there, and then continue on to the wedding. And there in Ireland, he encountered a remarkable trail system.

“In Ireland, there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of trails. They’re known for being hillwalkers,” he said.

His hiking took him across the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin to trails that crossed the island to the Atlantic.

In Spain, there was the wedding and then more hiking, this time on the Camino de Santiago, a group of trails that radiates out like the spokes of a bike wheel, covering almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula.

What was particularly compelling, Halton said, was the communal nature of sharing the experience of the trail — having a place to stay every night and reflecting with other hikers what their day was like.

“Just meeting all these people staying at the same place every night. Maybe seeing some again, maybe not. That was an unbelievable experience,” he said.

When he returned from Europe he finished the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, got to Jockey’s Ridge State Park and decided to move to the Outer Banks because he felt there was unfinished business.

“I came out here (to the Outer Banks) because I was curious about why the Mountains-to-Sea Trail didn’t go all the way from Jockey’s Ridge to the Virginia border. That’s pretty much it,” he said.

There were some important lessons from the European experience that Halton brought back with him. One, that there is a communal feeling among long-distance hikers and through-hikers, Halton observed, something he described as, “a real hiker community.”

That community is on full display on a cold morning in early March as a dozen or so women of the OBX Women’s Adventure Club and Halton gather at one of the Nags Head Woods trails. They are there to support club member Stephanie Anderson who is doing a final warmup hike before taking on a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail.

“I can’t remember how or why we messaged each other,” Halton said. “But as soon as we started communicating, we automatically connected because she’s doing the Appalachian Trail.”

Some of what he learned in Europe, though, is difficult to apply to the Outer Banks. For example, the concept of a hostel or common meeting place at the end of each day’s hike does not exist along the Jockey’s Trail. Although, Halton pointed out in his discussions that there is still work to be done on lodging for the hike.

One important lesson he learned and has applied is to keep each day’s distance manageable.

“All the mileage is under 16 miles,” he said. “That 16-to-20-mile range, that’s when you start getting blisters and fatigue. You want to enjoy this; you want to take your time and be able to stop because there is going to be so much to see.”

An online aerial video of the trail uses Google Earth to show the route and some of the highlights, including some of the most iconic Outer Banks landmarks.

The trail includes a hike past the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The second day includes an easy trek through the Audubon Pine Island Sanctuary. The third day ends at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla. And along the way, there is a scenic segment through Nags Head Woods.

The most difficult stretch is probably the 13 miles from the Currituck Beach Lighthouse to the state line boundary marker. That stretch also includes a considerable amount of beach hiking along the way to Carova. But that is also the realm of the Corolla wild horses, giving hikers a popular wildlife attraction to look forward to.

For Halton, who founded The OBX Way, a nonprofit that made it easier for him to place signs for the route and work with state and local governments, the Jockey’s Trail represents numerous ways to enjoy the coastal outdoors.

The trail can double as a bike route, although the last 11 miles on the Carova beach requires fat tires. It is also a trail that allows hiking at any pace.

Someone asked Halton early in the process of creating the trail about the record time for hiking it, and since to the best of his knowledge, he had been the only one to have completed it, he pointed out his four days were both the fastest and slowest times.

Most importantly, though, Halton sees the Jockey’s Trail as a way for hikers to experience some of the joys of being on a trail for few days without having to lug a 30- or 40-pound pack and everything that goes with it.

“If somebody has dreamed of doing a through-hike, but just never had a month or so to get away for days, (the Jockey’s Trail) gives you a real taste of what a through-hike is like without excessive logistic challenge,” he said.

The vibrant, full-color painting “The Checkerboard Crew,” a depiction by Outer Banks artist Jim Melvin of a 1910 black-and-white photograph of United States Life-Saving Service crewmen, was unveiled recently at the College of the Albemarle Dare County campus in Manteo.

Organized by the Pea Island Preservation Society Inc., the March 4 unveiling was postponed from its original date of Feb. 18, during Black History Month, because of health concerns of some members of the society.

The painting will be on display at the society’s Pea Island Cookhouse Museum in Manteo. Tentative plans to display the painting throughout the Outer Banks are under discussion.

The checkerboard crews were crews of the Life-Saving Service typically staffed with five white and one Black crewmen, although there were some instances where two African Americans worked at a station. The Black crewmen were usually listed as surfmen No. 5 or No. 6, the lowest ranks at the station.

Melvin, who has lived in Nags Head since 1982, is perhaps best known as the illustrator of the children’s Nature Series books by Suzanne Tate, but the body of his work includes street scenes from the Caribbean, depictions of Outer Banks beaches and homes, shorebirds and more.

As he worked on the painting, Melvin, who is African American, found himself wondering about some of the details he observed of the men in the photo. In particular, he noticed the Black crewman was not facing the camera.

“If you notice this fella here,” he said, indicating the man in the upper right side of the painting. “He’s completely turned and I wondered was that because he just doesn’t like taking pictures? Some people don’t like things like that. Or was he thinking about his situation when he turned his head away?”

The “Checkerboard Crew” is the most recent in a series of paintings Melvin has of checkerboard crews.

Other paintings in the series depict scenes from the Pea Island Life-Saving Station including the rescue during a hurricane of the crew of the schooner E.S. Newman on Oct. 11, 1896, by the all-Black Life-Saving Service crew of Station Pea Island. Under the leadership of Capt. Richard Etheridge, the first Black station chief for the Life-Saving Service, the Pea Island crew rescued all nine people on the ship, including the captain’s 3-year-old son.

One hundred years after the Newman shipwreck, descendants of the Pea Island crew were awarded the Coast Guard’s Gold Lifesaving Medal, the service’s highest honor for heroism in a water rescue.

These paintings are housed at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, where Etheridge and his family’s graves are on the grounds.

The checkerboard crews may have been the first integrated military installations in the country, although the integration was a matter of necessity not law.

When Sumner Kimball became superintendent of the U.S. Life-Saving Service in 1878, he was determined to transform an organization rife with political cronyism and incompetence into a professional service capable of performing its mission, according to Coast Guard history.

Kimball also pushed Congress to expand the number of lifesaving stations throughout the nation, and on the Outer Banks, 11 new stations were added in 1878.

Black watermen offered a ready source of skilled watermen, and checkerboard crews were formed, although the African American crewmen were the lowest-ranking crewmembers and had no chance for advancement.

It was from the Bodie Island crew that Kimball, on the recommendation of his inspector, 1st Lt. Charles Shoemaker, promoted Surfman No. 6 Etheridge to Station Keeper Etheridge of Station Pea Island.

It is unclear whether the white crew at Pea Island refused to work with Etheridge or if Shoemaker recommended an all-Black crew, but beginning in 1880 the Pea Island Station was staffed exclusively by African Americans and it remained that way until it was decommissioned in 1947.

Many of the descendants of the Pea Island crews still live on the Outer Banks, most of them on Roanoke Island.

For Joan Collins, the Pea Island Preservation Society’s director of outreach and education, the  event offered an opportunity to bring the story of the checkerboard crews and Capt. Richard Etheridge and the legacy of Station Pea Island into the present day. Five young descendants of Pea Island Station crewmen spoke, describing their connection to the men who served under Etheridge.

“I’m a descendant of the checkerboard history of the Pea Island Life-Saving Station. My great-great-grandfather is Joseph Hall Berry who served under keeper Richard Etheridge,” 13-year-old Jason Berry said. “My family history is the history of the enslaved and the Native Americans who once lived on Roanoke Island.”

His remarks were echoed by the other young speakers at the event.

A wider discussion on race

Collins, though, felt the day provided a chance to have a wider discussion of race in our history and how it continues to impact lives.

“I was trying to get people to think (about race). That’s what we wanted to do,” she said.

Collins began her talk reciting “You So Black,” a powerful poem by Theresa Wilson that is ultimately one of hope and empowerment.

“You so Black, You so Black, when you smile, the stars come out. You so Black, when you were born, the God come out …” the poem begins. The poem goes on to weave the past and present together.  “… I’m Black like my granddaddy and my great-great-great-great-grandmama … Black is that letting your freedom ring and resound. Black is adjective, adverb, color and noun …”

For Collins, the poem connected directly with the story of the checkerboard stations. “I think it is a poem … that reminds us of a time when people were categorized strictly as being either Black or white,” she said.

She pointed out that in 19^th century America, that categorization diminished people of color to an extraordinary degree.

“Being viewed as white, in Etheridge’s time, was seen as the normal way. That is what people were expected to be, white and not Black, and it was viewed as the right way to be,” she said.

The relevance of the poem, she went on to say, extended beyond “You So Black.”

“Take the word ‘Black’ out and substitute it for any minority. Think about it substituted with the Native American history. Native Americans that were categorized as being Black. Substitute it for the Latinos who are here today. Substitute it for the equal treatment of women, gay, transgender, any minority person that is not being treated fairly or justly,” she said, adding. “That is what this history is about.”

The last speaker of the day, the Rev. Dr. Michelle Lewis, spoke of painful personal memories and how they are a part of a shared history.

Lewis, who grew up in Manteo, recalled her first day in sixth grade and the teacher who insisted that the siblings she had in school could not all have the same parents “… because Black children don’t all have the same mother and father.” And the history teacher in high school who “… skipped all the chapters if there was a chapter or a section about Black people, it was just skipped.”

And she referenced a more recent event that took place at the high school in Kill Devil Hills.

“One of the first things I was asked to do in 2019 (when she returned to the Outer Banks) was sit on a task force because somebody had spray painted some stuff onto the lockers … that included the N-word,” she said.

Those personal events combined with the more recent incident were, to her, a reminder of the importance of acknowledging where we have been so that we can better understand how to move forward.

“That’s why we’re talking about this today. That’s why we’re talking about the history because our histories are important. Yes, these stories about Pea Island Lifesavers and the checkerboard crews, they’re important to me because they’re the stories of my ancestors. But they’re important to all of us because they’re the stories of our shared heritage. The failure to learn and understand our collective histories means we’re sure to repeat the past and we have a choice. Are we choosing ignorance instead of growing in knowledge,” she said.

COLUMBIA – The long-planned replacement of the 60-year-old, two-lane, swing-span bridge that is the only direct link between Raleigh and the Outer Banks will come years sooner thanks to a recently announced $110 million federal infrastructure grant.

Gov. Roy Cooper, Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt and North Carolina Department of Transportation Secretary Eric Boyette joined Tyrell and Dare County officials Thursday at the west side of the Alligator River bridge on U.S. Highway 64 in Columbia to celebrate the grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation Mega Program.

The competitive grant program, also known as the National Infrastructure Project Assistance program, provides money for “large, complex projects that are difficult to fund by other means and likely to generate national or regional economic, mobility, or safety benefits,” according to the program website. The North Carolina award also includes broadband funding.

The estimated $294 million project to replace the Lindsay C. Warren Bridge, which opened to traffic in February 1962, includes a new structure just north of the existing one and connect Tyrell County segment of U.S. 64 to Old Ferry Road in Dare County. Construction is now expected to begin as soon as winter 2024.

“It’s my understanding that this bridge has been accelerated by at least a decade,” Bhatt said during the press gathering, adding that, “Because while everybody’s trying to do their best, there wasn’t a lot of money sitting around.”

Bhatt said the project is one of the first Mega grants that USDOT had awarded and one of only nine awarded nationwide. Officials announced the award in January.

Boyette, when asked after his public remarks whether the project was now fully funded, said the state’s existing commitment was a significant reason why North Carolina was awarded the grant.

“We can show the gap in our funding. This is what we’ll need to complete it. That was one of the pluses for us,” he said.

The bridge is one of two highway corridors to the Outer Banks — the other being the Wright Memorial Bridge on U.S. 158 — but its importance is greater than a way for tourists to get to the shore. Tyrell County is one of the state’s most economically distressed, and a significant number of its 3,200 residents have jobs on the Outer Banks, a point Tyrell County Manager David Clegg underscored.

“It creates today easily 500 jobs between the two counties,” Clegg said.

The bridge’s swinging center span that opens 90 degrees for boat traffic sometimes fails to close and is one of the most apparent problems with the bridge. However, a 2021 NCDOT evaluation classified the bridge as structurally deficient with a sufficiency rating of 31.71 out of a possible 100.

“The existing bridge requires costly, heavy maintenance on a regular basis,” according to the report.

“It’s very clear the 60-year-old swing-span behind me is not supporting the community,” said Transportation Secretary Boyette during his remarks.

The replacement project, listed as HB-0001 by NCDOT, includes numerous improvements over the existing bridge. Perhaps most importantly, the fixed center span will provide a 65-foot clearance for boat traffic. The new two-lane bridge will include 8-foot-wide shoulders, enough for a bike lane. The existing bridge has 1-foot-wide shoulders.

Along with the planned improvements to the transportation corridor between Raleigh and the Outer Banks, Cooper highlighted another infrastructure improvement that is also funded in the federal grant.

“Part of what’s going to happen with this bridge is going to be high-speed internet all the way from Rocky Mount to Nags Head,” Cooper said.

Boyette also noted that the grant was a way to remember longtime Division 1 Engineer Sterling Baker, who died of cancer in April 2022.

“We named this grant application after Sterling, the STERLING grant — Strengthening Transportation Evacuation Resilience Lifeline and Improving our Network’s Gateway,” Boyette said.

This report includes outdated racial terms that may bother some readers.

Salmon Creek is a slow-moving, scenic tributary of the Chowan River in Bertie County. At the mouth of the creek on the south bank there is a golf course. On the north side, the Salmon Creek State Natural Area and adjacent Bertie County land that the county is using to develop its Tall Glass of Water park create 1,400 acres of protected forest and wetlands.

The peaceful setting gives little evidence of its rich history, a history that includes Native American villages at the site and extends to the earliest days of European explorers.

It is here at the mouth of Salmon Creek that the nonprofit First Colony Foundation places the Lost Colony Site X that was discovered in 2012 hidden on a 1585 John White map.

As the stream meanders to the heart of Bertie County, it seems far removed from the time when it was once one of the most prolific shad and herring fisheries in the nation – a fishery that David Cecelski describes in his 2001 book, “The Waterman’s Song Slavery and Freedom in Maritime South,” as “… by far the most prominent commercial fishery in the South prior to the Civil War. It was also the only major commercial fishery in North America that relied exclusively on slave and free black labor.”

Using mostly seine nets, the amount of fish landed and processed here was sizable. In a 2002 report placing Bertie County plantation Elmwood on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), the study’s authors wrote, “The heyday of fishing in the Albemarle Sound and its tributaries was during the antebellum period … During the 1840s and 1850s it was not unusual for large soundside fisheries to experience a single seine haul containing in excess of 100,000 fish, all of which were cleaned and packed for shipping by the time the next seine haul was landed five or six hours later.”

Little had changed 45 or 50 years later, other than the use of steam winches to haul the net in, when The Semi-Weekly Fisherman & Farmer described the harvest in its October 21, 1887, edition.

“The large seines nets in the Albemarle Sound and Chowan River are from 2000 to 2400 yards long …They are laid out in the water and hauled in, about five times in every twenty-four hours, and sweep a square mile or more of water. It catches everything that it encircles. Steam is employed by most of them both in the laying of them out in the water, and on shore for hauling them in,” the newspaper reported.

The spawning run for the herring and shad was brief — perhaps 10 weeks — but the labor needs were extraordinary. In “A Cultural History of River Herring and Shad Fisheries in Eastern North Carolina,” a 1997 East Carolina University master’s thesis, Charles Heath describes the Fisherman’s Courts where workers were recruited.

“During the antebellum period, the Fisherman’s Court was established in several counties surrounding the Albemarle Sound. The court was held the third Monday in February and served as a clearing house for fisheries labor,” he wrote. “Fishery operators came to the court to hire slaves, as well as free whites and blacks. Potential laborers, free blacks and whites, were said to have come to the court from as far inland as fifty miles or more for the opportunity to work at the fisheries. In May, the court was held again and the fishery owners settled debts and paid the free laborers and the owners of the slaves for their work.”

It was brutal work. The hours, according to eyewitnesses, were around the clock.

Sally Moore Koestler has created a website, “Sally’s Family Place,” where she records “Tales of NC Roanoke-Chowan and elsewhere.” On her page recounting seine fishing, she has included a letter written to Lucy Daniels by her grandmother, Ella Harrell Evans. Koestler places the date of the letter around 1965 and in an email wrote that she believes it is possible to “… place the grandmother’s notes about 1900.”

The details in the letter paint an extraordinary picture of who the workers were and what the work was like.

“Years ago at Capehart’s fishery which was owned by Mr. William Capehart, he runned (sic) a public fishery and had forty-five or fifty negroes that helped him,” Evans writes.

She goes on to detail the working conditions, writing to her granddaughter, “The men would start to work about three o’clock in the morning and work in the rain, snow, ice and sleet and sometimes their clothes would be frozen. They wore oil suits, hats and long hip boots. The men would work until 12 o’clock every night and go back at three in the morning.”

Her recollection of the size of the catch confirms how large the haul was.

“The negroes would line up on each end of the seine and pull the seine in, it would take around five hours, depending on the amount of fish in the seine … They would have to stake it out because there would be so many fish in the seine, around two hundred fifty thousands. They would have to get it close end to dip part of the fish out so they could pull the seine in. Most days they could make four hauls a day with about about fifty or seventy five thousands,” Evans writes.

Other accounts note even larger harvests. The Elmwood National Register of Historic Places study authors describe what the fishing was like at its peak.

“Although the notably large hauls at Avoca (the south bank of Salmon Creek) comprised of approximately 300,000 river herring and 6,000 shad, such operations were recorded as having caught as many as 400,000- 500,000 river herring in a single haul of the seine. Observers noted that from 1878 to 1883 the total catch at one Chowan River fishery was over fifteen million river herring,” the study notes.

The Evans letter and other accounts written by eyewitnesses are richly detailed, but in his master’s candidacy prospectus, East Carolina University student Levi Holton notes all the eyewitness accounts of the Salmon Creek fishery are missing an important point of view.

“The initial gathering of primary source materials indicates that the record of experiences, points of view, and stories of African Americans have been written almost exclusively by white Americans. This is a limitation to the accurate interpretation of historical records concerning African Americans and what has been written may suffer from the constraints of bias and potential prejudice,” he writes.

Holton’s prospectus includes a reexamination of records, most of which have not been digitized. Additionally he is proposing deep mapping of Salmon Creek, a relatively new geographic information system-based archaeological tool that creates a 3-D historic overview of the research site.

River herring continued to be commercially harvested well into the 20th century, but today there are no nets strung across Salmon Creek catching the fish on their spawning run.

The massive harvests of the fish were likely a factor in the river stock’s decline, but it was not the only cause.

In a 2017 fishery management plan for river herring, North Carolina Marine Fisheries noted, “considerable habitat area has been lost through wetland drainage, stream channelization and conversion to other uses.” The plan continues that oxygen-consuming wastes are discharged into several streams, “causing nuisance algal blooms, fish kills, and fish diseases over the years.”

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

With the release in February of a three-year study of the shoreline in Currituck County, the only coastal county in North Carolina that has not nourished its beaches is looking at findings that place 158 homes at risk as the beach retreats.

The study by Coastal Protection Engineering was requested by the county commissioners in 2020 and examined the 22.6 miles of shoreline from the Virginia state line to the county line at Duck.

“In total, 158 houses were shown to be impacted over the 30-year horizon throughout the Corolla Section. These houses are all located between the Horse Gate and Wave Arch in the Ocean Lake community,” the report noted. Wave Arch is approximately a half-mile south of the Food Lion shopping center.

For Currituck County Chairman Bob White, the report was a call to action, and he indicated that beach nourishment is a real option.

“We’re going have to do something, is the bottom line. We can’t get to the point where Kitty Hawk did … where we have stuff dropping in the ocean and lose that tax base and people’s investment in Currituck,” he said. “We have to do something now.”

The report explained that that not all homes are in the most urgent need of protection. Using 10-year intervals as a measurement, it concluded that 11 homes will be impacted in the next 10 years, 66 homes will be impacted in the next 20 years and the remainder will be affected in the next 30 years.

Although the study concluded that the retreat in the four-wheel-drive area of Carova was minimal and that beach was accreting in some areas, a cautionary note was included.

“While the number of houses impacted in this section may not be significant, the retreat of the shoreline may create pinch points for traffic transiting north and south through these areas,” it stated.

The study’s authors also cautioned that its projections assume no major storm events, and that a major hurricane would place a substantial number of homes in immediate danger.

“In total, 43 oceanfront homes were determined to be vulnerable from a storm similar in characteristics to Hurricane Isabel,” the study observes.

For Corolla resident Ed Cornet, the study is welcome, if overdue.

“The key is … being happy that they (Currituck County) finally have gotten to this point,” he said. Cornet has been part of a lawsuit filed in 2019, Gerald Costanzo, Corolla Civic Association et al. v. Currituck County. The suit contends that Currituck County used occupancy tax funds that were supposed to be allocated for beach nourishment and shoreline maintenance for expenses typically covered through the general fund. The plaintiffs contend that is contrary to the intent of a 2004 law allowing the county to increase its occupancy tax to 6%.

The case was dismissed in superior court in January 2022 but is currently before the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Oral arguments in the case were held Feb. 13.

Cornet, who has a doctorate in physics, said the study was well done. “It’s a very thorough job,” he said, adding that it confirms what residents can see every day. “We could just say that science backs up our onsite observations.”

White agreed, saying, “You can walk out there and see where the problems are. You don’t have to have that report to tell you.”

The report outlines what the next steps might look like, making three suggestions: Continue to monitor the beach using the three-year study as a baseline, develop a beach management plan, and coordinate with Dare County on a regional sand resource investigation.

The beach management plan in particular is already moving forward.

“We’re getting staff to come back and put together a plan for us going forward so we can sink our teeth into it to figure out a beach management plan,” White said.

Asked about working with Dare County, though, White quickly dismissed the idea.

“The problem there is after they finish up these next couple projects … they’re out of sand,” he said. “For them, they need to come into our reserve areas, and I don’t see us going, ‘sure take the same sand we need to put on our beaches.’”

The management plan suggested by the study would include beach nourishment, but that would be one of a number of components. Nonetheless, White made it clear that nourishment is on the table.

Nourishment is expensive, and White, first noting that occupancy tax revenues will help to offset the costs, added that the municipal tax districts used by other towns to help pay for nourishment is a real possibility, noting that “we definitely have to bring in some local tax district to handle that.”

Cornet, who would be affected by such a Corolla tax district, agreed that combining the occupancy tax with a special tax district would be manageable.

“If they did a couple of miles every year, this (municipal tax districts) would pay for it,” he said.

If the county does decide to move forward with nourishment, the permitting and bidding process is at least a three-year process and more likely to take four to five years, which White acknowledged. He also sees an opportunity for Currituck County and other communities along the state’s shoreline to develop new ways to manage their beaches.

“We hired a lobbying firm. They have several coastal counties they represent getting the state to look at this,” he said. “And the state’s putting together a coastal caucus. I think we have better representation at state level to help us and other coastal communities out. We all share the same problem. Erosion is a real thing and sea level rises as well. We need the state to help out at some point and recognize the impact of tourism on the state and its tax base.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

The Elizabeth City State University Choir recently lifted their voices in song during a performance honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in the First Flight High School auditorium in Kill Devil Hills.

The trip to Kill Devil Hills Jan. 14 was not a long one, an hour at the most, but it was in keeping with the choir’s long tradition of traveling to perform for as many eager audiences as possible.

It is a tradition that dates to the choir’s founding in 1933 by Dr. Evelyn Adelaide Johnson. In her book, “History of Elizabeth City State University: A Story of Survival,” published in 1980, she wrote about the choir’s custom of traveling to perform.

“There are few churches in the area, black and white, in which the choir has not appeared … The choir has sung for local clubs, societies, fraternal organizations, banks, the navy, general assembly celebrations, and for other groups in other states,” she wrote.

More recently, Dr. Walter Swan, director of choral activities for ECSU, described an upcoming spring tour.

“We do take annual tours since we’re now back from COVID and we’re able to travel,” he said. “This year’s tour will take us as far south as South Carolina, potentially Georgia and will take us up to D.C.”

It may seem remarkable that through wars, the Great Depression and civil rights turmoil, a choir from a relatively small, historically Black university in a small city in northeastern North Carolina would be able to continue to tour and perform.

Perhaps more remarkably, though, in the 90 years since Dr. Johnson came to the school, there have only been three choral directors.

When Johnson arrived on campus in 1933, ECSU was still a State Normal School with a two-year course of instruction. It would not become Elizabeth City State Teachers College until 1939 when it was able to award its first baccalaureate degrees in elementary education.

“Many students who entered the school between 1934 and 1939 were almost poverty stricken,” Dr. Johnson wrote. “They entered sometimes with less than five dollars, brought their few belongings in a burlap bag or some other nondescript luggage.”

Teachers, she mentioned, were on half-salary.

“It took ten years to recover salaries in vogue during the 20s, before the depression,” she noted.

In her book, she lists the regular events that she scheduled for her choir, community Christmas carols at the homes of respected Black and white citizens, a choir scholarship fund and annual choir tours during the school year.

She retired in 1975, and Clarence Lewis, who sang in the choir for two years in the early 1970s, recalled clearly what it was like.

“It was an experience. And if you didn’t know how to read music, you couldn’t be in a choir,” he said.

At the time Lewis was fresh out of the military and spent two years at ECSU. Then, in his words, “I … made the decision that I wasn’t ready for college. I went back into the military,” where he spent 21 years, retiring as a master sergeant.

The two years he was at ECSU included giving performances across the country and internationally.

“We sang in quite a few places in the United States. Major cities like New York and Delaware and places like that. Okay, so we also toured overseas in Belgium,” he said.

ECSU is a tradition in many families and Lewis’ daughter Michelle sang in the choir when she went to college. Billy Hines was her choral director and like Dr. Lewis, he demanded his choir know their music.

“If you loved to sing, and you had some ability, professor Hines was willing to work with you. But you had to put in the same time that everybody else did,” she said.

Everyone was expected to know their part, she added.

“If someone was singing off-pitch in a section, if he couldn’t tell who it was right away, everybody had to stand up and sing the part a capella, one by one,” she said. “There was this one time where I didn’t know the part. It was me and I knew it was me … I kind of hoped I’d figure it out before he got down the line to me … it was my turn … and I couldn’t sing it.”

Not being able to sing the part seems to have left an indelible memory.

“I can still sing it to this day,” she said.

Attention to detail and knowing how to perform to the highest standards are things that ECSU graduate Tshombe Selby, who is now performing with the Metropolitan Opera of New York, remembered.

“I would not be where I am without Mr. Hines and the ECSU choir … Mr Hines’ attention to the music and acceptance of nothing less than your best are the teachings that are my foundation in classical music and my performance career. He was more than an instructor, he was Mr. Hines,” Selby wrote when asked about Hines.

Swan has been the choral director since Hines retired in 2009 after 34 years. He was already teaching vocal performance at ECSU when, as he describes it, “I was ushered in.”

Other traditions that were established in 1933 continue. The choir is made up of music lovers, but they do not have to be music majors.

“We do have good musicians, but because we’re not solely music majors, we are taking people who are music lovers who come from other choral programs from high school,” Swan said.

Like Johnson and Hines before him, he sees his role as more than an instructor of music, and is especially aware of the importance of ECSU as an historically Black college and university.

“I think (there is) pride that comes with HBCUs, especially being a product or coming through that rake of being a graduate of Alcorn State University. I understood the importance of this particular lay of the land from Mississippi. Also being educators and knowing that there is a greater purpose beyond self,” he said.

Yet if he is aware of the traditions that have been created over 90 years, he sees that as a path forward for the school and choir, and not something that will slow the path to the future.

“I don’t have large shoes to fill, I have to only walk in my own, create my own footprint,” he said. “You don’t ever leave something like you found it. Always try to leave it better. I think that’s what Evelyn did, and that was trying to create something better. What Billy did was to capitalize on Evelyn and (what I’m) doing is to capitalize on Billy.”

This story has been updated to clarify that the moratorium in the C2 district applies to a limited area.

Facing public opposition to a proposed affordable housing development, the Nags Head Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 Wednesday to remove multifamily dwellings as a permissible use in the town’s C2, general commercial zoning district to allow time to develop standards for such development in “appropriate areas of town.”

The board’s action came amid widespread criticism and concerns voiced by residents and nonresident property owners after the unveiling in October of plans for a 4.7-acre, 54-unit workforce housing project at the intersection of U.S. 158 Croatan Highway and East Holloway Street, across from Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

Dare County officials have been pursuing efforts to develop essential and workforce housing. In 2020, business owners and employers were asked to complete a survey on their employees’ housing needs and to identify challenges associated with the shortage of housing options in the county. Last summer, the county contracted with Woda Cooper Companies, which planned to develop the housing units at Nags Head and another 46 units in Manteo.

Nags Head commissioners said the C2 language in the town’s zoning ordinance was contradictory and vague.

The C2 District is a large commercial designation in the town that includes Virginia Dare Trail, which is part of N.C. 12, and Croatan Highway, the town’s segment of U.S. 158, from the Kill Devil Hills corporate limit to South Nags Head. The board in October 2022 adopted a moratorium on all nonresidential development in a section of the C2 district until March 17. The moratorium applies only to the part of C2 within the Historic Character Area between U.S. 158 and N.C. 12 from Hollowell Street to Danube Street.

Numerous people voiced their concerns during the meeting Wednesday about multifamily dwellings in the C2 zone, which they see as their neighborhood of single-family homes.

During the public comment portion of the meeting, Frank Campanale told the board that he had driven from his home in New Jersey to attend and speak out about the project. His remarks reflected the concerns of other residents and property owners — who also acknowledged the need for workforce housing.

“We’re looking to retire (in Nags Head),” Campanale said. “We’re in favor of changing the zoning of the commercial C2 area to eliminate high-density housing … It’s not intended as a gripe or insensitive to the need of supporting businesses. I’ve owned multiple businesses my whole life. I’m just saying you’ve got to optimize where you put that content.”

In remarks following the meeting, Campanale said there are other, more appropriate areas where multifamily dwellings could be developed. “I wouldn’t do it at a state park that’s nationally recognized in a residential neighborhood and then put apartment dwelling in.”

Others said they worried about the scope of the board’s decision. Bobby Harrell, owner of Harrell & Associates, a real estate company in Nags Head, pointed to the effect removing multifamily dwellings from the district could have on critical housing needs of those who work service and other jobs in town. He said research had shown that the Outer Banks Hospital alone needs 40 housing units for employees.

“Elimination of the multifamily in the C2 zone will affect much of the area that will accommodate multifamily housing,” he said.

Mayor Ben Cahoon, who cast the dissenting vote, called the action “a little precipitous,” saying it would eliminate an essential use in a large part of town.

“The C2 is not just the area that’s been referenced repeatedly. C2 is virtually everything between the highways … and much of what borders 158 on the west side of the highway. I understand that we will probably put this back, but we’re taking it off the table without a guarantee that we’re putting it back,” said Cahoon.

In an email to Coastal Review clarifying his concerns, Cahoon noted that the C2 district was the only one in town where multifamily uses were permitted. “I believe we need multi-family housing. But multi-family is now not permitted in the town anywhere. It will take study, a proposed ordinance, and another public hearing to put it back.”

The commissioners who voted to eliminate multifamily buildings pointed to confusing and imprecise language in the existing requirements. They stressed that theirs was not a vote against multifamily zoning, rather they wanted more precise wording and better placement of multifamily units.

“We need to work on our end. Looking at some of the definitions that we’ve got. It contradicts itself in different areas of the of the ordinance,” Commissioner Kevin Brinkley said during the meeting. “I do think we need time to get it right.”

Cahoon, asked whether the vote was a permanent setback for workforce housing, said he was cautiously optimistic.

“It is for the short term. Whether it is or not for the long term, it’s hard to say,” he said. “It’s feasible that the board could adopt some standards that would make it easier to … do workforce housing. I don’t know. That’s speculation, because we don’t know what kind of recommendations are going to come forward as they get adopted.”

Time may be running out for the wild horses of Corolla.

The herd lives in an area accessible by four-wheel-drive vehicles only.

Wandering among the 11 miles of dunes, maritime forest, beach and sand roads between the end of the paved road and the Virginia state line, the horses were relocated from Corolla to the northern end of the Outer Banks in 2001.

In 2003, a sea-to-sound fence was completed, keeping the herd from wandering into the development and traffic of Corolla.

But development is coming even to the four-wheel-drive area, Carova, of the Currituck Banks. There are no paved roads north of Corolla, no stores and no services, yet homes are being built, almost all of them for the vacation rental market.

Some of the homes are designed specifically to handle large events with 16 to 24 bedrooms. Most are not that large, but the building has continued for some time and inexorably the open land that the horses need for their well-being is being transformed.

There are, at last count, 101 horses in the Corolla wild horse herd, according to Corolla Wild Horse Fund Chief Operating Officer Jo Langone. That’s down from 110 the previous year. There were some deaths and a few of the horses were removed from the herd and relocated to a farm that has been set aside for them because of health issues.

The Wild Horses of Corolla, or “Bankers,” as they are sometimes called, are feral animals. Introduced to North America by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century, they have adapted remarkably well to the Outer Banks environment, so well that they are recognized as a landrace breed.

“The Bankers are recognized as a landrace breed — one that has genetically adapted to and is able to survive its unique habitat, has distinctive and identifiable traits, has not been purposefully improved by the introduction of domestic, standardized stock, and has a historical origin in a specific region,” the Corolla Wild Horse Fund notes on its website.

Although there are other genetic markers in their makeup, there is reason to believe that the Corolla herd, isolated for decades, is directly descended from their Iberian ancestors.

In 2013, the Corolla Wild Horses Protection Act passed the U.S. House but was not taken up by the Senate. The introduction to the bill noted, “There is evidence that Corolla horses were introduced to the Currituck Outer Banks by Spanish explorers 500 years ago.”

There are 7,544 acres between the north end of Corolla and the Virginia line. Some of that is the state- and federally protected property of the 965-acre Currituck Banks Estuarine Reserve, although over half of the acreage is in the wetlands of Currituck Sound.

There is also the 3,674-acre Currituck Wildlife Refuge. Most of the refuge is marsh and wetlands, but there is a mile and a half of protected land separating the subdivisions of Swan Beach and North Swan Beach.

Yet nearly all of Carova is available for development.

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund wants its Land Preservation Initiative that was announced Nov. 16 to set aside some portion of the undeveloped land. The initiative is to be supported by a land-acquisition fund that, “allows supporters to donate towards the purchase, conversion to habitat, and habitat maintenance of property that will be held in conservation into perpetuity.” 

“The fund itself has purchased seven lots,” Langone said. An additional two lots also have been donated to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

There is added urgency, Langone noted, to set aside protected land for the herd. Development has been ongoing for some time in the Carova area, but recent events seem to have accelerated that development.

“It (construction) is nothing like in the last couple of seasons,” she said. “Having COVID was a double edge. It turned so many people on to this area for the first time, it was quite remarkable. And when people see it, it knocks you out, and well, ‘I want to be there,’ and a lot of people have decided they’re going to be here.’”

The lots in the Corolla Wild Horse Fund initiative are small, about a third of an acre in size, and as much as can possibly be done, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund is hoping the lots will be contiguous. The lots are in areas that have not yet been developed, and for Herd Manager Meg Puckett, owning the property is the first step.

“You acquire the land, but then we need to make sure that it’s viable habitat. Maybe there’s things that we can do to that land to make it a better environment for the horses and other wildlife,” she said. “There’s a lot more that goes into it than just buying the land, but the land acquisition is certainly step one.”

At one time, Bankers roamed freely from Carova to the Shackleford Banks. Exact numbers are hard to find. In 1926 National Geographic writer Melville Chater estimated the total number of Bankers to be between 5,000 and 6,000.

The horses thrived until the 1930s when the federal government created Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. The belief, at that time, was that the horses, because they were nonnative, were damaging the ecosystem that migratory waterfowl needed. The decision was made to eliminate the herd and a bounty was placed on the horses. At a time when the Great Depression gripped the Outer Banks, as well as the nation, families saw the bounty as economic survival. Today, the last remnants of the 5,000 to 6,000 horses that Chater claimed live on as the Corolla wild horses and at the Shackleford Banks father south along the North Carolina coast.

It is unclear, though, if the Corolla horses are destructive to the environment. Puckett said that what she sees in her work as herd manager does not match that belief.

“I think it doesn’t take someone who’s an expert in this to take a step back and say this population of horses has not only lived here, they’ve thrived,” she said. “If they were as destructive to the environment as some people say that they are, they wouldn’t still be alive. They wouldn’t be able to survive if they destroyed their environment. They also would be very damaging to other wildlife, and we just don’t see that.”

The view that the Corolla herd is not as destructive as once thought has been gaining acceptance. Because part of the area they use is state and federal lands, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund management plan is created in conjunction with government agencies. When first presented, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had sought a herd totaling 60, a number too low to maintain a healthy population. That number, though, has been revised as evidence of what the real impact of the herd has been.

“For U.S. Fish and Wildlife and for the state of North Carolina to come to the table and say, ‘We agree to your population statement of no less than 110, no more than 130,’ I think speaks for itself, as far do the horses have a negative impact on the environment,” Puckett said.

Featured Image

A tricolored heron watches motionless for prey in the water at Roanoke Island Marshes Dedicated Nature Preserve in Wanchese. Photo: Kip Tabb

Dec. 1, 1922, was an overcast day with a strong wind from the south in New Bern. It was the day after Thanksgiving — it was not until 1942 that the holiday became the fourth Thursday of the month.

Also, it was the day a quarter of the city went up in flames. A fire that, according to New Bern historian Bill Hand, is still the largest urban fire in North Carolina history.

For most of the residents of the city it was a workday, although hundreds were in Raleigh to cheer the high school football team on to victory in the state tournament.

At the time, lumber and wood product factories were some of the city’s biggest employers, and along the Neuse River, sawmills lined the riverfront.

Sometime around 8 a.m. the Morning New Bernian reported in its Dec. 2, 1922, edition that a fire had begun at the largest facility in the city, the Rowland Lumber Co., and quickly engulfed the business.

“The blaze is said to have originated from friction caused by a belt on the leg jack in the saw mill building. This was discovered shortly after it had originated but the spread of the flames was so rapid that before an alarm could be sounded and water gotten to the fire, the building was a mass of flames,” the newspaper reported.

The Rowland Lumber Co. fire was the beginning of a series of seemingly unconnected coincidences that led to an estimated 900 to 1,000 structures destroyed, leaving as many as 3,000 people homeless.

At the time, there were two volunteer fire companies protecting the city: the Atlantic Fire Co. and the Button Co. There was tremendous rivalry between the companies and in hope of toning down the competition, the city decreed that the chief of each company would alternate odd and even years as the city fire chief.

“So, we know that the chief on the day the fire was actually the chief of the Atlantic Volunteer Fire Company as well,” Pat Dunleavy, a volunteer at the New Bern Firehouse Museum said during a recent presentation at the firehouse.

Both companies responded to the fire, and Atlantic Chief James Bryan decided to keep his company on hand and send the Button Company home.

“The standard practice at the time was that if the chief decided he didn’t really have to have both companies, they’d send one back to their fire station in case there was another fire alarm,” Dunleavy explained.

Around 9 a.m., an alarm came in for a fire at a home in the city’s housing area for Black residents.

Chief Bryan left the Rowland Mills fire and after arriving on the scene, found that the residents had formed a bucket brigade and extinguished the flames themselves.

An hour later, a third alarm sounded at Kilmarnock Street.

“The chief breaks away, comes down to take a look and discovers that it’s not a single house fire, but three houses have already burned down and three blocks of houses are on fire,” Dunleavy said.

Bryan faces a dilemma. Unlike the white sections of the city, the Black neighborhoods do not have municipal water. In 1922, “If you were Black living in this area and you wanted to get water you (would) send your kid outside with a bucket to go to the hand pump and get a bucket of water.”

The lack of water pressure and the rapidly spreading flames were not the only problem the chief faced. There was also a critical shortage of trained personnel.

“New Bern High School was on their way to the state championship. Over 300 people loaded the train and others drove to Raleigh that morning,” New Bern historian Carol Becton noted during a lecture she delivered earlier this month at Tryon Palace.

Numerous accounts estimate the wind at 30-40 mph with stronger gusts. Around the periphery of the Black neighborhoods, the fire companies had the water pressure they needed to keep the fire from spreading to the white homes, but their fire trucks had neither the capacity in their tanks nor the water pressure to battle the blaze. Bryan had his two companies, but neither was at full strength, with quite a few firemen in Raleigh for the big football game.

And there was one more factor, perhaps the most significant of all.

“These houses are almost all wood construction. Almost all have cedar shake shingle roofs, the whole building was just a fire waiting to happen,” Dunleavy said.

The chief saw the fire burning out of control, realized the wooden homes were tinder and made a drastic decision. The only course of action, he determined, was to create a fire break.

“So, he decides he’s going to blow up all these houses on Queen Street (on the south side of flames) to remove the fuel from the air,” Dunleavy said. “Of course, that won’t really remove the fuel. What it will do is lower the fuel so the sparks will be not so easily blow onto the roofs.”

The firemen waste no time in placing either dynamite or gunpowder under homes, though newspaper accounts differ on which explosive it was. The firemen were moving so quickly they may have endangered lives.

The Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico’s homeport was New Bern and as the fire spread, crewmen from the ship came to help.

In his book “New Bern History 101,” Edward Barnes Ellis Jr. tells of Coast Guard officer William Montague who entered a house to help a woman out as the firemen were getting ready to blow it up.

“With the woman in his arms, Montague saw three men placing explosive charges. He shouted to tell them he was in the building (but) to no avail. The blast blew Montague and the woman through a wall and into the yard,” he wrote.

Montague was unconscious for several hours, but other than that he and the woman suffered only minor injuries.

The fire, according to the New Bernian, had originated in the home of Henry Bryan, a Black itinerant barber on Kilmarnock Street, in the section of the city occupied mainly by Black residents.

Whether the Bryan house was the first to catch fire may be difficult to determine. It was certainly one of the first, and Hand, the historian, had an opportunity to interview Dr. Samuel Bryan who was 4 at the time in 1922.

“He was a child in that house on Kilmarnock Street and remembered sitting there. Everybody runs out and he’s still sitting at the table eating his breakfast, which is Thanksgiving leftovers, and they had come back in and drag him out,” Hand said.

Bryan, a dentist, died in 2014.

The firebreak does little if anything to stop the spread of the flames, and the chief realizes he has neither the resources nor personnel to fight the fire.

“He starts calling neighboring towns to ask for assistance,” Dunleavy said. “Kinston 35 miles west says yes, they’ll send a fire company and a fire truck down, but they have to travel over 35 miles across the (dirt and gravel) roads to get here. So it’s not going to be quick. Little Washington responds and says yes, they’ll send the fire truck in there. But they have to wait and get a flatbed railroad car.”

Washington firefighters do not arrive until 3 p.m., and Kinston makes it to the fire an hour later.

In the Black neighborhoods, people are grabbing what they can from their homes and fleeing for their lives. Many of them retreat to the Cedar Grove Cemetery. With its stone walls and open green space, the cemetery nearest the southeast side of the area that burned became the overnight refuge for hundreds if not thousands of residents.

They often arrived with flames hard on their heels. In “The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922,” a compilation of oral histories gathered in 1992 by the Memories of New Bern Committee, Joe Gaskill McDaniel recalls running for his life with a friend.

“Frank and I were standing in a patch of collards growing in a vacant lot across the street. Wind caught the flames on the roof and carried them across the street. We fled from their path and you could hear the collards crackling as the fire consumed (them),” he said.

It was not until late afternoon or early evening that the fire was finally brought under control.

What greeted New Bern residents the next day was a scene of unimaginable destruction. Block upon block of charred wood, some smoldering, with the brick chimneys still standing to mark where homes had stood.

Yet there was only one reported fatality, Harriet Reeves, purportedly 105 years old and born into slavery. Exactly what happened is unclear. Some reports cite her weakened condition and an inability to escape. Others say she was escorted from her home, but went back to get personal belongings and was overcome by smoke.

The misery from the fire did not end Dec. 1, 1992. One quarter of the population of the city was now homeless, in many cases with only the clothes on their backs.

Help begins to arrive almost immediately.

“In the days following, Fort Bragg sent eight freight cars of tents, cots and mattresses, and other equipment for the homeless, with other organizations contributing clothing, money, and food to assist. A temporary ‘Tent City’ was established in Cedar Grove and at the Greenwood Cemetery for the homeless …” Nancy Figiel wrote earlier this year for Yes! Weekly.

Each family was issued two tents; one for sleeping and the other as a common area for cooking and gathering.

In “The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922” oral history, Mary Barden points to another tragedy.

“Losses were estimated at two and a half million dollars and about a third of this was covered by insurance,” she said, a figure that is consistent with newspaper accounts of the time.

Retired schoolteacher Dorcas Carter recalls in the oral histories what the aftermath was like.

“The town has changed, because three thousand people were left homeless, and out of this they became quite disheartened,” she said. “No jobs, property condemned …”

It was the condemnation of the properties by the city that for many Black residents created a bitter legacy. Rather than allow all the homes to be rebuilt, New Bern used the opportunity to create city parks, widen streets and create government buildings.

“They did not allow the blacks to rebuild on their home site … This was upsetting … not returning to your birthplace,” Carter said, and described in detail what would happen when someone would try to rebuild.

“I’m recalling now a nearby neighbor who was a Mr. Richard Sawyer … attempted to rebuild. His homesite was on the condemned section … Each time he would get his frames up the city would make him tear it down. Finally he built up to the second story ready for a roof … He was ordered to tear down,” she recalled.

Becton in her lecture described how confusing it would have been for the residents of the area, showing a notice that read: “All owners of property located in the area that has been condemned by the by the Board of Alderman of the city of New Bern or parks, cemeteries and playgrounds and extensions and widening of streets would please file their claims with the City Clerk of the city of New Bern at the city hall at once in order that claims may be paid, adjusted and settled by the board of appraisals”

For many of the homeowners in those neighborhoods at that time, Becton explained, the notice was like a foreign language.

“Keep in mind, this is segregation, Jim Crow, and a lot of people may not be able to read well or at all or understand a lot of the terminology and were not even able perhaps to execute some of the requirements,” she said.

The loss of homes and property were not the only troubles confronting the Black community of the city.

“When the Rowland Lumber Company closed, many people were left unemployed. As a result many moved North,” Mary Chapman was recorded as saying in the “Great Fire” oral history.

“The demographics of the city before the fire was 60-65% Black with 35-40% of white population after the closing of tent city — all those Black people leave,” said Dunleavy. “There’s no choice. They need to get jobs.”

U.S. Census estimates show a shift to 55.6% white, 33.1% Black.

Becton, in her lecture, focused on more than the horror of the fire, also calling attention to a community hospital for the Black residents and a library that became a part of the community. Pointing to a mural that had been painted on the side of a building on Queen Street that depicted a Phoenix flying above a burned-out city, she described it as representing how the community recovered.

It was, as she recounted it, a “Phoenix rising out of the ashes. And so that’s exactly what happened for those victims of the great fire.”

WANCHESE – The federal government recently announced new offshore wind energy lease areas off the North Carolina coast, but for Dr. Mike Muglia, assistant director for science and research with the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Program at the Coastal Studies Institute, there is tremendous additional potential for power generation in the ocean’s waters.

Much of Muglia’s research focus has been on how ocean currents can be harnessed, and he said the potential is huge, and while the obstacles are big too, the Gulf Stream could be the largest single focused source of renewable energy identified to date.

“That’s all the water in the Atlantic Ocean that’s flowing north on the surface layer,” explained Muglia, who spoke during a recent Science on the Sound lecture. “Drive the rest of the way across the Atlantic Ocean and the water’s coming back south. You’re moving about 30 times the flow of all the rivers on Earth off Cape Hatteras in the Gulf Stream, an immense amount of energy and volume of water.”

The monthly lecture series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus examines coastal topics and issues relevant to the state’s northern coast. Each lecture is also livestreamed and archived on the institute’s YouTube channel.

Standing in front of a map showing the confluence of the Gulf Stream, Labrador Current and the boundary waters, Muglia said the Outer Banks is an outstanding location for ocean studies.

“We happen to live in one of the best places in the world for oceanography and the coolest, most exciting place ever,” Muglia said. “We have this huge confluence of all these different water masses occurring right off of Cape Hatteras in our backyard.”

There is an extraordinary amount of energy in those water masses, he said, and ocean energy in general is a resource of almost extraordinary potential that could represent a significant third renewable energy resource joining wind and solar. But the technology is still in its infancy, Muglia noted.

“It’s a pretty new industry, which is why it’s not necessarily cost-competitive with wind and solar that have been around for 50 or 100 years,” he said.

Research to bring down the cost of generating ocean energy is moving forward. One of the advantages ocean energy offers is the range of options.

Muglia said it appears straightforward, but it’s not that simple. 

“I’m a physics guy. I work with engineers, and we all think the same, which means, ‘All right, let’s see how much we have out there. Where’s the best wave resource? Where should we go put this thing and then how can we build something to get that energy?’ We think that’s all there is to get energy. And that’s totally wrong,” he said.

A big obstacle is developing mechanisms to capture and convert ocean energy and transmit it to the power grid.

“This is a really new endeavor,” he said. “There aren’t people building wave energy converters. We need to bring those people up to speed on what we’re actually doing and teach them, and then they’ll surpass us. “

If grid-level ocean energy production is still years in the future, there are already smaller devices that Muglia is working on that may have commercial application. Two devices in particular, a tethered coaxial turbine and an ocean kite may have commercial potential, and prototypes are being tested.

Developed by a North Carolina State University team, the coaxial turbine looks like a torpedo that is tapered at both tips. It features two rotors, one at each end. When deployed, the turbine will be tethered and operate at an angle — yawed — to the current. The rotors counterrotate to eliminate the torque that would occur if both rotors were to turn in the same direction.

“The reason that it’s yawed is that you can get fresh flow on both rotors,” Muglia said. “If you had a line with the current the second rotor would be in the turbulence of the first. This way it gets clean flow on both rotors.”

The device was recently tested at Lake Norman, a hydroelectric dam reservoir that covers nearly 1,800 square miles, where it was towed behind a boat to simulate an ocean current.

“Lake Norman has these long fetches of very deep water where we can tow for a long time and simulate the current on them,” Muglia said, explaining why the devices were tested at that location.

The Lake Norman prototype was equipped with a generator. The next deployment of the coaxial turbine is planned to take place in waters near the Coastal Studies Institute and will test the device’s ability to desalinate the water.

“The one we’re going to test in our backyard has a pump, so it can do reverse osmosis by pumping water from the device up the line to a reverse-osmosis system,” Muglia said.

The other device, the underwater kite, may be closer to actual application than the coaxial turbine, although it’s not clear whether the public will be seeing it in use any time soon.

With primary design work done by Chris Vermillion at NC State, the Ocean Kite System for Marine Hydrokinetic Energy Harvesting, as it is officially known, will move through the water in in a figure-eight motion, collecting and transmitting energy along its tether.

The ocean kite may be the first of the ocean current-harvesting systems to be deployed. Muglia explained that the kite is part of a project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which is looking for ways to power an unmanned submarine. The submarine, called the Manta Ray, is designed for stealth movement and minimal drag as it maneuvers beneath the surface.

Desalination technology

Although much of the research Muglia described is focused on how to harness the ocean’s power for energy production, there are other areas of research that use wave action without necessarily generating or storing electricity.

Waves to Water, held at Jennette’s Pier in April, was a National Renewable Energy Lab-sponsored competition calling for relatively lightweight, easily assembled systems that can produce clean drinking water using only wave energy. The lab’s overview described the devices as, “small, modular, wave-powered desalination systems capable of providing potable drinking water in disaster relief scenarios and remote coastal locations.”

Muglia and his team at the Coastal Studies Institute organized the deployment of the four systems during the competition, and all produced fresh water. The winning entry, from Canadian company Oneka Technologies, was able to produce 1,000 liters of water per day.

What may be most remarkable though, is the Oneka system used only the power of the waves to pump water through a membrane. There was no electric-powered pump onboard.

“This device pressurizes water and forces it through a semi permeable membrane so it’s not making electricity,” Muglia explained. “It’s just using this giant device as a pump. And when Trip (Taylor, a research assistant at the institute) got on this to activate it. He said it was incredible because as soon as a little wave hit it, it was like these big lungs just going and just pumping.”

While the applications of ocean energy are still in their infancy, especially for generating power to light homes and businesses, George Bonner, director of the Renewable Ocean Energy Program, has been pushing the microgrid possibilities of ocean energy since he joined the institute in 2019.

Muglia, responding to a question about that technology, expressed support for his colleague’s goal.

“Ultimately, what we’d like to do is to take the energy that we’re getting from these devices and put them in charging stations for cars in the parking lot. That’s what George is hellbent to do and we’re all with him.”

For Lisa Rose, author of the new book, “Urban Foraging,” her fascination with the often-overlooked plants that can be a part of a healthy diet began with family and has become a profession and a passion.

An anthropologist with an interest in ethnobotany and herbal medicine, Rose has written three books. Her first two, “Grand Rapids Food” and “Midwest Medicinal Plants,” were focused on her home state of Michigan. Her latest, though, “Urban Foraging,” released in October, takes a nationwide look.

“I’ve traveled a great deal between both coasts … so in considering this book, I really had to double click into generally what am I going to be able to find across most of my regions,” she said. “So in parts of North Carolina coastal regions, you might have 35 of those plants, whereas 15 might not be immediately at your fingertips. The criteria, first and foremost (was) geographic distribution.”

The foundation for her interest in botany, plants and how they can be a part of everyday life, began in Flint, Michigan, where she grew up. Her father was an engineer and mother an avid gardener, and both parents contributed to her fascination with plants.

“He was always asking questions, “she said, describing her father. “He was very engaged in the natural world. In fact, he taught me at a young age that the natural world is the best engineer, that the natural world has solutions to the problems of imbalance. There’s a natural rhythm, not always nice and frequently chaotic in the restoration of balance.”

It was her mother, though, who applied knowledge of the natural world to daily life.

“My mother was a gardener for a good chunk of my childhood, not because it was a hobby, but because it was a practical, economical way to feed her family,” Rose said. “We had a feral concord grape hedgerow when I was growing up and my mother would put up about 50 to 75 quart jars’ worth of juice. I mean that that really was a foundation of my childhood.”

Not every plant in the book grows in eastern North Carolina. Aspen, according to North Carolina Parks webpage “Vascular Plants of North Carolina,” only grows in the mountains of the state and even then, only rarely. Hyssop, described by the “Vascular Plants” page as “one of the tallest and most robust native herbs in the state,” has not been recorded in the Piedmont or coastal plain.

With 50 plants listed in her book, though, there are plenty to choose from. Some are well known as edible wild plants, particularly blackberries and grapes, although Rose features wild concord grapes of her native Michigan.

Some of her selections are surprising, although when reading about these plants, it becomes apparent why they were chosen.

The prickly pear is a case in point. Rose suggests numerous possible uses for the plant, ultimately settling on recommending a prickly pear simple syrup. When harvesting prickly pear, Rose makes clear the hazards involved, pointing out that the species has two types of sharp barbs awaiting the careless.

“Both the prickly pear pads and fruits are covered in large and tiny spines. While the large spies are somewhat avoidable, the glochids are pesky buggers that can get into the skin and feel like a fiberglass rash,” she writes. “The glochids will embed themselves into fabric, so do your gathering with leather gloves.”

She described for Coastal Review the lesson she learned the first time she harvested prickly pear.

I didn’t realize — It’s not the big thorns that are the worst problem. It’s the glochids. They’re horrible. I had harvested my first batch of prickly pear using a cloth bag and cloth gloves. That was the worst idea ever,” she said.

Her recommended recipe for prickly pear simple syrup is as a “delicious simple syrup for margaritas.”

A number of Rose’s recipes are for mixed drinks, which she noted is part of a long tradition.

“In past generations a lot of plants were preserved into a bitter as digestive aids and served as aperitifs. Monks were brewing them in the Middle Ages, 13th century France, Germany. So it’s really a long tradition, of maybe not for medicinal any longer but definitely today for a cocktail hour,” she said.

Many of the plants Rose writes about are often thought of as common weeds. Field garlic is a great example. Also known, according to the North Carolina State Cooperative Extension webpage as crow garlic, onion grass, stag’s garlic, wild garlic, and wild onion, the plant is common, especially along the edge of gardens. The plant has a distinct odor that is a cross between an onion and garlic and has the appearance of a spindly scallion.

Her recipe calls for a wild garlic flatbread, but she also notes the tops make an excellent garnish in place of scallion in a salad. She also writes that the bulb is exceedingly fibrous and quite difficult to use in a recipe.

Rose also takes readers into the forest. She noted that the needles, bark and resin of pine trees in general are edible. The needles in particular are emphasized for their culinary versatility.

“Chop the needles and use them as an herb to flavor salads, butters and vinegars for dressings,” she suggests in her book. She also notes that homebrewers can use pine needles to create ”a Belgian or wheat-styled ale without making the brew overly pine flavored.”

For Rose, “Urban Foraging” is a way to help readers understand the common plants in our lives that can be a part of our everyday diet — trees, flowers and many that are considered weeds. The book also reminds us of a largely forgotten history, a time when foraging for wild plants was a regular part of life. “In general, common knowledge we’ve forgotten about (wild plants),” she said.  “We’re about two generations now from that having been a really common practice.”

Editor’s note: The following report is drawn solely from Pete Benjamin’s comments as keynote speaker at the Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival and is not presented as representative of differing points of view on the controversial Red Wolf Recovery Program in northeastern North Carolina.

KILL DEVIL HILLS — Pete Benjamin has almost 10 years of hands-on experience supervising the red wolf recovery plan at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Benjamin, Fish and Wildlife Service Raleigh office field supervisor for ecological services, was keynote speaker Saturday for the 2022 Wings Over Water Wildlife Festival, telling attendees he was optimistic about the species’ recovery. But he also acknowledged the process had been a difficult series of twists and turns.

Red wolves at one time filled forests and fields here, Benjamin noted.

“The early naturalists noted that the wolves in the New World were a little smaller than the wolves they were familiar with from Europe,” he said, adding, “Europeans also brought with them all their prejudices and feelings about wolves. And they set about eliminating predators as quickly as they could.”

Related: Managers report positive shift in red wolf recovery efforts

Those prejudices against predators extended well into the 20th century.

“My agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, up through the 1940s had very active program of predator eradication. That was part of our job,” Benjamin said.

Eradication measures were effective — by the 1960s, the few remaining red wolves in the wild were cornered in a small area in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas.

Nature, however, seeks balance, and if a predator is removed from an environment, another inevitably takes its place.

“The coyote took advantage at that point,” he said. “In the early 1900s, its range started to expand quite dramatically, and it took over that role that had been filled by the other predators.”

Canidae biology allows any animal of the species to mate with any other of the species. Typically, they prefer to mate within their own species, “But when populations fall really low, the habitat is highly altered,” Benjamin said, “they will breed with others from the genus Canidae.”

When the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966 became law, the red wolf, Canis rufus, was one of the first species recognized as being in danger of extinction. Since then, there have been numerous attempts to preserve the red wolf.

The agency’s initial response was swift, Benjamin said.

“A guy named Curtis Carley was sent by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service down to Texas. And his job was to find the last remaining red wolves and establish a buffer zone around that population to keep the coyotes and the red wolves separate,” he said.

Carley quickly realized that was not feasible. He also concluded that there were already few “true” red wolves left, and that most were coyote-red wolf hybrids.

Recognizing that the original plan for saving the species would not work, Carley crafted another solution.

“Carley came up with an idea … and it took him a few years to convince his bosses to go along with it,” Benjamin said. “They decided that the way to save the red wolf was to eliminate it from the wild. Bring the last few animals they could find into captivity.”

It was considered a bold move. “The first time ever an animal had been eliminated from the wild for its preservation,” Benjamin noted.

The Fish and Wildlife Service began trapping red wolves in the 1970s, before genetic analysis was available. Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington, provided a captive-breeding facility, and Carley initially trapped 400 animals. He and his team developed criteria for what would be considered a red wolf, and as the captured animals bred, those criteria were applied time and again.

“They whittled it down to 14 animals,” Benjamin said. “That is the founding population of all red wolves that we know of existing today.”

The plan was never to keep the entire red wolf population in captivity. The goal was to reintroduce them to the wild. But that too was an unknown.

“Could wolves raised in zoos learn how to be wolves again in the wild? Could they find their own food? Could they defend and their own territory?” Benjamin said.

In the 1980s, agency biologists believed they had found the ideal release site: Bulls Island at the southern end of the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge on the South Carolina coast. Somewhat isolated from populated areas by extensive marsh, it seemed a good location for the wolves to succeed in the wild, but results were mixed.

The wolves did successfully hunt and establish territory. The biologists found they could successfully track the wolves, including when they left the island and ventured into nearby towns. 

A larger recovery area was needed.

Then, in 1986, the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge was established, and it seemed to check all the boxes for red wolf recovery, especially its size — 140,000 acres. Combined with the adjacent Navy bombing range, the wolves would have almost 200,000 acres total. And, perhaps most importantly, coyotes had not yet reached the region. After outreach to residents living near the refuge, breeding pairs were released into Alligator River.

Again, the learning curve for the field biologists was steep. The wolves covered far more territory than originally thought, with some of them roaming to Manns Harbor.

“And they eat a lot of deer. They really like deer,” Benjamin said.

Elsewhere, that may not have been important, but area hunters had been assured the wolves’ diet consisted almost entirely of smaller mammals.

Nonetheless, the population thrived, so much so that another first for reintroducing a species into the wild was tried.

“We developed the technique of cross-fostering,” he said. “They learned that if there was a litter of puppies born in the zoo at very nearly the same time as a litter in the wild, they can take puppies from that captive litter and just insert them into the wild. Since wolves can’t count, they just raise those foster puppies as their own. Puppies will grow up with all the experience and knowledge that they need to succeed.”

That appeared to work until the coyotes showed up in eastern North Carolina in the 1990s. Although research has subsequently demonstrated that red wolves will only breed with coyotes when there is no other option, in the 1990s that information was not yet available.

“We really didn’t understand at the time the dynamics that leads to interbreeding between red wolves and coyotes,” Benjamin said.

To prevent interbreeding, wildlife management scientists came up with another idea. The 1999 red wolf adaptive management plan was the first of its kind for the agency and the keystone was that, instead of just trying to remove the coyotes, they instead sterilized them.

Coyotes, like all canids, are territorial, and a breeding pair of coyotes will continue to protect its territory even if they can no longer reproduce.

But the plan did not address the larger issue of the exploding coyote population. As coyotes became more prevalent, hunting restrictions were relaxed. Hunters, unfamiliar with red wolves, too often mistook them for coyotes.

“Up until that time, vehicle mortality had really been the leading cause of death, natural causes a close second, but in about 2004, 2005, or so, gunshot took over as leading cause of death,” Benjamin said.

As he explained, for red wolves, highly dependent on their well-developed social structure, the death of a breeding pair or even one of the breeding pair, could halt reproduction for the entire season. The population plateaued at 120, Benjamin noted.

“And then it got a bit worse,” he said.

Concerns about the coyote population intersected with law and politics and the result was a stunning drop in cooperative efforts to protect the red wolf.

In 2012, the North Carolina Wildlife Commission permitted coyotes to be taken in daytime or night and allowed hunters to use spotlights.

“That prompted a number of environmental groups to challenge the state in federal court, saying that was going to inevitably lead to more take of red wolves in violation Endangered Species Act.

For a while, the judge banned hunting of coyotes in the five-county Albemarle Peninsula, Benjamin said.

It was a legal victory, but the cost to the red wolf management program was nearly catastrophic. Landowners adjacent to the refuge, who had been cooperative or indifferent to the management plan, suddenly no longer permitted access to their property.

“A lot of landowners just said, ‘Fish and Wildlife Service, you’re not allowed on my land,’” Benjamin recalled.

Effective red wolf management requires a hands-on approach. Dens need to be located, collars and tags are important for tracking the species and the health of litters is important to note. Without that information, management became difficult, almost impossible, and the result was a collapse of the wild red wolf population.

“By the 2018 we were down to where there were no remaining breeding pairs in the wild” Benjamin said.

Yet even as the Alligator River program was teetering on the brink of failure, there was reason for optimism for the species overall.

“At that same time, we were working hard with the (wolf) population under human care in zoos in 49 facilities around the country to grow the size of capital population because with only 14 animals that was the starting population, retaining the genetic diversity of species is very difficult to gain,” he said.

Then a second site, St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, produced a litter in the wild.

“That project is going on very well,” Benjamin said.

Alligator River, though, is still the primary test site for wild red wolf recovery. Here, there has been some recovery from the 2018 low of eight wolves and no breeding pair. For the first time since 2014, the agency is again releasing captive-bred wolves into the wild.

Many of the problems that plagued the program in its earliest days returned.

“There were no wild mating pairs so you could not do pup fosters. So, we’re back to where we were in the beginning of releasing adult zoo raised wolves,” Benjamin said.

Some wolves have wandered into towns and had to be removed. Others were hit by cars. A few were shot. But earlier this year, a litter of six wild wolf pups was confirmed, the first wild litter since 2018.

And the agency is trying to do better at working with locals.

“We’re spending a lot more time trying to work with people, landowners, stakeholders. We spend a lot of time talking to folks, understand their concerns, do everything we can to address those concerns,” Benjamin said.

Recognizing that attitudes about coyotes are unlikely to change and hunting continues, released red wolves are now fitted with orange collars.

This post has been updated to include additional information on Currituck Beach Lighthouse provided by Outer Banks Conservationists nonprofit organization.

The three lighthouses north of Ocracoke on the Outer Banks, Cape Hatteras, Bodie Island and Currituck Beach, built between 1869 and 1875, have withstood hurricanes, nor’easters and the harsh coastal environment, although the Hatteras light was moved landward in 1999 to spare it from the encroaching Atlantic.

The trio all share design features that were introduced with the Hatteras light, which was first lit Dec. 16, 1870, and they all have in common construction supervisor Dexter Stetson, a Massachusetts native who brought his church construction expertise and innovations to the projects.

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was the nation’s third attempt at providing a beacon to warn mariners about deadly Diamond Shoals. The first light tower at Hatteras had been built in 1803 but was only 90 feet tall, too short to be effective. In 1853, the tower was extended another 60 feet, but even at 150 feet and even with its first-order Fresnel lens the lighthouse was inadequate.

But the new lighthouse, once completed, was up to the task. The beam from the Fresnel lens was visible 20 nautical miles. And the foundation supporting the towering structure, which featured Stetson’s solution after conditions at the site had halted construction as designed, stood the tests of time and harsh coastal conditions.

Before construction of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was complete, the Lighthouse Board, the federal agency overseeing the nation’s lighthouses, was planning its next project on the Outer Banks, a new lighthouse for Bodie Island. Stetson’s written orders were dated June 19, 1871, from Capt. Peter Hains, lighthouse engineer for the 5th Lighthouse District.

“You will proceed without delay to Body’s Island, N. C., and commence the construction of the First Order Light house at that place in accordance with the drawings and instructions furnished you,” Hains wrote, advising that, “The L. H. at Body’s Island, the construction of which is placed in your charge, will be one of the most important on the Atlantic Coast and too much energy cannot be displayed in hastening its completion.”

A 2003 National Park Service historic structure document details the location selected for the new lighthouse as recorded in the report, “New structure at Body’s Island,” found in the National Archives.

Related: Ceremony set for Bodie Island Lighthouse’s 150th year

“The new site is 1^1/2 nautical miles north of Oregon Met, 3/4 mile from the Atlantic and 3/8 mile from Roanoke Sound. It is protected on the west by Roanoke Island from the action of storms tending to drive the waters of Pamlico Sound towards the sea. It is a square piece of land 15 acres in extent,” according to the document.

Hains prescribes how the structure was to be built, specifically referencing Stetson’s design for a stable foundation used for the just-completed Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

“As the work you superintended at Cape Hatteras has rendered you familiar with the details and requirements of such a tower, as that to be built at Body’s Island, detailed instructions are not deemed necessary, the drawings being sufficiently explicit with general instructions. The foundation will be on grillage similar to that at Cape Hatteras tower the top of the grillage being six feet two inches below the surface of the ground,” he writes.

The grillage Hains references were pine beams that Stetson had used to shore the foundation for the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

“The lighthouse was set on a ‘floating foundation’ (two layers of pine beams placed crossways below the water table topped by massive granite blocks), which remained perfectly preserved for well over a century,” according to the lighthousefriends.com website.

In 1999, when the lighthouse was raised off its foundation and moved a half-mile away from the sea, the pine beams were intact and unharmed.

The original plans for Cape Hatteras Lighthouse called for the foundation to be on pilings driven into the sand. However, it quickly became apparent that the sand was too compacted to drive pilings, and project engineer J.H. Simpson wrote to the Lighthouse Board detailing Stetson’s solution.

“Pursuant to said instructions a bottom sounding iron rod, 1’4”…provided with a proper head and sharp point at its lower end was furnished Mr. Stetson, the Supt of Construction; but with all the battering possible it seems he could not make it penetrate the sand at the site of the Tower more than 9 feet … Indeed, he found when he reached the proper depth of excavation, the bottom so hard and compacted as to require no piling, and therefore mailing me … that he intended to place a double grillage platform immediately on the bottom.”

Stetson employed the same floating foundation design when building the Bodie Island Lighthouse, and again in 1873 when he began work on the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.

However, when Stetson drove his test borings into the sand at Currituck Beach, he found the soil was suitable for a foundation of pilings, the pilings driven 22’-24’ into the sand. Stetson’s grill design was still to be used to support the tower as described by Peter Hains, Major Engineer for the project in a January, 1874 letter to the Lighthouse Board.

“The piles are to be driven at distances apart of two (2) feet ten (10) inches,” he wrote. “They will then be sawed off at a depth of three and a half (3 ½) feet below the level of the water, then capped by 12”x12” timbers…At right angles to these pieces, another set of 12”x12” timbers will be laid…The grillage will then be eighteen inches thick. The open spaces are to be filled in with concrete…on which the masonry of the tower will rest,” according to information provided by Outer Banks Conservationists, which oversees the Currituck Beach Lighthouse.

Stetson’s qualifications

It’s not entirely clear why Stetson was initially chosen for the job of superintendent of construction.

According to his obituary published Dec. 1, 1899, in the Lynn, Massachusetts, Daily Evening, Stetson was born in Durham, Maine, Nov. 8, 1815.

In February 2006 the Nahant Harbor Review wrote that sometime in the 1840s he had moved to Lynn and in 1846 married Ann Maria Hood of Nahant, a small town on a peninsula that borders Lynn to the south. There, the couple made their home.

Stetson had gained a reputation as a skilled builder, according to the Nahant Review article. In the town, his most widely praised work was the village church built in 1852. The Nahant Harbor Review quotes Calantha Sears of the Nahant Historical Society who said, “It was built so well for $2,258 that part of a Sunday sermon included praise for Stetson on his handiwork.”

His successful work on the church was followed by a small political victory, having been elected a town selectman in Nahant, according to an April 4, 1853, report in the Richmond, Virginia, Daily Dispatch. “The town is one of the smallest in the Bay State containing only about 30 votes.”

In 1855, Stetson worked on his first lighthouse, the Egg Rock Lighthouse, near Nahant, according to historian and author Kevin Duffus.

Stetson was not the supervisor on the project. That was Ira P. Brown, and it is unclear exactly what Stetson’s role was. But the work led to government contracts, and just as the Civil War erupted, Stetson had taken work on the Gulf Coast.

“When the war broke out, he was in New Orleans, having charge of the building of several government buildings there. He had in his possession, a valise full of gold coin, the property of the government, and had considerable of a trip getting it back safely to New York,” the Lynn Daily Evening noted in Stetson’s obituary.

Later life

After completing the Currituck Beach Lighthouse Stetson returned to Nahant, remaining there until he died in 1899. Stetson’s mother’s maiden name was Dennison, and in a 1906 book by A.L. Dennison, “The Dennison Family,” the author describes Stetson’s life after returning to his hometown.

“He served the government thirty years and built some of the finest lighthouses on our coast. When he retired he received many complimentary letters from high officials of the Army and Navy for his integrity and efficiency,” Dennison writes.

This story has been updated to correct William Weaver’s nationality.

Marvin Tupper Jones has deep roots in his native Hertford County, but part of his heritage is what some historians have described as lost.

Jones is the executive director of Chowan Discovery, a Hertford County nonprofit working to tell the history and heritage of the multiracial communities of northeastern North Carolina.

Jones shared the story of his family during a talk Aug. 17 at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, putting his ancestors’ stories in the context of the nation’s history. Not necessarily the wars, battles and great events, although there was plenty of that, rather, his narrative showed how interwoven his family’s history is in the American fabric.

On his father’s side, Jones is descended from William Weaver, an East Indian man who lived in India before coming to North America. Arriving in 1690, he was the father of biracial children, none of whom were enslaved.

But on his mother’s side of the family, the history goes back even further and is traced to the earliest inhabitants of northeastern North Carolina, a culture that had “disappeared.”

“I’d like to tell you a story about a long period of time here in the Albemarle and that is my family from before the Lost Colony up to now,” Jones said as he began his lecture.

His ancestors were from the Chowanoke of the Albemarle region. The Chowanoke, who lived along the banks of the Chowan River, were described by Ralph Lane, military captain of Sir Walter Raleigh’s first exploratory mission to the Albemarle, as the most powerful tribe in the area, with some 19 towns and 700 warriors ready for battle.

In 1585 Lane, in an action that would presage the violence against the region’s tribal nations, seized the Chowanoke king and questioned him for days, Jones explained.

“He seized the Chowanoke leader, Menatonon, and interrogated him for three days, departing with Mematonon’s son as a hostage,” he said.

Jones traces his family’s links to the Chowanoke to John Robins. There is no known documentation of Robins’ birthdate, but it’s generally listed around 1665. The family name was eventually spelled as Robbins.

Robins lived in a turbulent period. The Chowanoke had entered into a treaty in 1663 with the lords proprietors who controlled at the time what would become North Carolina. By the terms of the treaty, according to the Naive American Project, the tribe, “submitted themselves to the Crown of England under the Dominion of the Lord Proprietors.”

But as the Colony’s population grew, treaty violations became more numerous, leading to a largely forgotten 17th-century conflict.

“Because of encroachments in 1676 between the Chowan River and Dismal Swamp, there was the Chowan River War, which is almost never mentioned in North Carolina histories. It was the first Colonial war against Indians. It was sustained. It covered a period of about two years,” Jones said.

The Chowanoke lost the war and a new treaty relegated them to 12 square miles along Bennetts Creek, a Gates County tributary to the Chowan River. Over time much of the original tract was sold, probably to satisfy taxes and debts.

“Now we get into my mother’s part of the family,” Jones said. “John Robbins, born say 1700, was one of the Chowan County Indians who sold some of their land on Bennetts Creek.”

The sale of land continually shrank the size of what was probably the first North American Native American reservation. By the 1750s, almost all the land had been sold.

Jones cites Moravian missionary August Gottlieb Spangenberg who wrote in 1752, “the tribe of the Chowans is reduced to a few families.” Going on to say that their condition was “deplorable” and “their land had been taken away from them.”

But Jones clarified that if the land that was once their native soil was no longer theirs, the Chowan people still saw themselves as unique.

“As a collective community when some disappear from the historical record … a lost tribe, the Chowanoke blended with others on the margins of Colonial society,” he said, citing Michael Leroy Oberg from his 2009 book, “The Head in Edward Nugent’s Hand.”

“Hey, I’m here,” Jones said to that, adding that the blending with others on the margins of society was, “not true at all.”

He cites research done by Forest Hazel, published in North Carolina Archeology, that showed the Chowanoke dispersed throughout northeastern North Carolina.

“You had Chowanokes who moved as far east as Currituck County, of course Hertford County and Bertie County, but still you have a core who stayed in Gates,” he said.

As Jones reviewed his family’s history, even if the Chowanoke tribe was no longer recognized, the descendants of the tribe were creating their own community in Hertford County.

In 1790, James Robbins, probably the grandson or great-grandson of John Robins, with other members of his family, sold the last remaining 400 acres of the original tract granted to the Chowanoke people in 1724.

At that time, any sale of land involving nonwhite citizens had to be approved by the state legislature and in approving the sale, Jones quoted the legislature as noting the sale was, “Leaving a parcel of Indian women which is mixed with Negroes, and there is now several freemen or women of Mixed blood as aforesaid has descended from said Indians and they behave themselves in the late contest with Great Britain as good and faithful soldiers.”

James Robbins had, in fact, been a “good and faithful soldier.” Among the documents Jones found in researching his family history was a 1782 pay voucher for Robbins’ service in the Revolutionary War.

The James Robbins household also is found in the 1790 census. It was a large household, listed as having 15 free people of color and a white woman. The white woman is listed in the 1800 census, also. The woman is not named; at that time only the male head of a household was listed in census records. However, Jones points out, the couple were probably married.

“I have a white great-great-great-grandmother,” he said.

The designation as a free people of color became extraordinarily important after the 1831 Nate Turner rebellion. The oldest document in his family’s personal possession is a court statement from 1831.

“It belonged to my great-great-grandfather, Noah Robins,” Jones said. “The document states: ‘Noah Robins a man of color hath made application to this court to grant him a certificate certifying that his a free man and a native of this county Gates County and in proofs being rendered to that effect, it was then and there that ordered that the Clerk of said Court give to Noah Robins a certificate certifying that he is a free man of color and is a native of said County and is entitled to all the rights and privileges of free persons of colour …’”

“This is four days after the Nat Turner Rebellion,” Jones explained. “This document was required of all free people of color in North Carolina, but many of them didn’t get it until they needed it. He needed it because of the great backlash in Virginia and North Carolina all the way to South Carolina from the Nat Turner rebellion. He needed it to save his life, his household and everything.”

Although the court document granted Robbins “all the rights and privileges of free persons of color” in antebellum North Carolina, it is unclear what those rights and privileges were. The state legislature stripped free people of color of the right to vote in 1835, one of a series of increasingly restrictive laws.

The result was that the ranks of the Union Army were filled with members of the Hertford County Robbins family.

In February 1862, the Union Navy seized control of the Chowan River, and free people of color and formerly enslaved people flocked to the Union banner. According to Jones, eight Robbins served in the Union Army. The various members of Robbins family served throughout the states in rebellion.

“(They) served in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida and Texas,” Jones said.

Sergeant major Parker David Robbins and his brother, Augustus Robbins, regimental quartermaster sergeant, went on to serve in the North Carolina legislature after the war.

But when Reconstruction ended in 1877, the hope that people of color could participate in the political process in North Carolina seemed to die. The tenuous coalition of Republican legislators combining white political leaders and people of color elected to state office was shattered. Physical intimidation and laws made it ever more difficult for people of color to vote.

Yet, nearly a century after the end of Reconstruction, Jones’ mother served as a Hertford County elections official.

“Noah Robbins lost the right to vote in 1835,” Jones said and pointed to an image he posted on the screen in the lecture hall. “This is his great-granddaughter, my mother Pearlene (Robbins) Jones, who was an elections judge in 1972.”

National Aviation Day, held annually Aug. 19, always seems to be a pretty big deal at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.

It is, after all, where Wilbur and Orville Wright first proved that heavier-than-air flight was possible.

The date celebrating flight was not chosen randomly. Orville Wright was born Aug. 19, 1874. Three years later, his sister Katherine was born on the same day. In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt declared as National Aviation Day Orville’s – and Katherine’s – birthday.

This year, to commemorate National Aviation Day and the innovation of the Wright brothers, Dr. Bob Balaram, former chief engineer for the Mars Ingenuity project, spoke Friday during a ceremony at the Wright Brothers Memorial about the challenges Ingenuity faced in becoming the first heavier-than-air aircraft to fly on another planet.

NASA now lists Balaram as emeritus, a role he defined as “handing off the reins to some of the younger members of the team.”

Six months ago, Balaram was the project’s chief engineer, and it was under his guidance that Ingenuity came to life, proving that flight was possible on the surface of Mars.

“This talk is really trying to draw some parallels between what the Wright brothers did here on Earth to fly for the first time … and what the Ingenuity team did on Mars to get that first helicopter on Mars,” he said.

Ingenuity is a four-blade helicopter with two sets of blades, upper and lower, that counter-rotate. Balaram brought with him a replica of the helicopter that was built using spare parts from the original.

At first glance, Ingenuity may not look all that remarkable — different, perhaps, but not too different in appearance from any number of drones. Yet what was on display is unlike any drone ever built.

It weighs only 4 pounds. Each of the helicopter blades weigh an ounce. Every component part of Ingenuity is designed to limit weight yet perform in an environment with temperatures that range between minus 130 to 60 degrees Farenheit.

The aircraft must be lightweight, Balaram explained, because the volume of Mars’ atmosphere is only 1% of Earth’s.

To demonstrate, Balaram held his arms out to about 3 feet.

“If I hold my arms out this way, I get about 2 pounds of air,” he said. “On Mars, that same volume is about an ounce or less.”

That difference parallels challenges the Wright brothers experienced.

The Ingenuity team built a 1/3-scale replica for test purposes. They had a chamber where the air pressure could be reduced to that of Mars’ atmosphere. As the rotors reached the 2,000 revolutions per minute needed for Mars flight, the model Ingenuity became uncontrollable, slammed into the walls of the chamber and broke.

Balaram showed a video of the event Friday during his talk.

“It turns out that helicopters on Earth — when they fly, their wings do flap up and down as they go around. And that flapping tends to induce an instability in the control, but on Earth the air is so thick that instability is not very much,” Dr. Balaram said.

On Mars, without the denser air, the dampening effect is lost.

The Wright brothers, Balaram noted, realized early on during their time at Kitty Hawk that they were not getting the lift expected from the calculations of their time.

“What they realized was most aerodynamic information that they had gotten was wrong. So they actually built their own wind tunnel … And they actually found out the correct aerodynamic tables,” he said.

The Ingenuity team faced a similar problem: There was theory about flight on Mars, but nothing practical because no one had ever flown in a 1% atmosphere. Nor, as it turned out, was there a proper wind tunnel to test designs.

“So we needed to build our own wind tunnel to understand what the dynamics of this Mars atmosphere would be,” he said.

The wind tunnel the Ingenuity team created was far more sophisticated than anything the Wrights could have envisioned, but like them, the only way to get the data that was needed was to build a wind tunnel.

There were other parallels.

Balaram pointed to the engine that Charlie Taylor built for the Wright brothers.

“It was an aluminum engine, a very new material to build an engine. In fact, precedent setting. And Charlie Taylor built the engine in six short weeks, and it produced real horsepower,” he said.

Because of the weight requirements of Ingenuity, extraordinary measures had to be taken to create the electric motor that would power the Mars helicopter’s rotors. Copper wire is the best material for generating the power from the battery, but what was needed was especially fine, square copper wire that would lay flat, weigh less and take up less space.

However, it all had to be done by hand. Everything in the construction of Ingenuity had to be done in a sterile setting to prevent contamination on Mars, and there wasn’t really anyone who had ever built something to wind wire with the tolerances needed.

The task of hand wiring Ingenuity fell to Matt Keenum of AeroVironment, one of the subcontractors on the project. Keenum was on hand for the presentation and Balaram recognized him as he explained what was involved.

“Matt had to spend about 100 hours under a microscope putting all the wiring in place for that motor,” he said.

The result was what Balaram described as “one of the most efficient motors you can possibly imagine for this very compact size.”

The first flight for the Wright brothers was a moment of triumph. Yet before the Wright Flyer lifted into the air, there was uncertainty and a real concern for the physical safety of whoever was in the aircraft.

The physical danger did not exist for the Ingenuity flight team, but there were moments of fear, perhaps none as great as simply getting to the surface of the planet.

“We hit the top of the Mars atmosphere and we have to decelerate from more than 5 miles a second down to zero in seven minutes. This is the scary part of any atmospheric landing, descending into the atmosphere,” Balaram said. “In the landing business, this is known as the seven minutes of terror landing on Mars.”

Ingenuity, attached to the bottom of the Mars Rover Perseverance, deployed and flew for the first time on April 19, 2021. Originally, mission planners had hoped Ingenuity would fly for a month and be a technology demonstration. As it turned out, though, Ingenuity has proved itself to be far more useful than originally envisioned.

Even though much of Ingenuity is high-tech, cutting-edge design, many of its components are off the shelf. Balaram pointed to its camera as an example.

“We have a color camera mounted to the side, very much like the cellphone camera,” he said.

“We fly ahead. We do a recon of various things that they may be interested in to find safe routes for the (Perseverance) rover. So that has turned out to be an extension of our technology demonstration, Balaram said. “Right now, it’s been almost a year and a half now that we’ve been flying together with the Perseverance Rover.”

There is now a small piece of the Wright Flyer on Mars. Wanting to pay tribute to the Wright brothers, a small piece of the muslin fabric of that first Wright Flyer has been attached to Ingenuity.

United States Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City is celebrating its 82nd birthday Monday, just weeks after the Coast Guard’s 232-year anniversary Aug. 4.

Now the Coast Guard’s largest aviation facility and biggest employer in the area, the base on the south side of Elizabeth City covers some 800 acres, a far cry from the original 249 acres when it first began operations Aug. 15, 1940.

When the station was commissioned, there were only four officers, 52 enlisted men and 10 aircraft including three Hall PH-2 seaplanes, four Fairchild J2K landplanes, and three Grumman JF-2 amphibians, according to Coast Guard Aviation History, a project of the Coast Guard Aviation Association.

Today, there is a combined workforce of around 2,000 Coast Guard personnel and civilian employees, making it the largest employer in northeastern North Carolina, according to the state archives.

The station’s core mission is search and rescue, but it also has aerial patrols as diverse as iceberg tracking in the Atlantic to monitoring shipping from the Atlantic Coast to the Azores.

Until recently, the base handled the training of the service’s rescue swimmers. After 30 years here, the training has temporarily moved to Petaluma, California. The renovated facility should reopen in 2025, according to the Coast Guard website.

Although Elizabeth City is one of the largest and busiest Coast Guard bases in the nation, there seems to be very little documentation of its earliest days.

From its beginning, Elizabeth City was an air base. It is not clear why Elizabeth City was chosen for what would become one of the most important Coast Guard and Naval facilities on the East Coast during World War II.

It is likely that the late Lindsay Warren played an important role. Warren was a Democrat who represented the 1st District encompassing northeastern North Carolina, from 1925 to 1940. He was briefly the speaker of the House before becoming the nation’s comptroller general in 1940.

Aycock Brown, in his “Covering the Waterfront” column that he wrote for the Beaufort News in the 1930s and 1940s, took note of 1939 headlines to speculate on what could be happening at Elizabeth City, suggesting Warren played an important part in bringing the base to the area.

One of the headlines originated in Elizabeth City, the other was from Washington, D.C.

“The Elizabeth City story stated that work began there Tuesday on the $128,000 WPA project which will when completed, be a modern and up-to-date Coast Guard Air Base, obtained through the efforts of Congressman Lindsay Warren,” Brown wrote.

“The Washington story under the caption: ‘Warren Has Hopes For Ocean Air Base’ quoted the congressman as saying he was looking into the possibility of Elizabeth City, N.C., becoming an airbase for trans-Atlantic plane service.”

Brown’s $128,000 from Works Progress Administration was dwarfed by the $2 million, or $42.3 million today, that the government actually spent on the facility. Also called Work Projects Administration, the WPA was created in 1935 for the unemployed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Neither the base nor the city ever became a center for trans-Atlantic plane service, but what it did become was an important facility for confronting the U-boats that brought World War II to the doorstep of the nation.

While Warren may have played a role in steering the Coast Guard to Elizabeth City, there were other factors also at play.

Even though the United States was ill-prepared for open warfare when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, government officials were aware that the world was becoming an increasingly dangerous place and were taking steps to protect vital interests.

Chesapeake Bay and the Hampton Roads area of Virginia was one of the largest ports on the East Coast, and had the open water needed for the seaplanes the Coast Guard was using.

The Virginia ports, though, were open to the sea, and Elizabeth City’s inland location was important to planners.

A document provided by Dr. William H. Thiesen, Atlantic area historian for the Coast Guard, offers a clue to what planners were thinking.

The document seems to be a study of how the Coast Guard’s air bases in general were used during World War II, although there is no date on it. The study’s author is unknown, and the pages are marked “confidential.”

“While the station was primarily intended as a major overhaul base for the eastern seaboard, the location of the base nevertheless was selected with a view of its strategic importance in regard to possible enemy action in time of war,” the study’s author wrote. “The new site was ideal, the most advantageous location between New York and Miami. In a sheltered area, north of Albemarle Sound and some fifty or sixty miles from Cape Hatteras, the station was built on the sloping banks of the Pasquotank River.”

Initially most of the flights were mapping exercises and law enforcement, especially enforcement of the Neutrality Acts. The Neutrality Acts were designed to keep the United States out of the warfare that was so much a part of the decade. Although modified and eventually rendered irrelevant, the acts prohibited U.S. flagged ships from carrying weapons of war to belligerent nations.

It was enforcement of the Neutrality Act of 1939 that Roosevelt used to expand and modernize the Coast Guard, informing Congress in an executive order “that a national emergency exists in connection with …proper observance, safeguarding, and enforcing of the neutrality of the United States…”

He went on to authorize the Coast Guard to add 2,000 more men and to order the “… facilities of the Coast Guard be increased, repaired, modernized, enlarged, and equipped to the extent determined by the Secretary of the Treasury …”

With the declaration of war, the Coast Guard was directed to operate as part of the Navy, and one of the primary functions of the base was the interdiction of German submarines. It was a function Coast Guard aircraft were ill-suited to perform.

“Initially there were very few resources available to combat the German submarines. The Coast Guard aircraft, not designed for combat, were equipped with locally fabricated depth charge racks and pressed into service,” notes United States Coast Guard Aviation History website.

It was extraordinarily frustrating for the pilots, according to the confidential study.

“Daily, merchant vessels were being sunk, while pilots stood by helplessly, unable to do more than turn in an outraged report,” the study continues, “It was not until December, 1943, that adequate fighting planes were procured. By that time the submarine danger was almost over.”

Yet the air crews saved lives, though the rescues were dangerous. Aviation History combines all air station activity indicating that more than 1,000 were rescued and with 95 landings.

“Three OS2U Kingfishers on a routine patrol spotted men in the water 30 miles east of Cape Hatteras. Depth charges were dropped in an area where it would not injure the men. All three aircraft landed and picked up all the survivors who rested on the wings until a boat arrived from the Elizabeth City air station to pick them up,” is one of the stories on the website.

By the end of the war, the base had returned to much of its original mission of rescue. Aggressive patrolling by U.S. military aircraft and communication with naval ships made the East Coast too dangerous for the submarines.

After the war, Elizabeth City, now greatly expanded, became a training and repair hub for the Coast Guard, as well as an air patrol base, functions that have continued until today.

Featured Image

A trio of great crested flycatchers gather momentarily Saturday in a tree at Sandy Run Park in Kitty Hawk. According to the Audubon Guide to North American Birds, flycatchers are more often heard — especially the males’ loud calls — than seen, as they prefer wooded areas. Photo: Kip Tabb

This story has been updated to include the link to the published report.

As spring gives way to summer and temperatures rise, the rivers and streams that are part of the Albemarle Sound Basin in northeastern North Carolina are home to an increasing number of algal blooms. New research draws a connection between the presence of these blooms and potentially hazardous fine particulate matter in the air.

In 2021, the Albemarle Resource Conservation and Development Council noted on its website that, “After an absence of 25-30 years, algal blooms have returned to parts of the Chowan River, Edenton Bay, Albemarle Sound, Little River, Perquimans River, and Pasquotank River. The summer blooms in 2015-2020 triggered state advisories for swimming and consuming fish.”

The algal blooms triggering the advisories are caused by cyanobacteria, a form of bacteria that produces its own food through photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are responsible for the blue-green blooms in the waters of the Chowan River and its tributaries.

Although not all cyanobacteria are harmful, those that are have been shown to contain neurotoxins, hepatotoxins that cause liver damage, cytotoxins that cause cellular damage, and dermatoxins that potentially cause skin irritation, necrosis and damage to mucous membranes. 

Cyanobacteria blooms have become a global health concern. Writing in the introduction to their paper, the authors note, “Water security across the globe is threatened by the recent expansion of toxin-producing cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CHABs) in freshwater and estuarine ecosystems.”

The paper, which was posted as preprint access at SSRN, had not been peer reviewed, although final review was expected by the end of June. Update: The peer-reviewed final publication is at Science Direct. 

The release of toxins from cyanobacteria blooms into the air was an area of research that doctoral student and lead author of the paper Haley Plaas told Coastal Review had not been studied as extensively as the toxic effects of the bacteria in the water.

“What has been understudied is if their toxins and their cells have the potential to go airborne, and we know very little about what the health impacts might be for people and wildlife and pets,” she said. “These toxins have been studied quite a bit for their impact when it’s ingested via drinking water, or absorbed through the skin. We know a lot about those health impacts. But we know significantly less about what the health impacts might be if it’s inhaled.”

The ability of red tide algal blooms in the ocean to release their toxins into the air have been studied extensively. For Plaas, the red tide algal booms in Florida were what led to her work at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City.

“I was studying the red tide and the Gulf of Mexico, which is another type of harmful algae whose toxin can easily get into the air, which will shut down beaches all across the west coast of Florida,” she said. “I became really fascinated by this. This microscopic organism having such a big impact on human health and the economy… how water quality can impact human health.”

Cyanobacteria have not been studied as much as the algae that causes red tides.

Colleen Karl, chair of the Chowan-Edenton Environmental Group and one of the co-authors of the paper, said not as much was known about blue-green algae. It was not until recently that environmental conditions had become more conducive to the freshwater blooms.

“Blue-green algae, the cyanobacteria, are pretty much a newcomer,” she said. “They’ve been around for eons. I mean, in the last 10 or 20 years, we’ve started talking about this more as they’re showing up more in local ecosystems.”

Compared to ocean algal blooms, there are relatively few studies looking at the effects cyanobacteria blooms have on air quality. The work by Plaas, Karl and their colleagues sheds new light.

“As far back as 2010, they started looking at the ability of the cyanobacteria toxins to get into the air, but there have been less than 10 studies that have really looked at this,” Plaas said. “Where our study is unique, we’ve actually found a correlation between increases of particulate matter, the PM2.5, and association with bloom periods.”

PM2.5 refers to particulate matter 2.5 microns in size or smaller, air pollutants that the Environmental Protection Agency considers to be of “the greatest risk to health.”

The Chowan River study does not specifically identify cyanobacteria toxins in the particulate matter. Rather, the authors were looking for toxins called microcystins. Microcystins, a family of the bacteria that the EPA considers a “a potent liver toxin and possible human carcinogen,” had previously been shown to be present in area waters “on numerous occasions,” according to the paper.

During the study period, however, microcystins were not the dominant blue-green algae found.

“In our study, we didn’t see a lot of microcystins,” Plaas said. Instead, the research found a lot of another type of cyanobacteria that is not as frequently associated with microcystins production.

Nonetheless, the researchers established what they say is a clear connection between different stages of cyanobacteria bloom and aerosol particulate matter. The authors found that more particulate matter was present early in the life cycle of a bloom, even though it’s at the end of the cycle when blooms can get pretty smelly and their presence is most readily apparent.

“It’s when they’re just beginning their lifecycle when they’re ramping everything up,” Plaas said. “What we are predicting in our preliminary findings, at that early stage, more toxins are being produced when you don’t have as much of the herald signs of a bloom. Toward the end, that’s when it’s potentially less toxic.”

Plaas was cautious about linking the increase in particulate matter specifically to airborne toxins, saying, “It’s not a smoking gun because we can’t say for a fact, ‘Yes, those PM 2.5 particles were made of cyanobacteria or something from the cyanobacteria.’ But we did a robust statistical analysis looking at that time period during the bloom versus not during the bloom and found a significant association.”

The study did not examine why more cyanobacteria blooms are occurring in freshwater bodies worldwide. For that, Dr. Hans Paerl, Kenan Distinguished Professor at UNC Institute of Marine Sciences and a co-author of the paper, pointed to nitrogen, especially in the Albemarle-Chowan River basin.

“Nitrogen ends up being kind of on the short end of the stick. So, any new nitrogen that’s coming into the system will help promote the growth of algae and blooms,” Paerl said.

He said there had been a steady increase in the potential for algal blooms in northeastern North Carolina for some time, as shown in North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality data.

“The thing that we’ve been doing … is analyzing data that’s been collected by DEQ on Albemarle Sound” he said. “The amount of chlorophyll in the water, which is indicative of how much algae is there has been steadily increasing since … back in the probably late ‘90s or so.”

What is causing the increase, however, may be a complex interaction of factors and global climate change may play a role. But Paerl cautioned against looking solely at rising temperatures as the driving factor.

“Temperature is definitely important, and during the summertime when the temperature is up, you have a greater potential for getting blooms of cyanobacteria, which are the problematic bloom organisms,” Paerl said. “But if you look at the long-term data from DEQ, it’s hard to see a signal that’s significantly different from the natural variability out there.”

Paerl said that even though temperatures in Albemarle Sound are rising, “it’s not the increase in temperature that’s responsible for the increase in blooms.”

That’s not to dismiss climate change as playing a significant role. Paerl noted that extreme weather — hurricanes and violent storms — flush lawn, farm and animal waste nutrients into the watershed.

“Climate change may play a role, not so much in terms of the increase in temperature, which is very subtle, but more extreme events,” Paerl said. “More major storm events and floods, and those, of course, would lead to more discharge of nutrients into the system.”

NEW BERN — A lesser-known story of the Underground Railroad is beginning to become clearer some 160 years after the Civil War began. Increasingly historians are viewing the waterways of the South as perhaps the most important component of that journey to freedom as enslaved people fled their bondage.

Although in the past much of the story of the Underground Railroad has emphasized terrestrial escape, Pathway to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in North Carolina Symposium held Saturday at Tryon Palace in New Bern, refocused that attention on escape by water.

Keynote speaker Dr. Timothy Walker, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, framed the discussion, giving substance to the idea that the ports of Southern towns and cities were significant players in the quest for freedom.

“The overwhelming majority of attention on the Underground Railroad story up to this point, has been focused mainly on terrestrial escapes, and that’s extremely important,” Walker said. “But it’s only half the story.” He added that there’s a need to “shift our approach to the Underground Railroad, and change the way we think about it. The sea is a major central component of that Underground Railroad story.”

He pointed out that by a considerable margin the documented escapes using terrestrial routes of the Underground Railroad were from slaveholding states that bordered free states and very rarely came from the Deep South. And, he noted, there were practical reasons for that.

“Escaping over land to a territory that was unknown to people and the logistics of organizing food and shelter, traveling at night in an area that was essentially hostile territory, where there were organized slave patrols to pick you up, it was very, very difficult to do that successfully over a long distance,” he said. “The great majority of overland escapes that are documented as successful began within just a few days walk of the Ohio River and other places in Maryland, western Virginia, northern Virginia and eastern Missouri.”

For Walker, whose research includes maritime history and the slave trade of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, there was a practical reason why so little emphasis has been placed on the seaboard of the Southeastern states and the Underground Railroad.

“Historians have tended to look at the overland routes,” he said, “because many historians don’t have a lot of training in maritime records and documentation. They don’t come into the profession with an understanding of how and where those maritime documents can be found and how to analyze them and what they mean.”

There are also other reasons why the documentation of Underground Railroad escapes are often difficult to find.

“We’re talking about activity that was illegal, for which there were very serious repercussions,” Walker said. “So it’s illegal activity, and it was clandestine.”

He said the lack of documentation has made the job of historians more difficult. “They were doing this in ways that they didn’t want anyone to know about and they tried not to leave records.”

But if direct records of escape do not exist, circumstantial evidence abounds that points to water routes as significant pathways to freedom.

One of the best resources for historians trying to understand how enslaved people fled their situation is in the newspaper advertisements owners placed in hopes of recapturing the humans who were their property.

“There are approximately 200,000 runaway slave advertisements that are available in archives from North American newspapers. Beginning in the middle of the 1700s, 18th century, right up until the time of the Civil War,” he said.

Ads like these placed by President George Washington are among the documentation of his status as slaveholder.

“Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, Oney Judge, a light mulatto, much freckled with very black eyes …” read the 1796 advertisement, which went on to suggest that “she may attempt to escape by water.”

Oney Judge, who lived from 1773 until 1848, did, in fact, escape by water, probably sailing directly to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after being hidden by free people who were Black. Much of her story is known because of an 1845 interview in the Concord, New Hampshire, Granite Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper.

Neither the ad nor her story, however, were unique, Walker said. In analyzing the ads, he found a disproportionate number mention a suspected escape by water.

“As we start to go through them and look closely, a very large proportion of them provide information about how the person escaped, and that information indicates that it was in a state of water,” he said.

There is additional evidence of the importance of coastal ports to the Underground Railroad. William Still’s 1872 collection of narratives of escape from enslavement, “The Underground Rail Road,” has a significant number of stories focusing on fleeing in ships plying the East Coast.

Wilbur Siebert, one of the first historians to extensively research the Underground Railroad, wrote in his 1898 book, “The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom,” “The advantages of escape by boat were early discerned by slaves living near the coast or along inland rivers. Vessels engaged in our coastwise trade became more or less involved in transporting fugitives from Southern ports to Northern soil.”

And, Walker said, it was not surprising that enslaved people were able to use waterways for their escape. All the labor to move goods and products along the waterways of the South was supplied by enslaved people. They were the longshoremen and stevedores, the ship pilots — everyone who handled cargo and worked the docks was an enslaved person.

“The absolute fundamental bedrock reason for why escape by water worked and the conditions existed to get people out of places very, very far away from the free states was the labor force on the waterfront of the entire Southern Seaboard, every little inlet and port city and tidal waterway and river … down to the ports for loading onto larger ocean going vessels to take them to market. All of that labor was enslaved African American labor,” he said.

Research has also shown that, although most enslaved people fled north, not all of them did and there were significant communities of formerly enslaved peoples that come into existence in the Spanish-controlled areas of Florida, Texas and Mexico.

Dr. Maria Hammack of the University of Pennsylvania, also part of the symposium panel, has studied the phenomena. What she learned was that, although there were differences between how the United States’ Underground Railroad was implemented and that of the Mexican version, the human element remained constant.

“I have come to understand that the Underground Railroad was this organized network of assistance that led north with conductors and safe houses. And I wanted to know if the Underground Railroad to Mexico materialized in the same way,” she said. “What I have learned is that it did materialize very differently, but essentially, it was people who led it.”

Because so much of how the Underground Railroad operated was not recorded—could not be recorded—there is no way to know how many people found their way to freedom. But Dr. Adrienne Israel, retired Guilford University professor of history and another member of the panel, noted that the number was less important than what it symbolized.

“It doesn’t matter so much how many people actually escaped,” she said. “It’s the perception of the slave folks that really gave this underground railroad it’s impact.

“It is the notion that we should be free, we can be free,” she said.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

A little over two years ago, “Trail” Marshall was drinking a 12-pack of beer a day, watching TV and not liking life all that much.

“I’d been watching TV and, everybody hated everybody. Everything was just so bad,” he told a gathering who welcomed him as he completed the 1,175-mile North Carolina Mountains-to-Sea Trail May 6 at Jockey’s Ridge State Park

So he decided to go for a walk … well, hike, beginning with the Appalachian Trail in June 2020. That was a 406-day adventure. With that behind him, his next goal was the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, bringing him to the eastern end of the trail at Jockey’s Ridge State Park.

He spent an extra day exploring the Outer Banks, stopping by Kitty Hawk on Saturday to hike along the Kitty Hawk Woods Birch Lane Trail for about a mile, remarking: “I don’t like swamp trails, but that was really pretty.”

Marshall officially began his Mountains-to-Sea Trail trek at Clingmans Dome, 6,643 feet above sea level in Great Smoky Mountain National Park, just after the New Year. Five months to walk from the mountains to the sea through the heart of North Carolina is a good pace — particularly in the winter when snow changes everything.

“In the snow in the mountains, you’re kind of in a haze where you’re not thinking anything. You’re going like that for hours. Once you finally get to where you’re going, you look back,” he said. “I saw some amazing ice formations in the trees … sunsets over mountains. And it’s just so quiet out there and so peaceful.”

As he hiked, Marshall found a very different reality than the one he had been watching every day — people were kinder and far more generous than what he had been witnessing on TV or the news.

“Along the way, there were so many good people, selfless people, people who had no reason to help. No reason to stop and give me a bottle of water, to stop and say, ‘Hi, you inspire me,’” he told the people gathered to greet him at Jockey’s Ridge.

Marshall began to chronicle his journey, writing eloquently about what he was seeing and experiencing. On his last full day, he wrote that, “I made the most of it with a beautiful 25-miles hike up the beach and around the Pea Island Wildlife Refuge and then over the terrifying, electrifying, stupefying, high-flying excitement of walking over the Marc Basnight Bridge. A three-miles-long masterpiece of art and function that traverses over the Oregon Inlet. Sheer terror for the first mile and then the terror subsided, and awe set in. What a lovely view! For miles … But can I expect anything less from the Outer Banks? The last 70 miles has been nothing short of spectacular!”

Kitty Hawk Town Manager Andy Stewart began following Marshall’s journey, providing updates on his approach to the Outer Banks. Stewart mentioned that the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau had made a small donation to help Marshall along.

There was a small ceremony at Jockey’s Ridge, when Nags Head Public Information Officer Roberta Thuman presented him with a Proclamation Honoring “Trail Marshall.” And at a gathering on Saturday, Kitty Hawk Mayor Craig Garriss gave Marshall a Kitty Hawk baseball cap and a license plate, telling him he’d been following him for some time on Facebook.

It was Marshall’s writing on his Facebook page that attracted attention from many people, more than 11,000 followers. And at Kitty Hawk Park, he became very emotional describing how he came to understand what his journey could mean to others.

“I get messages from people who are sick or dying,” he said. “They just need an encouraging word from me to tell them to keep fighting. A guy sent me a message last night. He’s having major surgery tomorrow. They’re taking out his pancreas and a few other things. I’ve been telling him to keep fighting. I got a message last night, ‘Congratulations on finishing your hike. I’m going to beat this just like you. I’m going to keep fighting.’”

“Everybody’s got a story,” he added. “If you take the time to just talk to them, they’re more than happy to tell you what it is. Whether it’s good or bad … sometimes the folks … just need something to believe in.”

He discussed the why of his hikes and writing about his time on the trail at Jockey’s Ridge and Kitty Hawk Park, and walking along the Birch Lane Trail, the subject came up again.

“People ask me why,” he said. “The real question is, why not? It’s a lifetime of reasons.”

This story is provided courtesy of the Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Featured Image

Waves top the end of Jennette’s Pier Monday just after high tide. With a low-pressure system parked off the coast, waves pushed by near gale-force winds from the north and northeast battered the northern Outer Banks from Oregon Inlet to Corolla.

Related: Storm brings down another beach house, closes highway

As weather-related disasters impact shorelines throughout the world, there is an increasing need to know how to respond. The physical devastation, the loss of power, communication — all of it is part of the recovery process.

But nothing happens without clean water, something George Bonner, director of the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program at the Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese learned in 1998 when he was serving with the Coast Guard.

“I was in Puerto Rico after Hurricane George back in ’98. We lost power and water. You realize that power is important but maybe more important is to go the toilet and take a shower. It’s kind of like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — water’s way out there in my mind, above electricity.”

But how can fresh water be produced if there is no energy in the power grid.

Addressing that problem was at the heart of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waves to Water Prize, the final phase of which was held April 3-6 at Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head. Four competitors took to the waters off the pier, deploying wave-powered desalination devices. The devices worked as expected, producing fresh water from seawater, and provided much-needed insight into how to improve systems, said Scott Jenne, the National Renewable Energy Lab principal investigator for the Waves to Water Prize.

“This competition shows that wave-powered desalination systems are capable of supplying clean water to people in coastal locations, including in disaster-recovery situations,” he said in a statement from the lab after the event.

“These teams deserve a lot of recognition for doing something that very few people in wave energy have ever achieved. They all built functioning in-water prototypes,” he wrote about the competition in an email response to Coastal Review. “There’s still a long road to go before we understand every challenge, but we learn a lot every step of the way.”

The CSI team was responsible for deploying the devices. Dr. Mike Muglia and Dr. Lindsay Dubbs, both working with the North Carolina Renewable Ocean Energy Program, were lead investigators for the project and handled getting the devices in the water. According to Muglia, there were numerous challenges involved with that.

“There was the logistics of getting all the equipment and for a project that we haven’t done before,” he said. “There was lots of different delays with supply chain issues for the competitors, as well as some of the companies that rent us the cranes and deliver the cranes and set up the fence (for the deployment area at the end of Jennette’s Pier).”

The biggest challenge, though, may have been the weather. The devices were placed in the water April 3, and that night and into the next day the winds gusted to more than 30 knots with waves breaking in the deployment zone at the end of Jennette’s Pier. For the competitors, it was the first time in the water experiencing conditions so harsh, and all four devices broke from their moorings and had to be retrieved.

“Figuring out how to build a mooring for the whack in a breaking wave, which is what we experienced, I think was a surprise for them,” Muglia said.

The devices were retrieved — two on land and two at sea but accessible.

Regardless of the weather, what the competitors accomplished was what the National Renewable Energy Lab had hoped would happen.

“Every team was able to produce drinkable water from the ocean using nothing but wave energy,” Jenne wrote, adding, “Very few individuals have ever done that outside of a lab environment.”

Competitors were vying for several awards, including a grand prize of $500,000 that went to the Canada-based Oneka Technologies Snowflake. The design also was awarded an additional $125,000 prize for producing the most water: 1,000 liters per day. If used only as drinking water, that would be enough to sustain 400-450 people per day.

Perhaps most remarkably, all the units that were put into the ocean used readily available parts.

“Operationally, you don’t want to have really fancy, complex parts,” said Dragan Tutic, CEO and founder of Oneka Technologies. “So, the whole system is made with a readily available things you can buy at the hardware store.”

Oneka has been working with wave-powered desalination since 2017 and was the company with the most experience in building and deploying the units, and most with much larger capacities. The Snowflake, however, has an important role.

“It’s our small-scale unit that’s intended for emergency relief, that’s easy to ship and deploy with really minimal equipment,” Tutic said.

The harsh conditions at Jennette’s Pier were a test for improvements that had been made earlier in the year on an earlier version of the Snowflake.

“Snowflake 2 that was deployed in North Carolina, that one has a much stiffer float which, even in the very harsh condition — the system itself is still pretty intact,” Tutic said. “There are some minor things that we corrected, but the device itself as a whole, it was very resistant to even the very harsh conditions.”

Originally scheduled for five days, the Jennette’s Pier completion had to be shortened because of weather conditions. However, Muglia was quick to note that the information learned will be invaluable.

“It was definitely not a failure,” he said. “We’re going to learn how we could make these better and move forward.”

Jenne with the National Renewable Energy Lab echoed the point in his email, saying the conditions were something they knew they would eventually have to face. “The conditions we saw have already informed NREL and the Water Power Technology Office at DOE what research we need to focus on next,” he wrote. “There’s still a long road to go, but we learn a lot every step of the way.”

Prize winners

The Oneka Snowflake took home the $500,000 grand prize, and the team received an additional $125,000 for producing the most water with their device.

Another $125,000 was awarded to Team Water Bros, whose members hail from the University of North Carolina Charlotte, for delivering the lightest device.

And $125,000 was disbursed among the four teams for the Simplest Assembly award. The amounts awarded, based on the time taken it took each team to assemble its device, were as follows:

• Oneka: $80,000
• Mark Zero Prototypes, LLC: $20,000
• Water Bros: $17,000
• Project 816: $9,000

Finally, $125,000 was also distributed among the teams based on the ease of deployment and retrieval for each device. The awards were as follows:

• Mark Zero Prototypes LLC: $38,000
• WATER BROS: $36,000
• Project 816: $26,000
• Oneka: $24,000

Since the teams were unable to test their devices for the full five-day window because of foul weather, each will have the opportunity individually test their own device again in North Carolina this summer.

In July 1587, the English ship Lyon put ashore on Roanoke Island with 118 men, women and children.

The attempt to establish an English colony in the New World was the culmination of Sir Walter Raleigh’s investment in exploiting lands he had been granted by Queen Elizabeth I.

Hoping to be met by the 15 men Capt. Ralph Lane had left to hold the island for the colonists’ arrival, they instead found only the sun-bleached bones of one of the soldiers.

Nonetheless, they remained and began the work of repairing the fort and building a town. After a month, though, it was apparent that without more supplies and additional colonists, Raleigh’s investment in the New World would not succeed, and Governor John White returned to England, hoping to secure the supplies and people needed to strengthen England’s toehold in the New World. But a proxy war that was being waged with Spain became open warfare and the Spanish Armada intervened. White was not able to return to Roanoke until 1590.

When he arrived, there were no colonists, the only clue to their fate was the word “CROATAN” carved in a tree. It may have been an indication that the colonists had relocated to Hatteras Island, but the loss of the rescue expedition’s captain, a hurricane and a near-mutinous crew sent the relief ships back to England before they could explore Hatteras Island.

What is now called the “Lost Colony,” might have the appearance of a desperate, almost unplanned attempt by England to colonize the Americas, but it was instead the product of a carefully planned investigation of an uncharted, unknown new land.

At the center of that investigative work was Thomas Harriot, a scientist and mathematician whose “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,” was the most complete description of that first attempt by the English to understand the New World.

The recent “OBX History Weekend: Searchers of the New Horizons” was a three-day, in-depth look at some of the most significant events and people who shaped the history of the area. Produced by the First Colony Foundation, Elizabeth R and Co. and the National Park Service, an entire day was devoted to exploring the life and times of Thomas Harriot.

What emerged from the lectures was a portrait of a remarkable man — a mathematician who was dabbling in algebraic equations at a time they were little known in Europe.

He was a linguist whose work presaged a 19th century syllabary alphabet, an astronomer, and chemist. Although in 16th century England, Harriot’s work combining various materials was called alchemy.

Yet for all his intellectual accomplishments, Harriot’s only published works were his depictions of the English experience in the New World, which may be why he is not better known today.

Dr. Robyn Arianrhod, speaking during the symposium from her native Australia, is the author of, “Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science,” a book that explores Harriot the scientist.

She introduced him to the audience, outlining why so little is known about Harriot.

“He is nothing if not enigmatic. Without really knowing where he was born, or who his parents were, although we do know they were working people, not gentry,” she said. “To add to the mystery, we only know about him because some 8,000 pages of his research notes were found hidden away in an old castle 150 years after he died.”

He was a man who was, in many ways, ahead of his time. A hundred years before Newton, Arianrhod said, Harriot was experimenting with prisms and the diffusion of light. He was also the first mathematician, she noted, to work entirely in mathematical formula.

Astronomy fascinated him and when telescopes became available at the beginning of the 17th century, Harriot was one of the first to understand the scientific potential of the new instrument.

“Harriot was the first to leave a surviving record of a telescopic astronomical observation,” Arianrhod said. “It was a rough outline … sketch of the crescent moon. But it was the very beginning of the new era of telescopic astronomy,

The sketch dated July 26, 1609, was “… Apparently a few months before Galileo began doing the same thing,” she added.

But it is his descriptions of the New World that Harriot is best known. His “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia” was originally published in Latin in 1588. In 1590, publisher Theodor de Bry translated the Harriot’s work into four languages and included copperplate reproductions of John White’s depictions of the New World, making it an early international bestseller.

He was in the New World because of his relationship with Raleigh, and it was probably his mathematical skills that brought him to Raleigh’s attention.

Raleigh had been granted the right to colonize the New World in 1584. An experienced sailor, he knew that a journey of 3,500 to 4,000 miles across the ocean would require new ways of thinking about navigation.

“Raleigh wanted his captains and navigators to be the best trained in the world,” Arianrhod said.

At that time, ocean navigation used the sun and stars to determine position, and Harriot, with his interest in astronomy and math, was the ideal person to create a more precise way to navigate.

But Harriot was much more than an armchair scientist. When Raleigh sent his first expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585, Harriot was a part of it and what he observed has become a remarkable eyewitness account.

How he saw the people of the Roanoke area and how he described them was influenced, said Dr. Robert Fox, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Oxford, by his days as a university student. It was a time of dynamic intellectual challenge and Harriot, who attended the Oxford from 1580-83, was in the middle of it.

“These new students were receptive to the tide of Renaissance humanism that was beginning to circulate in Oxford,” Fox said during the event. “And I think that tide of humanism had its long-term consequences for Harriot.”

Fox noted the way Harriot writes about the Algonquin people of the area as evidence of his education in humanism. His description of Native Americans departs significantly from the view of the time that they were simple savages.

“What he saw was a settled society, codified social structure, a simple legal system, hierarchy of gods headed by a single god. There was even some notion of an afterlife. And for Harriet, Algonquin religion has all the character, I think, of a pristine faith, perhaps the face of a prelapsarian world,” he said. “It was a world — I’m thinking back again to his Oxford experiences — free from the confessional tensions that he had known and witnessed in Elizabethan England.”

Perhaps more than anyone else on the 1585 expedition, Harriot had the best understanding of the culture and politics of native peoples.

A first reconnaissance mission led by Capt. Philip Amadas and Master Arthur Barlowe returned to England in 1584 with two Native Americans named Manteo and Wanchese.

They were housed at Raleigh’s London residence, Durham House, and while there Manteo worked with Harriot to learn each other’s language. From that, Harriot devised a syllabary — a sound-based alphabet — more than 200 years before the same technique was successfully developed by Sequoyah of the Cherokee Nation in the late 1810s. 

“Manteo and Harriot collaborated to produce one of the most remarkable achievements in 16th century science. Harriot called it a new way of recording language by sound, rather than by meaning. Harriot called it, ‘an universal alphabet containing six and 30 letters whereby maybe expressed the lively image of man’s voice in what language soever …'” said Dr. Karen Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University, during her History Weekend presentation.

Harriot understood that the society he was seeing was not some pure form of humanity that existed before the Biblical fall of mankind, that even if there were not the religious tensions of Catholic and Protestant religions of England, there was still conflict. While he was there, a war was being waged between the villages and Roanoke Island that comprised King Wingina’s kingdom, and he wrote about that.

“Their maner of warres amongst themselues is either by sudden surprising one an other most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moone light; or els by ambushes, or some suttle devises …” he wrote.

But as he looked at their cultures realistically, he also applied that standard in describing the actions of the English, and his mention of the violence against Native Americans may have presaged the failure of the Lost Colony, when the tribal nations of the region turned against them because of death of King Wingina at the hands of the English.

“And although some of our companie towardes the ende of the yeare, shewed themselues too fierce, in slaying some of the people, in some towns vpõ (upon) causes that on our part, might easily enough haue been borne withal …” he wrote.

March is Women’s History Month.

Civil rights and women’s suffrage pioneer Annie E. Jones of Elizabeth City is to be recognized with a historic marker in the Pasquotank County seat.

It’s unlikely her name will be in history books and it’s doubtful that there will be a movie made of her life, but Dr. Melissa Stuckey, assistant professor of history at Elizabeth City State University, is working to make the name Annie E. Jones known.

The William Pomeroy Foundation, which supports community history and blood cancer patients, is funding through its National Women’s Suffrage program a historic marker recognizing Annie E. Jones on the National Votes for Women Trail, a project of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites honoring women’s suffrage efforts leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment, Stuckey wrote in a column in the Elizabeth City Daily Advance.

The marker is expected to be placed sometime this fall at the intersection of Road and Speed streets on property owned by Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church, her longtime church, Stuckey told Coastal Review.

Annie E. Jones, who was born in 1884 and died in 1950, advocated for African American women’s voting rights and organized voter education classes after the 19^th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was passed Aug. 18, 1920, according to the foundation.

A graduate of the Elizabeth City State Colored Normal School in 1901, now Elizabeth City State University, and resident of Speed Street until her death, she was a respected teacher and principal. Annie E. Jones was a member of several clubs including the Elizabeth City Matrons’ Social and Literary Club that was affiliated with the State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. She is also featured on a mural with other prominent northeastern North Carolina women that celebrates 100 years of women’s right to vote at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.

For Stuckey, who did much of the research in establishing the historic significance of Annie E. Jones’ efforts, the passage of the 19th Amendment was a remarkable opportunity to change the arc of history.

“Black women strategically have an opportunity to attempt to vote and challenge Black disfranchisement in a different way,” she said about the passage of the 19^th Amendment.

It was an opportunity educator Annie E. Jones hoped to capitalize on, too. The Elizabeth City Independent described her in its July 21, 1922, edition as, “one of the most capable, most thorough and most conscientious primary school teachers in North Carolina.”

However, this is a period where African American men “have been brutally disenfranchised in North Carolina with violence,” Stuckey told Coastal Review, specifically pointing to the Wilmington race riot of 1898.

There were also requirements Black men had to meet in order to vote, including pay $2 poll tax – about $60 in today’s money – and must be able to read and write any section of the Constitution, states a 10-page pamphlet, “What a Colored Man Should Do To Vote,” written sometime between 1900 and 1909 and part of the Library of Congress collection that lists requirements by state in the South.

Even if a Black man were able to pass the voting requirement test and pay the poll tax, threats to livelihood and life were common.

In an interview with Coastal Review last year, Marvin Tupper Jones, executive director of the Chowan Discovery Group, gave an example of the violence directed toward people of color as they attempted to vote.

“In 1898 the same year and the same time as the Wilmington race riot, word got out in the morning of the election in Winton that a lot of people of color were voting, and the guns came out. So people of color stopped voting that afternoon in Winton,” he said.

The violence that Marvin Tupper Jones describes was not limited to the South, Stuckey explained to Coastal Review, “that was the case for places across the nation.”

However, the passage of the 19th Amendment gave women of color a chance to change the narrative.

It was Annie E. Jones’ goal, she told the Independent of Elizabeth City in September of 1920, that the Black women of the city and Pasquotank County would be better informed and use the power of the ballot more effectively than the men had.

“We realize,” the Independent quoted her as saying, “That our colored men did not use the ballot intelligently and for their best interests when they had it; they blindly followed the selfish leaders of one political party and never did any thinking for themselves. Most men don’t know anything about government anyway. We colored women are going to know the subject of government from the township unit up to the national congress and most of us already can show you how to read and interpret the Constitution of the United States.”

While the statement seems harsh, Stuckey explained that there was more to Annie E. Jones’ words than meets the eye, by necessity. Black society would often present one face to the world while preserving their true feelings for the people they could trust.

In the study of Black history, Stuckey explained, there are a couple of themes or tropes that are repeated that people use to protect themselves when they are dealing with adversity.

“W.E.B. DuBois refers to it as a veil, where there is a double (consciousness), that African American people have; a face that they show to the white power structures and people around them, and they have their own personal face that they share within their community,” she said.

That veil was essential if there was any hope of registering Black women to vote. “It was incumbent upon someone like Jones, to assuage any kinds of concerns that white men would have about them participating in the ballot,” Stuckey explained.

For any Black woman hoping to vote, it was important that they distance themselves from their husbands, fathers and sons who overwhelmingly voted for Republicans. The Democratic Party in the South at that time was often a self-described white supremacy organization.

In North Carolina, the Democratic Party-led legislature passed an amendment to the state constitution requiring a poll tax and literacy to vote.

“The primary goal of the amendment, as admitted in the Democratic Party’s pro-amendment campaign in 1900, was to eliminate African American voters as a factor in North Carolina politics,” according to NCPedia, an online reference managed by the North Carolina Government & Heritage Library at the State Library of North Carolina.

Annie E. Jones and other women of color understood that they had to give the appearance of neutrality. Nonetheless, they faced significant headwinds. “There was a counter-organizing attempt to really intimidate Black women so that they would not register to vote,” Stuckey said.

Black women faced overt racism over the news that they could gain the right to vote.

The Sept. 24, 1920, edition of the Monroe Journal in Union County published a letter from Mrs. J. Frank Laney under a headline reading, “Mrs. Laney Says Women by Instinct are Democratic. She Favors the ‘White Party’ and Urges Young Voters to Read ‘The Clansman.’”

Laney went on to write, “Let our young women of voting age read such books as ‘The Call of the South’ and ‘The Clansman,’ therein detecting the sinister cloud of the dark-skinned Americans …”

Another example of what Black women faced in their struggle to register to vote was in the Greensboro Patriot. An Oct.19, 1920, editorial on a letter that purported to support suffrage for people of color concluded with, “The Patriot … takes pride in being a Greensboro — White Supremacy — Democratic newspaper every day in the year.”

The threats of violence and loss of livelihood had the desired effect, Stuckey said. “It was a very successful venture in terms of intimidation tactics … threatening employment in particular, whether for the woman herself or for the husband. The registrar reported that only three Black women registered to vote (in Pasquotank County, 1920).”

Stuckey said she has not been able to locate the 1920 voter registration records for the county, so it’s unclear if Annie E. Jones was one of the women who did register. But whether she was one of those voters in 1920, it does not change how important she was in the fight for equal rights.

“She’s a powerful civil rights figure. She’s powerful women’s rights figure,” Stuckey said.

Dressed as an enslaved woman from 19th century North Carolina, Leesa Jones, executive director of the Washington Waterfront Underground Railroad Museum, tells the story of the journey to freedom that thousands of enslaved people endured.

Housed in an old caboose at the corner of Main and Gladden streets, the museum is small but filled with information and artifacts from the time that enslaved people were a part of life in Washington. Although the artifacts and reprints of wanted posters for runaways are fascinating, Jones and her narration are what truly bring the story to life.

As she describes the journey, what emerges is an interweaving of moral outrage, courage and ingenuity.

It was the enslaved people and their need to be free and a network of abolitionists fierce in their defiance of slavery that created the Underground Railroad. Although many of the people who were a part of it were white, the effort crossed racial and cultural lines, a point Jones emphasizes.

“Not all abolitionists were white. They were Native American, they were Italian, they were immigrants, they were German. They were people from every walk of life,” she said.

Jones draws particular attention to William Still, one of the best known and most effective of the abolitionists. A Black businessman from Philadelphia, he was born across the Delaware River from Philadelphia in 1821 in Burlington, New Jersey, and in 1847 started working for the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Three years later, he became the chairman of the society’s Vigilance Committee, the arm of the society that actively brought enslaved people to freedom.

Still is particularly important because of his 1872 book “The Underground Railroad,” which is notable because the stories of the enslaved people are told almost entirely through their letters, correspondence and interviews.

The book includes the story of William Jordon (page 129) that Still recounts, describing why a person would choose to live for 10 months in the swamps and three months in a cave, “surrounded with bears, wild cats, rattle-snakes and the like.”

“Under Governor Badger (sic, probably Sen. Edmund Badger), of North Carolina, William had experienced Slavery in its most hateful form. True, he had only been twelve months under the yoke of this high functionary. But William’s experience in this short space of time, was of a nature very painful,” Still wrote.

In Still’s narrative, Jordon became the property of Badger when the white man married his third wife. Badger and his wife were not good masters to Jordon and Jordon’s wife.

“The governor and his wife were both equally severe towards them; would stint them shamefully in clothing and food, though they did not get flogged quite as often as some others,” he reported.

What finally drove Jordon to escape enslavement, though, was the separation from his wife.

“(H)is honor gave him distinctly to understand that the idea of his going two hundred miles to see his wife was all nonsense … ‘If I said so, I did not mean it,’ said his honor.”

In his book, Still includes letters describing the conditions many of the escaping enslaved people endured. A letter from prominent abolitionist Thomas Garrett about three men who arrived from the South and needed a place to stay is similar to a number of other letters.

“Respected friend, William Still,” Garrett wrote, “I write to inform thee, that Captain Fountain has arrived this evening from the South with three men, one of which is nearly naked, and very lousy (covered in lice). He has been in the swamps of Carolina for eighteen months past … I would send them on to-night, but will have to provide two of them with some clothes before they can be sent by rail road.”

The origin of the phrase “underground railroad” is unclear. Numerous sources place the first use of the term in 1831 when Kentucky slave Tice Davids swam the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio with his master hard on his tail. An Ohio abolitionist named Rush Sloane claimed that when Davids’ master returned home emptyhanded, he blamed the escape on an underground railroad.

By 1840, the term was in general use in describing the network of safe homes, conductors and others who actively helped enslaved people to freedom.

Located at the mouth of the Pamlico River, antebellum Washington was a bustling industrial port, second only to Wilmington as the busiest port in the state, and was ideally situated to aid in the escape from bondage that the underground railroad offered.

“By 1850 Washington was the largest shipbuilding port in North Carolina. And it rivaled only Wilmington in size,” Jones said.

Her observation is confirmed by an East Carolina University research paper, “The Castle Island Ships’ Graveyard: The History and Archaeology of Eleven Wrecked and Abandoned Watercraft,” written in 2006 by Bradley A. Rodgers and Nathan Richards.

“By 1849, John Myers and Sons were building steamships in the port. The company completed two steamships that year,” according to the authors. “The following year Washington ranked as the number one shipbuilding center in North Carolina. A census completed in 1850 documented 23 shipbuilders living in Beaufort County.”

Jones said the port of Washington was a center of international trade, and the state’s exports of agricultural products and naval stores shipped to destinations as diverse as the northeast coast of the United States and Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. Those ships with their worldwide ports of call were a pathway to freedom for the enslaved.

“Freedom seekers used this river,” she said, “to get their freedom literally anywhere that a ship could go.”

What she describes was a vast network of people and places that gave the enslaved people of the South a chance to be free before the Civil War.

“You could get your freedom not just north and Canada,” she said. “People don’t realize the Underground Railroad ran south.”

She points to Fort Mose (pronounced Mo-say), a small settlement of free people of color that existed just outside St. Augustine, Florida. The town, sanctioned by the governor of the province when it was under Spanish rule in 1738 was “the first legally sanctioned free Black town in the present-day United States,” according to the Florida History Museum.

Jones describes a remarkably sophisticated network that included coded phrases and words that were commonly used but, only for the trained ear, delivered a message of hope.

“Let’s say (you’re) standing here and having a conversation with me. And let’s say (someone) says to me, ‘Tomorrow at the depot, we’re going to have breakfast. We’re going to have ham and eggs,’” she said.

To the untrained ear that sounds like an invitation to breakfast, but for the conductors and passenger of the underground railroad, the meaning was quite different.

Depot, she explained, would be almost any meeting place that had been agreed upon earlier.

“It could be a graveyard, could be a place by the river, could be a place in the woods, could be a cave. Anywhere that we had already agreed to meet. Breakfast indicates a specific kind of meeting. Ham one adult. Eggs more than two children,” she said.

Yet that only hints at the complexity of the journey to freedom for enslaved people.

A number of the ship’s pilots and captains who called Washington their homeport were enslaved. There was little motivation for them to escape their bondage — their skills were highly prized, and they were often quite well off and many had families that they could not return to if they left. Yet if the Black pilots and captains did not wish escape themselves, Jones said she believes they would often help others.

“They could tell you everything,” she said. And if they did not themselves seek freedom, they would often turn a blind eye to stowaways who were fleeing. Still’s book is filled with stories of Underground Railroad passengers, secreted in ships as they traveled north to Philadelphia or other free ports.

For Jones, who grew up in Washington, the stories she heard as a child are part of her own journey of discovery. Her grandmother would tell tales of her ancestors coming to America “in the snow,” and she would wonder because there is seldom snow in Washington.

And then she realized, “The Snow was the name of the slave ship coming from West Africa.”

She spent her summers as a child in Philadelphia, and remembers hearing the adults say, “Somebody went to Timbuktu. All I knew about Timbuktu (was that) it was in Africa.”

But what she subsequently learned was that Timbuctoo was an early African American settlement in New Jersey. According to the New Jersey State Library, the community dates from 1826. It is in Mount Holly about 3 miles southwest of Burlington.

For Jones, the process of uncovering the stories of the Underground Railroad has been a journey of discovery that keeps revealing more tales to tell of the people who believed so strongly in the freedom for others. And as those stories are revealed, different ways to understand what happened will continue to unfold.

“History is really like a diamond,” she said. “The more you turn it, the more you’re going to see.”

There wasn’t much to suggest a trail that led to the message in the bottle that Steve Jarvis found Jan. 6 in the Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve at the edge of Currituck Sound.

Jarvis is the northern sites stewardship assistant with the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve, a program of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, a division of the Department of Environmental Quality. The reserve includes 10 sites along the state’s coast established for long-term research, education and stewardship.

The previous two days had been windy and rainy and Jarvis was walking the soundside trail, making sure there wasn’t any deadfall blocking it. He noticed what looked like it could be an unauthorized trail heading to the sound, and the retired game warden in him emerged.

“I noticed that a trail that I hadn’t noticed before and the game warden came out in me,” he said. “Anytime I see any new trail, I go look to see what’s going on down there.”

The trail, indistinct and probably not visible in the summer, looked like it may have been a dirt road at one time, but Jarvis felt it was important to make sure no one was using it.

“I was like, I’ll just walk this out and make sure somebody’s not doing something they shouldn’t be doing down here,” he said.

“I got probably within about 75 yards from the sound, and I found a scum line from a storm with a bunch of stuff washed up. And I happened to look over and I saw it. Wow, that’s a bottle with a message in it,” he recalled.

His first thought was to not open the bottle and see what kind of reaction it would get.

“Just kind of have it as a conversation piece, because I knew it would make people nuts to find a bottle with a message in it and not actually not open it,” he said.

But after conversations with his supervisor, Northern Sites Manager Eric Alnes, and with his best friend and his best friend’s wife, he changed his mind.

What he found inside was not a call for help from a stranded mariner on a deserted island. This was simply a message from a family who was curious about where the bottle might end up.

“It was kind of tough to read but I could make it out,” he said. “‘We’re a family from South Dakota on vacation in Corolla. We have six kids and we just want to know who finds this and when and where.’ They left the email address, and it was dated July 19, 2016.”

By the time Jarvis discovered the message, the Pszanka family had pretty much forgotten they had even thrown a bottle into Currituck Sound. When Mickie Pszanka told her son, Jaxson, that the bottle had been found, he was confused at first.

“I was eating dinner, and she (Jaxson’s mother) said, ‘Someone found our message in a bottle,’ and I had no clue what she was talking about, because it was such a long time ago,” Jaxson Pszanka said. “I was very surprised once I started to remember it, that someone actually found it.”

While at the time there were six children in the Pszanka family, the parents have since adopted two more and moved to Colorado. The idea of throwing a message in a bottle into Currituck Sound did not meet with universal family approval.

“One (of the children) said, ‘Mom, why do you think that’s such a good idea for us to be throwing things into the into the sound?’ And I said, ‘I guess I didn’t think about it at the time.’ The other ones thought it was really cool,” she said.

The idea was sparked by a bottle the family had found the year before.

“It was on the beach in Corolla. It was a family that was vacationing, and it didn’t go far. They were in Duck. So, we contacted them, and that’s what gave us the idea,” Mickie Pszanka said.

The bottle that Jarvis found had traveled, perhaps not as long a distance as a bottle floating on ocean currents, but the Pszankas message had managed to dodge innumerable islands in northern Currituck Sound, islets and sandbars to make the roughly 25-mile journey from Corolla to Kitty Hawk.

It’s not clear what forces drove the bottle to Kitty Hawk Woods. The most likely suspect was a hurricane. Hurricane Matthew came ashore in October 2016, and then there was Hurricane Michael in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, and there were innumerable nor’easters since the bottle was tossed.

Whatever drove the bottle to shore, when it was found, the memories returned when the email arrived.

“We didn’t hear anything for all these years,” Mickie Pszanka said. “We forgot about it. I didn’t think I’d ever hear anything of it.”

The “S-curves” north of Rodanthe, one of the most troubled sections of the ribbon of highway connecting Hatteras Island with the mainland, may soon be allowed to return to its natural state.

Sometime in March, if the weather holds and the North Carolina Department of Transportation meets its schedule, the span informally known as the “jug-handle” bridge will open to vehicle traffic, bypassing one of the most dynamic stretches of shoreline on Hatteras Island. Soon after the bridge opens, NCDOT is expected to remove the asphalt and the sandbags placed to protect it from land that is part of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, allowing the forces of nature to dictate what happens next.

“The jug handle has an opportunity to be a barrier island again and function as a barrier island. Not as a Highway 12 dune-dike complex,” East Carolina University geology professor Dr. Stanley Riggs told Coastal Review last week.

It is a stretch of shoreline has always been dynamic. Wimble Shoals is just to the south of the beach, and buried beneath the sandy shoal is rock. That rock has lot to do with why it is one of the best beaches for surfing on the Outer Banks, Riggs explained.

“When we get heavy weather, the waves still refract off that rock, which is why that’s such an important surfing area,” he said.

The wave energy, though, is not the only factor that will affect what happens when the road is gone.

“This is actually something that I have been thinking about,” said Dr. Reide Corbett, dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at ECU’s Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese. “We’ve done a lot of work around this area both on the front side and the back side of the island.”

Corbett said he’s not the only one thinking about it, so is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “This is a real interest to Fish and Wildlife given their management of the area.”

Natural barrier island processes do not suddenly stop at the boundary of the wildlife refuge.

The north end of Rodanthe, the Mirlo Beach subdivision, is subject to regular ocean inundation. The southern terminus of the new bridge will be a traffic circle about three-quarters of a mile south of Pea Island. When the bridge opens to traffic, that section of the road through Mirlo Beach will no longer be a primary highway, although NCDOT says it will continue to maintain it.

“Division 1 intends to maintain access along this remnant portion of NC 12 as we do other secondary routes in Dare County and the State by clearing sand, water, snow and ice and other debris as conditions warrant and are safe,” Tim Hass, communications officer with NCDOT, responded this week to Coastal Review in an email.

Currently, NCDOT has sandbags placed parallel to the road south of the refuge, and the department is planning to extend that protection to a turnaround area, although they do not yet have a permit to do so.

“NCDOT applied for a permit from the NC Division of Coastal Management to install sandbags and a modified cul-de-sac at the north end of the remnant portion of NC 12,” Hass wrote in the email. “The permit application was not approved by (the N.C. Division of Coastal Management). The NCDOT has appealed the permit application decision by NC-DCM to the Coastal Resource Commission.”

The department’s request for a variance is on the agenda for the commission’s meeting Feb. 9-10 in Beaufort.

The department seeks commission approval for about 50 feet of sandbags at the end of the modified cul-de-sac that would be placed perpendicular to existing N.C. 12.

The area including Mirlo Beach is subject to frequent ocean overwash, and at times seawater will reach the sound, but it remains unclear exactly what will happen here over time.

Corbett, with the Coastal Studies Institute, described the breach that Hurricane Irene created just a mile and a half north of the area — where the Richard Etheridge Bridge is now — as a model for what may occur.

After Hurricane Irene passed in late August 2011, an inlet formed here and cut off highway access. The inlet was as much as 30 feet deep and 100 to 150 feet across then, and Corbett noted that it was a first for NCDOT in that when N.C. 12 was breached, the department did not try to fill in the inlet, choosing to bridge the gap instead.

But over time, sand naturally accreted in the breach, filling it in. The area is now a wide, fairly flat swath of sand between the ocean and Pamlico Sound.

“That showed a natural progression of what the island did when the natural processes were allowed,” Corbett said.

Although there are similarities between the New Inlet breach, as it is known, and the shoreline closer to the jug-handle bridge, there are also important differences.

“One of the things that’s different in that (the S-curves) location, new New Inlet had these, for lack of a better word, a canal or a creek that sort of moved from the sound side very close to the road. And those already had some depth to them,” Corbett said.

The area that the jug-handle bridge is bypassing does not have those deep canals or creeks on the sound side. That was apparent after Irene overwashed the area. When water from the Atlantic flowed into the sound, instead of a single deep breach between ocean and sound, there was a series of narrow, shallow creeks.

The researchers said changes in the area will be dynamic.

“I think we’re likely to see significant overwash and it may be a breach,” Corbett said.

But what is uncertain is how tenuous or permanent the connection between the ocean and sound will be.

“You have this very broad very shallow sand flat on the backside and there’s no real depth … a creek or anything that really comes up close to the road,” he said. “I’ve been out there, and I’ve collected some bathymetry. I was surprised at how shallow it is throughout that very broad region, without really any cuts in that, like a canal or a creek, moving up into the barrier.”

He also found a significant amount of sand in the water, leading him to wonder if it is an area that would be prone to inlet formation.

“Can we somehow move water in such a way that does breach this region, given the amount of sand that we have on the backside of the island right there?” he theorized. “Or would we see a breach someplace else first? As soon as you breach the island at some place, it sort of acts as, releasing the cork. So, if you create a breach someplace else first, you don’t have the same pressure on the system at any other location.”

Related: Bridge will bypass Pea Island, but refuge access to remain

When a breach or an inlet forms, a limiting factor on whether the rift is permanent or transitory is the amount of freshwater from mainland rivers that is flowing into the sounds of the region, and that, too, becomes a limiting factor.

“Because of the amount of fresh water, our tidal exchange system can likely only handle a certain number of inlets,” Corbett said. “It’s sort of an interesting line of potential study — understanding our inlets and our flow — to better understand what it might look like in the future.”

The one factor though, the single most dynamic event that is also the most unpredictable, in determining what will happen in the S-curve area is coastal storms.

“If you can tell me when we’re going to get storms and what storms and where they would go, I could tell you exactly what would happen,” Riggs with ECU said. “If we have the right storm, it will open. It will open as an inlet, but it won’t stay open.”

Such inlets are ephemeral, he added.

Featured Image

A gray catbird surveys its snow-covered surroundings Saturday at the Currituck Banks National Estuarine Research Reserve north of Corolla. Photo: Kip Tabb

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