Currituck County is looking for public input on a nearly 200-page draft beach management plan that officials said will guide management, protection and restoration of the county’s 22.6 miles of oceanfront beaches and dunes, and address coastal hazards such as long-term erosion, storm impacts, and sea level rise.

The draft document can be viewed on the county website.

“The Plan provides a long-term vision for Currituck County to sustain the beaches that support a significant portion of their local economy and maintain the tax base located along the County’s beaches,” officials said on the website. “The Plan recognizes that beaches are a critical economic asset, supporting tourism, property values, and the County’s tax base. The overarching goal of the Plan is to preserve tourism-driven revenues while improving coastal resilience.”

The document features an evaluation of coastal hazards and vulnerability, introduces general management concepts that could be implemented, and a feasibility analysis detailing four separate reaches, or sections of coastline, along the Currituck County oceanfront that were identified for active beach management.

The feasibility analysis was applied to the North Corolla Reach, the Spindrift Reach, the South Pine Island Reach, and Central Reserve/Refuge Reach, which includes beachfront for the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge and the Currituck Banks Estuarine Reserve. Several alternatives were developed and evaluated for each.

Officials are encouraging asking specifically for feedback on the feasibility analysis on whether other reasonable alternatives should be considered for the four areas of coastline.

“If citizens believe that additional considerations should be made in these assessments, comments submitted will also be considered,” officials said on the website.

Comments can be submitted through the county website.

This story has been updated to correct the name of Duke University’s Jackson Ewing.

As part of a potential coupling of two regionally powerful electric utilities, a proposed agreement between Virginia-based Dominion Energy and Florida-based NextEra Energy includes a small corner of North Carolina territory in the state’s northeast. But Dominion’s main attributes lie over the border to the north, with its access to a slew of data centers in Virginia as well as what will be the nation’s largest offshore wind energy operation off Hampton Roads.

NextEra Energy, already the nation’s largest electric utility by market value, announced last month that it had reached a $67 billion, all-stock deal with Richmond-based Dominion Energy to essentially absorb its business.

“It’s too soon to tell if this will be overall good thing for North Carolina,” Director of Energy and Climate Policy Jackson Ewing at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, told Coastal Review in a recent interview. “There are several reasons to think that it might be.” But, he added, the opposite may also be true.

As the regulatory process plays out, including securing approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, the details and consequent ramifications of the massive deal will become more evident.

“The combined company will be more than 80% regulated, serve approximately 10 million utility customer accounts across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina and own 110 gigawatts (GW) of generation across a broad mix of energy sources,” the companies said in a joint press release on May 18.

With a market value of about $190 billion, NextEra’s marriage to Dominion, which is valued at about $59.4 billion, would become the “world’s largest regulated electric utility,” according to the release, allowing the business to “drive affordability in the long term by leveraging scale and … efficiencies as the company makes smart investments on behalf of its customers to meet growing power demand.”

The agreement still requires approval from the companies’ shareholders as well as federal and state regulators.

“We have not received any filing,” Lucy Edmondson, chief counsel with the public staff at the North Carolina Utilities Commission, told Coastal Review in late May.

Once it is filed, she explained, the commission would issue a procedural order that issues a docket number. At that, the details of the process moving forward would be publicly available online to view in the docket. By law, the cost-benefit to customers would be investigated, and the commission typically would schedule public hearings.

Although Edmondson said that there is no legal requirement on how long the process should take, the companies said in their announcement that they expect the transaction to close in a year to 18 months.

Ewing, with the Nicholas Institute, agreed that when scale is increased in utility industries, gains in efficiency can follow. For instance, the ability to streamline processes across a larger scale can lead to operational efficiencies, he said, and those can lead to cost savings for customers.

“So, with the larger scale, it’s certainly possible that the merged NextEra-Dominion entity could put more investment into modernizing the grid and developing clean energy sources,” he said. “NextEra has a really well-established track record of building out utility-scale renewable energy. With a greater capital base, potentially lower borrowing costs, and with more influence over their supply chains, you could have some dividends that come from that.”

On the other hand, Ewing said, negative consequences could be lying in wait down the road.

“When scale increases, you also risk having utility policies and approaches that are less appropriate for a particular small service territory,” he said. “In the case of Dominion, just being the northeastern part of North Carolina, this is going to become a relatively small piece of a much larger puzzle with the merger.”

In other words, Ewing elaborated, being a little fish in a big pond could decrease opportunities to innovate development of infrastructure tailored to the local environment or limit creation of programming that responds to those particular customers.

Dominion Energy North Carolina currently provides electricity to about 130,000 customers in much of the northeastern area of the state, including parts of Dare, Pasquotank, Currituck, Hertford, Pitt and Washington counties, among others.

As part of the proposal, $2.25 billion in bill credits would be spread, after the deal closes, over two years to Dominion Energy customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, according to the announcement.

The newly reorganized power provider would also fund an additional $10 million annually in charitable support for five years in communities within the three states. And it promised to continue “robust” utility assistance programs for customers facing hardship.

Additionally, Dominion Energy would continue to operate with the same moniker, relative to each of the three states, such as “Dominion Energy North Carolina.”

But the titles at the top will change. John Ketchum, the current chief executive officer at NextEra will become chairman and CEO of the combined company, and Robert Blue, the current CEO at Dominion, will become president and CEO of regulated utilities and a member of the board of directors.

In light of industry-wide electric bill increases, critics have noted bloat in CEO salaries. According to an April 21 article in Energy & Policy Institute that analyzed CEO salaries at investor-owned electric and gas utilities, in 2025 Ketchum was paid $24.2 million, the third highest salary, and Blue was paid just over $16 million, the 10th highest.

Even absent bumps in the regulatory road, electric utilities have been in the crosshairs of public ire as consumer’s power bills continue to climb upward. Mixed in the dismay with growing costs, data centers, which are typically large facilities that can be noisy and often strain local resources such as water, are popping up in communities, sometimes without residents’ previous input or even knowledge.

Nationwide, data centers, which are critical to power the boom in artificial intelligence, or AI, have become such a huge public concern that famed citizen activist Erin Brockovich has gotten involved, creating a website, brockovichdatacenter.com, to collect reports from consumers.

Virginia has some of the highest numbers of centers in the country. Numerous public reports estimate that there are more than 600 data centers in the state, mostly in Northern Virginia. According to an Oct. 25, 2025, article in Inside Climate News, citing a report from Cushman & Wakefield, as of last June, the state had 6,247 megawatts of data centers and an additional 2,610 megawatts under construction.

The existing centers are not the only asset the Florida company will gain in the proposed utility coupling.

When Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, aka CVOW, is completed in 2027, the 2.6 GW project will become the largest offshore wind farm in the United States. With 176 turbines, the project would generate enough energy to power as many as 660,000 homes and is expected to save customers about $3 billion in fuel savings in its first decade, according to Dominion.

While the result of NextEra’s environmental stewardship remains to be seen, Ewing said that an important point in its favor is the company’s record as an aggressive developer of renewables.

“Their integration with the supply chains for renewable energy and batteries and their capital base will allow them to build that out more aggressively than Dominion would have been able to,” he said. “And so there it is kind of a shot in the arm to big renewable and battery storage builds, which is positive for the environment.”

On the flipside, he said, large utilities tend to seek significant centralized control. For instance, NextEra has been resistant to compensating rooftop solar users in Florida for the energy it produces, and he expects that approach could carry over to North Carolina.

“It’s not dismissed those things out of hand, but it has not given many of the consumer advocates what they wanted in terms of compensation on that metering,” he said. “And it has been much more on the side of, ‘Well, the utility controls the grid, we’re responsible for this infrastructure, we don’t want to socialize those costs.’”

NextEra is also showing more of an appetite to build natural gas plants, Ewing said. Still, those types of sites take about five years to come online, where renewables can usually produce energy quicker and at less cost.

“So that’s the thing we all need to be watching, is how that actually progresses in reality in coming years,” Ewing said.

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.

Island Farm on Roanoke Island is set to host Corolla Wild Horse Fund Herd Management Coordinator Kirsten Morse for a special program on Friday.

Colonial Spanish mustangs have existed for 500 years on the Outer Banks, Island Farm noted in a press release. The feral herd lives on through careful conservation, management, and ongoing educational efforts, event organizers said.

The May 15 program is set for 10 a.m.-noon, at Island Farm, 1140 N. U.S. Highway 64, just north of Manteo.

Morse will join Island Farm’s historical interpreters to bring modern context to the history of the Spanish mustang breed. Also included in the program will be the history of the colonial Spanish mustangs, their introduction to the Outer Banks, and historic uses over the centuries.

At Island Farm, the breed is represented in the site’s Heritage Livestock Program by two horses, Grace and Rainbow.

In the 19th century, banker horses were used endlessly across the Outer Banks in traditional farm work and transportation and in maritime pursuits like hauling nets or patrolling the beach after shipwrecks.

Today, the Corolla Wild Horse Fund protects and manages the existing herd along the northern beaches in Currituck County.

Island Farm’s Banker Pony Program continues weekly throughout the 2026 season, where visitors are encouraged to interact with the farm’s horses and learn more about the history and vast importance of the breed. 

Admission to the site is $11, and children 3 and younger are admitted free of charge.

Island Farm is open March to December, Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., where programming and events vary throughout the season.

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.

Currituck County commissioners and staff are launching in May the first in a series of town halls to discuss with the community their views on housing, infrastructure, economic development and quality of life to help guide future priorities.

The first meeting in lower Currituck is at 6 p.m. Monday, May 11, in the Jarvisburg Elementary School’s gymnasium.

Registration is not required through https://lowercurritucktownhall.eventbrite.com but encouraged.

The county plans to hold additional meetings in the mid-county area, Moyock, Corolla and Knotts Island. Dates and times will be announced.

During the meeting, County Manager Rebecca Gay will review the strategic plan process and introduce the four focus areas: quality of life, housing, infrastructure and economic development.

Cameron Lowe, director of the Currituck County Center for the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, will facilitate interactive feedback sessions with citizens. Each segment, based on the four focus areas, will include facilitated discussion with commissioners that will center on the strengths, challenges, and future vision for each focus area.

Citizens will be engaged and asked to provide feedback for each focus area. Following the discussion, time will be provided for citizen comments and/or questions on topics unrelated to the four focus areas.

Contact the county manager’s office at 252-232-2075 for more information.

Currituck County’s America 250 NC Task Force has launched a yearlong challenge to visit 10 of North Carolina’s lighthouses as part of the country’s celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Called the NC Lighthouse Challenge, participants must visit the 10 sites and submit their photos with the lighthouse visible to nc.lighthouse.visit@gmail.com by the Dec. 31 deadline. Those who complete the challenge will be awarded a personalized certificate from Currituck County upon completion, and earn a free lighthouse climb.

Organizers noted that Hatteras, Lookout, Ocracoke, and Bodie are not offering the free lighthouse climb because of either long-term maintenance or National Park Service rules.

Register at https://www.eventcreate.com/e/nc-lighthouse-visit to receive the official set of rules.

“Long before modern navigation systems, lighthouse keepers and members of the U.S. Life-Saving Service stood watch along North Carolina’s treacherous coastline. Their dedication—often in isolation and through severe weather—helped guide ships safely and protect countless lives,” organizers said in a release.

“These early services were eventually unified under the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939, continuing a legacy of vigilance and service that remains today. The NC Lighthouse Challenge honors that legacy, inviting participants to walk in the footsteps of those who helped ‘light the way’ for a growing nation,” they continued.

The 10 historic sites include the following:

• Old Baldy on Bald Head Island, built 1817.
• Ocracoke Lighthouse, 1823.
• Cape Lookout Lighthouse, 1859.
• Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, 1870.
• Bodie Island Lighthouse, 1872, on Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
• Currituck Beach Lighthouse, 1875.
• Oak Island Lighthouse, 1958.
• Roanoke River Lighthouse, 1886, in Edenton.
• Roanoke River Lighthouse 1867 replica in Plymouth.
• Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse 1877 replica in Manteo.

Tony Cerri, a member of the county’s celebration task force, said that at its core, the challenge is about more than visiting beautiful places.

“It’s about recognizing the vital role North Carolina’s lighthouses — and the people who served in them — played in guiding commerce, protecting lives, and supporting the growth of our nation,” Cerri added in the release.

Currituck County’s America 250 NC Task Force is one of the county committees that plan and organize events, projects, and initiatives at the county level as part of America 250 NC. The state’s official commemoration of America’s 250th anniversary is a program of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Millions will be awarded to broadband providers across rural North Carolina to connect homes, businesses, and community anchor institutions to high-speed internet access.

The governor’s office announced last week that $26 million will go to bring 5,161 rural homes, businesses and community anchor institutions in 66 counties access to high-speed internet infrastructure by the end of the year through the Stop-Gap Solutions program.

A part of the North Carolina Department of Information Technology’s Division of Broadband and Digital Opportunity, the program administers funding from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to coverage gaps in internet access. This is done by targeting broadband line extensions to reach individuals and small pockets of homes and businesses in hard-to-reach areas.

“These broadband projects will ensure more families can soon access telehealth, students can complete their homework, businesses can compete in larger markets, and communities can thrive,” Gov. Josh Stein said in the release. “I am committed to improving broadband access across the state and making sure no community is left behind.”

On the coast, FOCUS Broadband, also known as Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative, has been selected to receive $1.65 million to connect 145 locations in Duplin and Pender counties.

Connect Holding II, LLC, doing business as Brightspeed, will be awarded $1.68 million to connect 2,439 locations in Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Tyrrell and Washington counties on the coast. Other counties to benefit from this award are Alamance, Bladen, Caldwell, Caswell, Chatham, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Franklin, Greene, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Jones, Martin, Montgomery, Moore, Nash, Northampton, Orange, Person, Pitt, Randolph, Rockingham, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Vance, Wake, Warren, Wayne and Wilson counties.

HarvestBeam Inc., a broadband provider for rural North Carolina, will receive $413,260 for 95 locations in Craven and Pitt counties.

Roanoke Connect Holdings, operating as Fybe internet provider, will be awarded $2.4 million to connect 826 locations in Bertie, Chowan, Gates, Granville, Halifax, Hertford, Martin, and Northampton counties. 

Wilkes & RiverStreet Networks has been selected to receive $959,828 to connect 306 locations in Camden, Currituck, Stokes and Wilkes counties.

Other providers to be awarded serve customers in Alexander, Bladen, Buncombe, Durham, Henderson, Hoke, Iredell, Forsyth, Jackson, Macon, Orange, Robeson, Rowan, Sampson, Scotland, Swain, Transylvania and Yadkin counites.

“High-speed internet access is the foundation for health care delivery, public safety operations, workforce development, and economic growth in our state,” Teena Piccione, NCDIT secretary and state chief information officer, said. “This program allows us to move with urgency and precision to connect more North Carolinians.”

HERTFORD — Even as the proposed Mid-Currituck bridge project has been uncharacteristically zipping along in the planning process, a new analysis of two revenue options has cast doubts on the project’s future, with serious concerns raised about the latest estimated construction costs that hover around $1.2 billion.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation presented a report Feb. 18 to the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization comparing a traditional toll project and a “P3” toll project, as required by federal law, to determine “value for money.” With a traditional toll project, the state is responsible for financial, operational and construction-related risks. A “P3” toll project is where a private sector/single developer has responsibility for revenue, financial, operational and construction-related risks.

“The base case financial results from the comparative analysis reveal that neither the Traditional Toll Delivery nor the P3 Toll Delivery are currently financially feasible,” the report said. “The analysis highlights funding gaps of $1,005 million for the Traditional Toll Delivery and $875 million for the P3 Toll Delivery, both of which exceed the $173 million of committed STIP (State Transportation Improvement Plan) funding.”

And it doesn’t appear that sunny prospects are around the corner. “Project costs have continued to increase above inflation and any schedule delays would likely increase costs further,” the report adds.

NCDOT has scheduled another presentation to the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization of the Mid-Currituck bridge comparative analysis for 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Albemarle Commission headquarters, 512 South Church St., Hertford.

A decision on the next step must be made by the organization’s board by its April meeting.

Although the transportation department and the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, the state agency responsible for tolling, are not advocating for any particular decision, the report said, it did cite several potential options.

One option is to adjust the STIP schedule and submitting it again to compete for funding, or removing the project from the schedule all together, which would free up the $173 million bridge allocation to be used for other Division 1 projects. Other options are to continue applying for federal grants, looking for other funding sources, consider local sales or occupancy taxes, and/or request an annual state appropriation.

Despite the challenging budgetary situation, the bridge agencies are still in the fight, with both NCDOT and the Turnpike Authority continuing to advance the project toward construction, Logen Hodges, the authority’s marketing and communications director, said in an email responding to questions from Coastal Review.

So far, he said, three permits have been issued for the project, including those issued by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s divisions of Water Resources and Coastal Management on Sept. 19, 2025, and one issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Oct. 28, 2025. While geotechnical investigations are being completed, another permit application to the Coast Guard is pending.

First identified as a need in 1975, the proposed bridge would connect the Currituck mainland at Aydlett to Corolla, on the Currituck Outer Banks. The 4.66-mile-long bridge would cross Currituck Sound and a 1.5-mile-long bridge would cross Maple Swamp on the mainland side about 25 miles south of the Virginia state line.

But the project, which has a timeline of five years for design and construction, has been rife with conflict, budget shortfalls, waning and waxing political support and repeated legal challenges. Dare and Currituck counties, and most of their respective towns and villages, have been pushing for the bridge for decades as a necessity to decrease traffic volume and improve hurricane evacuation.

At the same time, vocal opponents, many of them residents from both sides of the proposed bridge, have maintained that the bridge would be a costly boondoggle that would damage the environment and increase traffic.

Legal challenges were filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which challenged the permit issued by DEQ on different fronts.

“The timeline for resolution of this legal challenge is uncertain,” Hodges wrote. “Due to the pending legal challenge of an environmental permit and additional project funding needs, the project schedule will remain uncertain. To reflect this, the project construction let date has been extended by one year and may continue to be adjusted until a project schedule is determined.” 

On behalf of No Mid-Currituck Bridge, a citizens’ group opposed to the bridge, and the Sierra Club, an environmental nonprofit group, the SELC submitted a Petition for a Contested Case Hearing to the state in November that challenged the DEQ’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit. 

The petition argues, among others, that the bridge will bring adverse effects and disrupt communities on both sides.

“The permit for the construction of the Bridge Alternative would induce dramatic increases in traffic and development on both the mainland and Outer Banks, strain already overburdened coastal wastewater and drinking water infrastructure, permanently harm estuarine waters, wetlands, and other surface waters,” the document states.

In a separate action, the law center submitted a petition for judicial review to the state in December, also challenging the issuance of the permit by Coastal Resources Commission and DEQ.

To the community on the northern Outer Banks and the southern end of mainland Currituck County, as well as for visiting property owners and tourists, the summer traffic crossing the Wright Memorial Bridge back and forth from Currituck to Dare counties is an annual headache, with bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging roads to and from Corolla every weekend and holiday.

According to a September 2025 traffic and revenue report, more than 1 million vehicles crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge in July 2023, the highest count to date. 

“The proposed (Currituck bridge) is expected to provide significant distance and time savings to residents and visitors, particularly to those that travel to the most northern portion of Dare County and the Currituck County portion of the Outer Banks,” the report said. “The (bridge) will reduce peak season congestion for trips to the south, facilitate planned growth north of the (Wright bridge), and improve emergency evacuation for those residing on all parts of the Outer Banks.”

Tolls would be charged starting in 2032, according to the report. Minimum tolls in 2023 dollars for cars would be $6 each direction, with discounts for tolls paid by transponders and future increases reflecting the inflation rate. Trucks and other heavy vehicles will pay proportionally higher tolls.

The report also states that the optimal toll rate of $15 would generate 90% of the maximum forecasted toll revenue. In the numerous models, calculated rates were as high as $40. 

But Hodges cautioned that the models are not just that.

 “While estimated toll rates were used for the purpose of the analysis, all toll rates are set by the North Carolina Turnpike Authority Board of Directors,” he wrote in the email. “Formal toll rates for the Mid-Currituck Bridge would not be established until closer to the facility’s opening.”

The $173 million in committed division funds represents about 20% of the total STIP funding for Division 1, Hodges said. Depending on the outcome of the project schedule, the DEQ permits would not expire on their own, he said. The Corps’ permit, however, is set to expire iis set to expire on Dec. 31,2030, unless an extension is granted.

But if the Albemarle Regional Planning Organization decides to move the project to the last five years of the STIP, he said, it could potentially be eligible for funding at statewide, regional impact funding and division needs tiers.

“Ultimately whether the project is funded and programmed for construction would be dependent on available funding at each tier and how the project scores relative to other projects submitted for prioritization,” he wrote.

Whatever its fate, it’s taken a lot of resources for the Mid-Currituck Bridge proposal to finally reach the runway, only to be stalled indefinitely — or eliminated. 

“Since the early 1990s when the project was first conceived,” Hodges wrote, “approximately $60 million has been spent on early project work, including preliminary engineering, environmental analysis and initial right-of-way acquisition.”

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, the North Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments in the long-running legal battle between Currituck County and the Corolla Civic Association (CCA) over how the county spends occupancy tax money.

The CCA plaintiffs contend that the county has improperly used those funds to pay for police, fire protection, emergency services and equipment for public safety rather than earmarking them for tourism-related expenses. The Currituck County Commissioners, citing the extra needs placed on public safety in the summer tourist season in Corolla, have contended that state law allows public safety spending with those funds.

The state legislature passes a law for any county that wishes to charge an occupancy tax, with a provision outlining how the tax can be used. The Currituck County occupancy tax law was first passed in 1987 and amended in 2004. The Outer Banks Voice – NC Supreme Court to hear Currituck County occupancy tax case

In March 2024, the NC Court of Appeals Court ruled in favor of the CCA and members of the organization. Currituck County then appealed that ruling to the State Supreme Court.  During the Feb. 17 arguments, it seemed clear that key elements of the case are whether public safety expenses are related to tourism and how much discretion the commissioners have in allocating occupancy tax dollars.

In speaking first for the defendants, attorney Chris Geis of the Womble Bond Dickinson firm argued that under the statute, the “[Currituck] Commissioners were given the broad authority to use their judgment to determine what is a tourism-related expenditure” that brings tourism to the county.

As an example, Geis cited occupancy tax spending on the county’s Veterans’ Memorial Park, which he said a “leaves people with a good feeling about [this] place. That is a tourism related expenditure.” He noted that the plaintiffs opposed spending occupancy tax dollars on the Park.

“We have reasonable disagreement here, we understand that,” Geis said, in addressing the Supreme Court Justices. “But this is not an area where the county has stepped outside that line” of violating state law.

Making the case for the plaintiffs, attorney Troy Shelton of the Dowling PLLC firm, stated that “the Court of Appeals saw exactly what happened for what it was,” in ruling for the plaintiffs. “The County’s been breaking the law, and it has to stop.”

In response to one Justice’s question, Shelton said that “I don’t think that paying for police or firefighters attracts tourists.”

“There is nothing stopping the County from going back to the [North Carolina] legislature and trying a new round of lobbying” to change the statute. “That’s what they need to be doing instead of fighting this case,” he stated.

Asked by Chief Justice Paul Newby what remedies the plaintiffs are seeking if they prevail, Shelton indicated that among things, they want the restoration of the occupancy tax funds they say were improperly spent.

You can see the Supreme Court arguments here. Supreme Court of North Carolina: 101PA24 Costanzo, et al. v Currituck County, et al.

This story first appeared in the Outer Banks Voice, Coastal Review Online partners with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

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.

More than $4.6 million will go to coastal conservation efforts such as property acquisition and living shoreline projects out of $36 million in statewide grants through North Carolina Land and Water Fund, the state announced earlier this week.

The fund gets appropriations from the N.C. General Assembly to support projects by local governments, state agencies, and nonprofit organizations that restore and protect the state’s natural and cultural resources.

“North Carolina is home to remarkable natural beauty,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a release. “These grants will help preserve that beauty.” 

These projects, which “will support North Carolina’s $28 billion outdoor recreation economy,” are broken up into four types: acquisition, stormwater, planning and restoration, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Coastal Resources said in the announcement.

Property acquisition projects selected for the coast are:

• $1.57 million to Kill Devil Hills for land at Nags Head Woods.
• $1.06 million to North Carolina Coastal Land Trust for land at Powells Point on the Albemarle Sound.
• $1.27 million to the town of Leland for the Silver Timber Tract – Nature Park.
• $752,000 to the North Carolina Coastal Federation for land in Carteret and Onslow counties.
• $3.5 million to Unique Places to Save for the St. James — Boiling Spring Lakes Wetland Complex, however this is a provisional award and depends on if the funds are available before July 1, 2026.
• $335,000 to The Nature Conservancy for land in Onslow and Pender counties. One of the three awards is provisional as well.

In addition to property acquisition, the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, has been selected for just shy of $1 million for the following projects:

• An update to the Oyster Blueprint for Action Restoration and Protection Plan.
• A stormwater plan for the Ocean City Jazz Festival site on Topsail Island.
• The second phase of a living shoreline for Jockey’s Ridge State Park.
• A living shorelines cost-share program.

Sound Rivers Inc. has been awarded $243,200 for a stormwater wetland education site in Craven County and nearly $30,000 for a watershed plan for a section of Slocum Creek.

A North Carolina State University-sponsored program in Onslow County has been awarded $234,241 for a stormwater infrastructure maintenance robot.

New Hanover County has a $75,000 grant for a Pages Creek feasibility plan.

A statewide list is available online.

Previously the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, the fund was put in place in 1996 to protect the state’s drinking water sources. The General Assembly expanded the fund’s mission to include conserving and protecting natural resources, cultural heritage and military installations.

Update Oct. 10: Duck officials announced Friday afternoon that the 2025 Duck Jazz Festival slated for this weekend has been canceled due to expected weather conditions.

Original post dated Oct. 3: Get ready to immerse yourself in the sounds of swing and rhythm at this year’s Duck Jazz Festival, a free, two-day event showcasing regional and local jazz musicians.

The town-sponsored festival now in its 16th year will kick off with a Concert on the Green-style event from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 11 featuring guitarist, producer and composer Adam Hawley on the main stage, 1200 Duck Road, in Duck Town Park. Hawley has performed with the likes of Natalie Cole, Lalah Hathaway, Jennifer Lopez and The Manhattan Transfer.

Several artists will be showcased on two different stages during a full day of music Oct. 12. Gates open at 10 a.m.

Vocalist Shayna Steele will kick things off at 11 a.m. on the main stage followed by a lineup to include:

• First Flight High School Honors Jazz Band at 12:10 p.m. on the amphitheater stage.
• Gerald Veasley at 1:10 p.m. on the main stage.
• David Esleck Trio featuring Jordan Garrett at 2:20 p.m. on the amphitheater stage.
• Brass Queens at 3:25 p.m. on the main stage.
• The Hot Lanes with Bobby Jasinski at 4:30 p.m. on the amphitheater stage.
• Tito Puente, Jr. at 5:25 p.m. on the main stage.

The festival will be held rain or shine. Chairs are available for rent onsite from Just for the Beach and attendees are invited to bring food, coolers, chairs, blankets, and well-behaved dogs.

Food and soft drinks will also be available for purchase from Duck eateries.

Umbrellas and tents are not permitted and video recording is prohibited.

The park is smoke-free and plastic, aluminum, and glass recycling receptors are available onsite, but guests are asked to consider taking glass containers home to recycle for the safety of the event’s volunteers.

A children’s story time and rhythm play, movie on the green, community concert on the green and a live jam at the Bluepoint will be hosted Oct. 10.

For further details, including the environmental policy for the event, visit the town’s website. “As part of the Town’s vision, a commitment to environmental stewardship is one of our unifying principles,” according to the website.

Live music and other special activities will be taking place at Duck businesses around town.  For event updates, follow Duck Jazz Festival on Facebook and Twitter.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management has issued a permit for the proposed mid-Currituck bridge that would connect mainland Currituck County and its barrier island beaches.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality on Friday announced that the division had issued a Coastal Area Management Act dredge and fill law permit and that, in a separate action, the agency’s Division of Water Resources had issued a Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification for the toll road and 6.7-mile-long bridge.

The project will connect the mainland at U.S. Highway 158 near Aydlett to the Outer Banks near Corolla with two-lane bridges spanning the Currituck Sound and Maple Swamp.

As previously reported in Coastal Review, the project has received wide support from Dare and Currituck counties and most Dare towns, though residents of Currituck County communities on either side of the bridge have expressed concerns about the impacts of more traffic on the neighborhoods’ infrastructure, environment and quality of life.

The N.C. Department of Transportation/North Carolina Turnpike Authority submitted the CAMA permit application one year ago. The Division of Coastal Management accepted the application as complete early this year.

CAMA Major/dredge and fill law permits must be obtained for projects that cover more than 20 acres, include activities that require other state or federal permits, or for construction covering more than 60,000 square feet.

Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certification determines whether a project complies with state water quality standards.

The Division of Water Resources issued a certification for the project with conditions, which include an agreement to offset unavoidable impacts to wetlands by creating, restoring or enhancing wetlands elsewhere from the construction area.

The applicants are also required to mitigate unavoidable impacts to submerged aquatic vegetation by monitoring for the effects of shading and replacing or restoring impacted vegetation as close to the area as possible.

“The certification also includes a condition that the applicant must submit an update to the project stormwater management plan prior to construction,” according to an NCDEQ release.

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.

Longtime Outer Banks politician Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, has launched a campaign to represent northeastern North Carolina at the federal level.

“I’m proud to announce that I am running for the United States Congress and the 1st congressional seat of the great state of North Carolina,” Hanig said Wednesday morning on “Talk of the Town” with Henry Hinton, a radio show on TALK 96.3 & 103.7 FM and streamed YouTube. He made the announcement on his website and social media, as well.

Hanig is running for the state’s 1^st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, which covers Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Edgecombe, Gates, Granville, Greene, Halifax, Hertford, Lenoir, Martin, Nash, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell, Vance, Warren, Washington, Wayne and Wilson counties.

So far, Hanig’s only opponent in the Republican primaries being held in March 2026 is Rocky Mount’s two-term mayor, Sandy Roberson. The winner of that race will face in the November 2026 election the incumbent Congressman Don Davis, a Democrat serving his second term representing the district, if Davis goes uncontested.

Hanig decided to run because “more people in North Carolina need someone that’s going to fight for their constituents and the ‘America First agenda,’ and we don’t have it,” he told Hinton, referring to the Trump administration’s plans under the reconciliation act passed in June.

Hanig is an Army veteran and small business owner in his second term in the North Carolina Senate. He represents District 1’s Bertie, Camden, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Tyrrell counties until his term ends Dec. 31, 2026. Before becoming a senator, Hanig served two terms in the state House and as chairman for the Currituck County Board of Commissioners.

In a statement from his campaign Wednesday morning, Hanig said he is a “proven leader who has always been a fierce advocate for my constituents and our shared values and beliefs. I will continue that fight when I get to Washington. I believe in President Trump’s America First Agenda and my record in the legislature backs it up. I’ve cut taxes for North Carolina families, toughened border control in the state, stood up for life, and defended our Second Amendment rights.”

Hanig said during the radio interview with Hinton that he had decided to run before his very public fight against a proposed bill that would prevent shrimp trawling in state waters a few months ago.

“I love eastern North Carolina, and this is my home. These are my people. I’m blessed to do what I do. Serving in the General Assembly has been an absolute honor, privilege and just opportunity in the lifetime,” he said, adding what he thinks he’s learned from serving as a county commissioner and in the House and Senate “has brought me to this point, and I’m ready to move on to the next level and really give northeast North Carolina what they deserve, which is good leadership to protect our values, our heritage and our way of life.”

The Currituck County Sheriff’s Office has identified the driver of the vehicle that struck and killed a young stallion earlier this week.

Trevor Odell Belcher of Greenville, Tennessee, was driving a 2010 Chevrolet, traveling south on Sandfiddler Road, which is not paved, when he struck the horse that was crossing in the path of his vehicle, according to the sheriff’s office.

Belcher stopped his vehicle and called 911 for assistance. His vehicle was not drivable.

Related: Driver strikes, kills 10-year-old stallion in Currituck County

No drugs or alcohol were involved and the driver was not charged, according to a sheriff’s office report.

The incident occurred at about 5 a.m. Monday.

The horse was a 10-year-old stallion named Francisco.

Staff with the Corolla Wild Horse Fund ask that motorists drive carefully and be aware of surroundings at all times, and obey traffic regulations on the four-wheel-drive beach area

Correction: The incident occurred on Sandfiddler Road, not nearby Sandpiper Road, as originally reported.

A driver struck and killed a stallion early Monday on the four-wheel-drive area of the beach in Currituck County, according to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund staff.

In a post on the organization’s Facebook page, staff said the horse was struck in the 2000 block of Sandfiddler Road in Corolla at about 5 a.m. Monday.

The driver called 911 to report the incident.

A spokesperson with the Currituck County Sheriff’s Office said late Tuesday that an incident report was not yet available.

The horse was a 10-year-old stallion named Francisco.

“He was an otherwise healthy, young stallion with a harem of four mares, a yearling colt, and a four-month-old colt,” according to the fund’s staff, who noted that the colts’ parentage had not been verified by DNA. “After examining the body, our veterinarian determined that Francisco sustained the following fatal injuries: complete fracture of the radius and ulna, ruptured eye with periocular fractures, fractured ribs with subcutaneous emphysema, and likely ruptured diaphragm with pneumoabdomen.”

The staff had observed the rest of the horses in the harem behaving normally and said there was no reason to be concerned for their safety or well-being.

Motorists are asked to drive carefully and be aware of surroundings at all times. Staff emphasized the importance of obeying all traffic regulations on the 4WD beach area.

“These tragic incidents can be avoided through vigilance and personal responsibility,” staff said.

Millions of dollars in state funding are being awarded for beach renourishment and dune projects along the North Carolina coast.

Projects in Dare, Carteret and Currituck counties and in Oak Island have been selected by the North Carlina Division of Water Resources to receive more than $9.39 million from the Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund.

Funding will go to the following projects:

• In Dare County, Buxton nourishment, $3.6 million and Avon Beach nourishment, $2 million.
• In Carteret County, Bogue Banks 2025-26 beach nourishment design, $663,537.
• Currituck County’s beach management plan, $120,568.
• Oak Island beach nourishment, $3 million.

The applicants are matching the state grants with more than $44 million in local government funds.

“The coastline is one of our state’s natural treasures and serves as the livelihood of many communities in eastern North Carolina,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a release. “These grants will help preserve our state’s beauty, protect people’s livelihoods, and keep communities safe.”

The North Carolina General Assembly funds the Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund to help with local costs associated with beach nourishment, artificial dunes and other projects to mitigate or remediate coastal storm damage to the state’s ocean beaches and dune systems.

“This funding will help coastal communities protect natural resources that are essential to their quality of life and economies,” said state Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Reid Wilson in the release. “By restoring beaches and dunes, the projects will also make these communities more resilient to future storms.”

The division scores applications on several criteria, including environmental, social, and economic benefits, life of the project, financial resources, and project efficiency.

For additional information about the application process, contact Kevin Hart with the division at 919-707-3607 or kevin.hart@deq.nc.gov.

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

MANTEO — In the six months since the chaotic and seemingly random cutting in the federal government began, a terrible uneasiness has descended on the northeast corner of North Carolina, where all of the state’s nine national wildlife refuges employ neighbors and family members who live in the rural communities in which they’re located.

At least 10 Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex staff and five employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional Ecological Services office in Raleigh, so far, are believed to have voluntarily left their jobs, whether nudged by coercion or incentives.

With staff forbidden to speak with media, and ongoing legal challenges and limited public information creating uncertainty, no one appears to know what will happen to their refuges.

“I just found out we should be getting some staffing numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the next couple of weeks,” Howard Phillips, the Southeastern representative for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, a nonprofit advocacy and support group for the refuges, told Coastal Review, citing informed but unofficial sources. “The dust seems to be settling a little and (the agency) is starting to get a handle on where they stand.”

But Phillips, who retired at the end of 2020 as manager of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Tyrrell County, says he fears that serious consequences are already baked into the refuges’ cake, no matter what the government decides to do. The lack of trust engendered by often abrupt, unexplained cuts of staff, research and budgets as well as the “crippling” brain drain of expertise, experience and local knowledge has only made the situation more problematic.

“Could the administration suddenly decide they want to hire everybody back and start doing conservation again?” he continued. “That would take at least six months, probably 12 months. They’d have to be trained.”

The stark reality, he added, is that without knowing the Trump administration’s timeline or goal in the current upheaval, it’s impossible to understand the long-term impacts and impractical to expect much to change, much less improve.

“I mean, they’ve just given no indication that they’re going to do anything that’s going to reverse the trend right now, which is down, down, down, down,” Phillips said.

An unnamed spokesperson from the agency’s public affairs office ignored Coastal Review’s request to authorize or facilitate a refuge staff interview, but responded to several questions about impacts on North Carolina’s wildlife refuges in a May 23 email.

“As part of the broader efforts led by the Department of the Interior under President Trump’s leadership, we are implementing necessary reforms to ensure fiscal responsibility, operational efficiency, and government accountability,” the spokesperson wrote. “While we do not comment on personnel matters, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service remains committed to fulfilling our mission of conserving fish, wildlife, and natural resources for the American people.” 

Refuges in the coastal complex encompass nearly a half-million acres of farmlands, swamp forests and pocosin peatlands, intersected by rivers, streams, canals, lakes and sounds within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

The nine refuges — Alligator River, Pea Island, Mackay Island, Currituck, Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lakes, Cedar Island, Swan Quarter, Roanoke River — are stretched along vast swaths of geography in the coastal plain that provide habitat for unique species and globally important ecosystems.

For instance, the critically endangered wild red wolves, the only surviving in the world, roam within a five-county recovery area based out of Alligator River, descendants of Spanish mustangs range free in Currituck, and thousands of migratory birds and waterfowl passing along the Atlantic Flyway overwinter every year at Mattamuskeet and Pocosin Lakes.

Mattamuskeet, the state’s largest natural lake, is undergoing an innovative and intensive watershed restoration project many years in the planning. And Pocosin Lakes, named for the Native American term for “swamp on hill” because of its boggy peat soil, has been studied by Duke University researchers for its ability to remediate carbon pollution. The refuge has also nearly completed an extensive rewetting project to restore the ability of the pocosin peat to absorb carbon dioxide and resist wildfires.

Two major wildfires in and around the refuge in recent decades have burned deep in the ground for many weeks, spewing tons of carbon back into the environment, with one smoldering for six months before it was finally extinguished.

Therein lies the dilemma — and the risk — to the refuges: What happens when there’s no one available to take proper care of the refuges, and to even continue the conservation mission?

Pocosin Lakes, for instance, with the recent retirement of former manager Wendy Stanton, no longer has a refuge manager.

“You know, with Wendy gone now, I don’t know that there’s anybody left at Pocosin Lakes that really understands that hydrology restoration and how it works,” Phillips said.

But it’s more than the upper-level staff, said Bonnie Strawser, president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society, a local nonprofit group that supports all of the eastern North Carolina refuges. It’s also the loss of staff that maintain buildings and trails, she said, as well as the biologists who monitor water and test soil.

Strawser, who retired in 2020 after 40 years with Fish and Wildlife as visitor services manager, said that the project leader for Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Rebekah Martin has designated acting managers in each refuge, but that’s in addition to their regular jobs with the refuges.

Martin is based at the agency’s Roanoke Island headquarters but is not authorized to speak to reporters. According to a 2023 article on the coastal refuges website, Martin oversees about 400,000 acres of habitat with more than a dozen endangered or threatened species. At the time, it said, the complex had 35 employees and more than 400 volunteers.

“We are currently down to 10 staff, and this is regular O and M — operations and maintenance — funded by general funding, refuge funding,” Strawser said in a recent interview. “Now that does not include firefighters or law enforcement, because they are funded through different programs.”

Strawser said that there were no probationary employees in eastern North Carolina, so no one had been outright fired. Some staff who agreed to resign under one of the agency’s two rounds of the deferred resignation program, she said, were quickly shut down and put on administrative leave for varied periods of time while collecting their salaries.

Cuts in both the U.S. Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service will also hamper the agencies cooperative response to wildfires and disasters, including with the national interagency incident management teams. Strawser is a member of one of three teams in the southern area.

“I don’t know what in the world we’re going to do when fire season comes,” she said. “They stood down our team. It’s not going to be available, they said, at least until after July.”

As Strawser noted, a lot goes on behind the scenes to keep the refuges humming, including procedural processes to keep records and run programs, as well as have sponsors to maintain the “casual hire” personnel to respond to emergencies.

“But the Fish and Wildlife Service, because they lost so many people in the administrative positions, they don’t have anybody to handle the payments and the travel, so they can’t sponsor” for a team member, she said.

For the time being, the public many not notice much difference when they go to a refuge, Strawser said.

“The visitor centers are run by volunteers,” she said. “The public programs are conducted mostly by volunteers.” But there’s only three maintenance people for their nine national wildlife refuges.

“There’s been no talk of closing anything, but it’s just common sense there will problems if there’s nobody to grade the roads, if there’s nobody to do the mowing on the road shoulders, she said. “And if there’s no ‘daylighting’ of the roads, they’ll get overgrown, the sun won’t reach down, and the mud doesn’t dry out and the road is destabilized and before you know it, they’re not drivable.”

Mike Bryant, who was succeeded by Martin, had served as refuge manager for 20 years, from 1996 to 2016, and he witnessed decreasing support for the refuges from the federal government, he told Coastal Review in an interview. After retirement, he had also served as consultant for the National Wildlife Refuge Association, and was former president of the Coastal Wildlife Refuge Society. Although he said he keeps in touch, he is no longer directly involved with either group.

Since about 2010, Bryant said there has been a steady decline in staffing.

“You have refuges where there were multiple people, and with some of them, there’s just one person left, and so that’s part of the story,” he said. “So it had nothing to do with the past 60 or 90 days, whatever it is now.”

But it’s not just mandated reductions in staff that threaten the refuges, he said. The management challenge is also an aging workforce that may not be replaced.

“You got over half a million acres of National Wildlife Refuge in multiple counties, and spanning across North Carolina to the Virginia border, with all kinds of infrastructure and management mandates and no staff to get those mandates done,” Bryant said. “They’re just wondering, how are we going to meet our responsibilities if we’re the only ones left? It’s a morale buster.”

After being fully staffed around 2003, he said it seemed as if the Department of Interior stopped prioritizing conservation and Congress slowly began losing interest in supporting the refuges.

“The Fish and Wildlife budget has so many facets to it, so many other responsibilities under various laws, endangered species and ecological services and all these other entities within the agency, fisheries and all those things, are all important,” Bryant said. “But Congress was never convinced to budget specifically for operations and maintenance of national wildlife refuges.”

Meanwhile, scores of new refuges came on line in the last 25 years. And rather than hiring more personnel, more work was heaped on less staff.

“I was hired in 1996 to manage Alligator River and Pea Island,” Bryant said. “Two years later, when the manager left Mackey Island and Currituck refuges, the regional office called me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to manage those two.’ All of a sudden, I had four refuges.”

Two years later, he was told to hire and supervise a new manager at Pocosin Lakes. Then staff was reduced, forcing him to share staff between the refuges. Next, Roanoke River was added to his responsibilities — along with the 90-minute drive each way. During all those years, he was bumped up just one pay grade.

Bryant said he gets why people get frustrated with the inefficient, cumbersome aspects of the federal government. But he remembers back when the Clinton administration had reduced both staffing and regulations, and not only succeeded, but ended up with a balanced budget.

“We went through all of those things without ever feeling like the sky is falling,” he said. Rather than taking rational steps to achieve efficiency, the interest now seems more in “just destroying the government, constantly degrading it, and yes, crafting corruption.”

“There’s a few bad actors, no doubt, always, in every organization everywhere, no matter what the enterprise,” Bryant added. “There was a rational process to deal with bad employees, grounded in policy. And the policy was grounded in regulation, and the regulation was grounded in law.”

The first official unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System was Pelican Island in Florida, established for conservation in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Today there are 570 refuges and 30 wetland management districts on more than 150 million acres entrusted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and enjoyed by 69 million visitors.

Bryant is rooting for not just survival of the struggling refuge system, but its revival.

“I think we’ll recover,” he said. “I’m optimistic about that. But we’ll be deeply scarred.”

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is temporarily suspending the Currituck-Knotts Island ferry route over the next several days while the fender systems at both terminals are replaced and repaired.

The route is to resume service the weekend of June 28-29. Service is scheduled to fully resume July 3, the state agency’s Ferry Division announced Wednesday.

The fender system includes the rubber materials installed on terminal pilings to protect boats and pilings while vessels are docking.

For real-time text or email updates on weather or mechanical delays, sign up for the Ferry Information Notification System at www.ncdot.gov/fins. 

Motorists will see lower speed limits this week along sections of N.C. Highway 12 in parts of Currituck and Dare counties.

It’s a move to improve safety during peak travel season.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crews have been reducing speed limits on several sections of N.C. 12. The speed limits in areas through Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Corolla and Frisco will be lowered to 35 mph on Thursday from the off-season speed limit of 45 mph.

Seasonal speed limit reductions will return in areas of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, such as the area near the Haulover Parking Lot south of Avon, as well.

Off-season speed limits will return on Sept. 15.

DUCK — Fifty years after the need for a bridge between mainland Currituck County and its barrier island beaches was first identified, and 30 years after a draft planning document for the proposed mid-Currituck bridge was first released, a recent public meeting revealed that the same issues are still being vigorously debated, costs have skyrocketed, and funding is still lacking.

Even with the green light in 2019 to finally begin the permitting process, the project continues to face considerable hurdles, including stark disagreement in the communities the bridge would connect.

Attendees at a recent hearing in Duck told state officials the bridge was needed to relieve the bumper-to-bumper traffic that clogs the only thoroughfare to the Currituck Outer Banks.

“Residents are literally trapped in their homes,” a woman from Southern Shores, a northern Dare County town, told state officials during the March 18 hearing held by the state Division of Coastal Management. “This is not just an annoyance. This is a safety risk. Getting people evacuated would be virtually impossible.”

The bridge project has received wide support from Dare and Currituck counties and most Dare towns.

But those who live in Currituck County communities on either side of the bridge — Corolla and Carova at the beach and Aydlett on the mainland — lamented the impacts of even more traffic on their neighborhoods’ infrastructure, environment and quality of life.

“Yes, we have a traffic problem,” commented Corolla resident Barbara Marzetti, a co-founder of the citizens group No Mid-Currituck Bridge, or NoMC, during the Duck meeting.

The bridge would make the situation worse, she added. If the bridge is built, the people will come. And then more people will come.

“It’ll bring more development,” Marzetti said. “Right now, we have an environmental disaster with the water and septic issues.”

Marzetti, who is also president of the Corolla Civic Association, said North Carolina’s northernmost barrier island communities can’t take “dumping all those people here.”

“We’re already overtaxed in terms of infrastructure here,” she told Coastal Review in a later interview. “There will be day trippers up the gazoo.”

Another public hearing on the proposal has been scheduled for 5-7 p.m. April 16 at the Currituck Extension Center, 120 Community Way in Barco, on the mainland side.

Although folks on the mainland are also worried about increased traffic, the Currituck Outer Banks is a more fragile environment that is home to a national wildlife refuge and wild mustangs. Even though the northern Outer Banks are less exposed than the southern communities on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands, the area is still vulnerable to intense tropical weather and coastal storms.

According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, the proposed bridge is needed to provide an additional hurricane evacuation route to meet the state standards of 18 hours to evacuate an area. Once built, the bridge would offer a 40-mile shortcut to travelers, saving as much as two hours one-way during peak tourism months.

In 2022, the Currituck County Department of Travel and Tourism estimated that 500,000 travelers visited the county during the 10-week peak summer travel season each year. It would be a good bet that nearly all are heading to the Outer Banks, where they’ll end up on N.C. Highway 12 — also called Duck Road along this stretch — and likely stuck in gridlock.

NCDOT data shows the average summer weekend traffic in 2017 on two-lane N.C. 12 in Southern Shores was 22,236 vehicles. More recent DOT traffic counts were not readily available.

The proposed project includes a 4.66-mile-long bridge across Currituck Sound and a 1.5-mile-long bridge across Maple Swamp on the mainland side in Aydlett, about 25 miles south of the Virginia state line. On the Outer Banks side, the bridge would tie-in at Corolla, a popular upscale resort community renowned for its shopping, big houses, wide beaches and charming historic village. Just to its north, 11 miles of unpaved sand roads wind through the tiny community of Carova, where the wild mustangs famously roam free.

Currituck County records show 57 applications in Carova for new single-family dwellings since January 2015.

Although Currituck County Planning Director Bill Newns said he didn’t have the exact percentage of buildout in the completely off-road beach community, there were originally thousands of large lots, but there had been no new real subdivisions.

“Pretty much, it’s all been platted out … some of that stuff goes back to the ’90s, ’80s, and before then,  that were already platted out,” he told Coastal Review.

“Typically, all those roads are private,” Newns said, “The county doesn’t have control of them.”

Longtime Carova resident Jay Laughmiller, who owns a water-treatment business and is also the volunteer fire chief, said he has seen firsthand the wear and tear on the community from the thousands of summer visitors. He fears that the “already controlled chaos” would be exacerbated by the bridge.

“It would not be good for the area,” he told Coastal Review. “Yes, it would grow the economy, because it would bring more people here. But the infrastructure itself can’t handle too much more.”

In the last decade or so, Currituck County has successfully marketed tourism by featuring captivating photographs of the horses frolicking on Carova’s wide-open beaches. Consequently, wild horse tours are one of the most popular attractions for visitors. Tourists and property owners are also allowed to drive on beach corridors and the unpaved roads, which has inevitably created conflicts and hazards for both horses and people.

With Carova’s beaches becoming parking lots every summer, the county in recent years instituted a permit system to control the beach traffic.

Impacts from the crowds are seen not just in rutted roads or damaged dunes; the volume and intensity of such growth is overwhelming the environmental balance.

Unlike neighboring Corolla, Carova has no stores, restaurants, public water, visitor facilities or wastewater systems. But it does have numerous single-family homes, most small and modest but with a few of 20 or more bedrooms.

Laughmiller said that septic systems and water from private wells, both subject to state regulations, are increasingly being compromised. Local rules allow placement of wells on a site to be determined after, rather than before, the house and septic, he said. Although septic must be at least 50 feet from the well, he said, leaving the well selection last can limit the quality of the well water.

“There’s no aquifers  there — it’s all groundwater,” Laughmiller said.

Sometimes the water is too salty or has high levels of arsenic, iron, tannin or other unwanted stuff, or is stinky from sulfides, Laughmiller said.  But current regulations, he said, look only at certain levels of bacteria before permitting a well.

Climate change effects such as rain deluges and drought, as well as increased impermeable surface coverage resulting from development, make it harder to cope with the challenges. Already, floodwater has to be pumped off the roads after big storms. Without improvements, Laughmiller said, problems with septic intrusions into well water “is only going to worsen.”

Currituck Sound is also vulnerable to climate impacts.

Julie Youngman, attorney for the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center, speaking at the Duck hearing, said the proposed bridge location crosses environmentally sensitive areas.

“I tell you, the ends of the bridge are going to be under water because of sea level rise before they find the money to pay for it,” she said.

The law center has represented the No Mid-Currituck Bridge group in an unsuccessful federal lawsuit challenging the bridge construction. The court ruled last year that the NCDOT had followed the law in issuing its 2019 record of decision, but the legal group is keeping its eye on the project during the permitting process.

In 2012, the project was estimated to cost $660 million, and somehow went down to $489 million in 2018, then to as low as $440 million, until soaring up to its current estimate of $1 billion.

Private-public partnerships, managed by the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, part of the state Department of Transportation that manages toll roads, have been on, then off, then on again, with unconfirmed speculation that a proposed toll would be about $50 round trip.

Youngman, who noted that her family had long vacationed on the northern Outer Banks, said that there are other less expensive and less environmentally damaging alternatives that NCDOT has not pursued, including construction of a flyway at the intersection of the U.S. Highway 158 Bypass and N.C. 12 in Southern Shores.

Logen Hodges, director of marketing and communications at the North Carolina Turnpike Authority, said the latest finance plan had not been finalized, but it is likely to include federal and state funds and toll-backed debt.

After applying for a competitive $425 million federal grant to fund some bridge costs, the agency was informed last October that it was not chosen for the award.

“The team is still evaluating all potential funding sources to deliver the project,” he responded in an email. “The toll revenue projections will be updated over the course of the next year with updated traffic and revenue forecasts. That analysis would also inform potential toll rates. Actual toll rates would not be set until much closer to the project opening.”

Comparative analysis is ongoing to evaluate whether to deliver the project as a “a traditional toll project,” or as a public-private-partnership toll project, he said.

The Albemarle Rural Planning Organization in August 2024 gave its approval to the Turnpike Authority and NCDOT to continue development of a potential private-public partnership, which was initially authorized only from 2009 to 2014.

In addition to a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit, various other permits are required, including from the state Division of Water Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard.

“We will be in a better position to provide an updated project schedule after all environmental permits are received,” Hodges wrote. He added that all right of way parcels have not yet been purchased.

Newns, Currituck’s planning director, said the county has not yet done a detailed plan to address the projected boom in growth if the bridge is actually built. And after hearing talk about it since the 1980s, he wasn’t going to speculate on the chances of construction.

“I don’t have an idea, because every time you think you’re a little closer to it, it takes a step back,” Newns said. “So yeah, I couldn’t honestly answer that question.”

The state Division of Coastal Management is hosting another public hearing on a permit application for the proposed mid-Currituck bridge project.

The focus of the April 16 hearing will be Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit application completed in early January by the North Carolina Department of Transportation and North Carolina Turnpike Authority.

The proposed bridge would span the Currituck Sound from Aydlett to south of Corolla. The project also includes improvements to existing roadways in Currituck and Dare Counties.

A previous public hearing on the project was held March 18 in Dare County.

The April 16 hearing will be held 5-7 p.m. at the Currituck Extension Center, 120 Community Way, Barco.

Speaker registration opens at 4 p.m. Speaker time may be limited depending on the number of registered speakers.

The public comment period on the proposed project has been extended to April 30.

Comments may be mailed to Tancred Miller, Director, Division of Coastal Management, 400 Commerce Avenue, Morehead City, NC 28557 or emailed with the subject line “Mid-Currituck CAMA application” to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov.

The CAMA application may be view at the division’s Morehead City office, 400 Commerce Ave., during normal business hours or online.

A public hearing on the Coastal Area Management Act application for the proposed mid-Currituck Bridge project is scheduled for next week.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management has set the hearing for 5-7 p.m. March 18 at Duck Town Hall, 1200 Duck Road.

The application was submitted to the division Jan. 7 by the N.C. Department of Transportation and N.C. Turnpike Authority. A copy of the application may be viewed at the division’s office at 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City during normal business hours or online.

The proposed bridge would span over Currituck Sound from Aydlett to south of Corolla. The project includes roadway improvements in Currituck and Dare counties.

Speaker registration will open one hour before the March 18 hearing. Depending on the number of registered speakers, comments may be limited in time at the discretion of the hearing officer.

Written comments may be mailed to Tancred Miller, Director, Division of Coastal Management, 400 Commerce Avenue, Morehead City, NC 28557 or emailed with the subject line “Mid-Currituck CAMA application” to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov.

The public comment period closes April 17.

The division said it will consider all comments when making its final permit decision, which, once made, will be provided upon written request.

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.”

Green thumbs can start planning now to attend the 2025 Currituck Home, Flower and Garden Show taking place this spring.

Organized by the Currituck County Extension Master Gardener volunteers, the indoor and outdoor show is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 12, at the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Currituck Center, 120 Community Way, Barco.

There will be vendors, educational short courses and gardening demonstrations throughout the day, children’s activities and the Master Gardener plant sale, which will feature vegetables, annuals, hanging baskets, native plants, sustainable trees, shrubs, herbs, perennials, camellias and more, according to the extension.

The Master Gardener program is under the N.C. Cooperative Extension, which has an office in every county. Volunteers are trained by North Carolina State University faculty and staff to offer research-based information about gardening and environmental stewardship to their community.

For more information or additional accommodations contact Currituck County Agriculture Technician Chris Blaha at 252-232-2261, or email ctblaha@ncsu.edu at least 10 days before the show.

State transportation officials are asking permission to disturb wetlands in Currituck Sound associated with construction of the proposed mid-Currituck bridge project.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation and the North Carolina Turnpike Authority are proposing the 7-mile project to connect U.S. Route 158 on the mainland and N.C. Highway 12 near Corolla on the Outer Banks.

Work on the project to build the controlled-access toll road and two bridges is proposed to begin in June 2026 and is expected to disturb wetlands and submerged aquatic vegetation, according to the application.

NCDOT and the turnpike authority submitted to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources in September 2024 the state 401 water quality certifications under the federal Clean Water Act.

The certification is required for federally permitted or licensed activities, including construction or operations of facilities that could result in a discharge to navigable waters.  

“The proposed project’s water quality impacts include fill material placed in and along the west bank of the Currituck Sound to stabilize the shoreline in the area of the bridge, as well as fill material in jurisdictional wetlands in Maple Swamp or Great Swamp,” the division said in a release.

The project is expected to permanently impact 1.21 acres of wetlands, more than 17 acres are expected to be temporarily disturbed, and there are predicted impacts to submerged aquatic vegetation, the division continued.

As part of the approval process, the division is holding a public comment period with a deadline of 5 p.m. March 31. A public hearing is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Feb. 27 in the Currituck County Center in Barco.

The public can submit written comments until 5 p.m. Monday, March 31.

Comments may be sent by email to publiccomments@deq.nc.gov, with “Mid-Currituck Bridge” written in the subject line.

Comments submitted by mail should be addressed to Garcy Ward, Division of Water Resources, 943 Washington Square Mall, Washington, NC 27889.

NCDOT’s application and the public notice from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District are available online.

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.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation is hosting a public meeting next month on a proposal to replace a Currituck County bridge near Knotts Island.

The proposed project would either replace the 180-foot bridge on N.C. Highway 615, known as Marsh Causeway, over Corey’s Ditch near the island, or close the existing man-made canal and pave it over with new roadway, according to a transportation department release.

Details are available on the project webpage. 

Though a formal presentation will not be held at the Dec. 9 meeting, engineers will be available to provide information and answer questions on a one-on-one basis.

The drop-in session will be held 5-7 p.m. at Knotts Island Elementary School, 413 Woodleigh Road, Knots Island.

Preliminary design maps will be available for viewing and public comments will be accepted at the meeting.

Public comments will be accepted through Dec. 30. Comments may also be submitted by phone at 984-205-6615, project code 7208, by email to nc615-currituck@publicinput.com, or by mail to: John Abel, NCDOT Highway Division 1 – Division Project Team Lead, 113 Airport Drive, Suite 100, Edenton, NC  27932.

Public comments will be accepted through Dec. 30.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

A large swath of property near Corolla, totaling about 177 acres, is up for sale, according to NAI Global, a commercial real estate brokerage firm handling the transaction.

In a Sept. 16 release, NAI said the five parcels involved “are approved for a by-right development which allows for 1,250 hotel rooms, as many as 782 single-family homes and nearly 428,000 square feet of commercial development.”

In a brief Sept. 17 interview with the Voice, an NAI Global official said the property went on the market about a week earlier. In response to a Voice inquiry, Currituck County Public Information Office Randall Edwards said that “the County Manager is aware that this property is for sale but does not have any comment since the property is still for sale and there are no definite plans in place.”

NAI Globe did not release the identity of the seller, but in a Sept. 17 story, the Triangle Business Journal  “the owner is listed as Coastland Properties of Virginia Beach, Virginia.”

Excerpts from Sept. 16 NAI release

NAI Global announces a rare land listing of 177+ acres for sale in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a region known to millions of Americans as a destination getaway that is largely comprised of multi-million-dollar homes, residential condominiums, resort hotels and supporting commercial development.

The unimproved land spans approximately 177+ acres on five parcels of varying sizes, two of which face the Atlantic Ocean providing direct beach access. Located near Corolla in Currituck County, the parcels are approved for a by-right development which allows for 1,250 hotel rooms, as many as 782 single-family homes and nearly 428,000 square feet of commercial development. Municipal water and sewer are provided for each parcel.

Section T has the highestbuilding height permitted in the Outer Banks. All of these sections have the right to rearrange density on a pre-approved basis. One of the parcels has the potential to build a marina/boat launch facility with water access to Currituck Sound, which is an allowed use under the development agreement with Currituck County.

The waterfront parcels are 82.6 acres and 44 acres respectively. The option exists for a buyer to develop one or more exclusive family compounds, or pursue a larger development as currently permitted.

“We don’t see many properties like this come to market, especially for a remarkable resort area of the U.S. The buyer will have numerous options to build estate properties, exclusive resorts and income-producing commercial properties. Normally with lands sales, one of these options may exist, but it is rare that all three options exist within a single acquisition,” said Alex Waddey, President and CEO of NAI Global.

The for-sale listing is unpriced. It is believed to be the largest land listing of unimproved property with direct-Atlantic Ocean access in the Eastern U.S.

Approval has been obtained and plans are in process to build an additional bridge to serve the northern Outer Banks – called the Mid-Currituck Bridge, that would stretch across Currituck Sound. The bridge would be a 7-mile span connecting the mainland with the Outer Banks near Corolla, a short distance from Ocean Sands. This would substantially reduce travel time and improve access.

This story was first published by the Outer Banks Voice, an online newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with the Voice and other publications to provide our readers a broad spectrum of coastal news.

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.”

Three coastal counties have been ranked as more economically distressed than they were last year, while one – Currituck — is ranked as the least distressed in the state for the third consecutive year. 

The North Carolina Department of Commerce published Nov. 29 the “2024 North Carolina Development Tier Designations,” a ranking of all 100 counties every year based on economic well-being and relative economic distress. 

Currituck County Manager Ike McRee told Coastal Review Thursday that he questions the validity of this ranking system, especially as the county’s population grows. 

David Rhoades, the Commerce’s communications director, explained to Coastal Review the tier system is incorporated into various state programs to encourage economic activity in the less prosperous areas of the state. 

Tier 1 counties are the most distressed and ranked 1 to 40, counties 41 to 80 are considered Tier 2, and the least distressed 20 counties are in Tier 3, ranked 81-100, according to the website. 

On the coast, Beaufort is ranked for 2024 at 34, Gates at 38 and Pasquotank as 31, all moving from Tier 2 to Tier 1 counties, joining Hertford ranked at No. 3, Bertie at No. 7, Chowan at No. 37, Hyde at No. 19, Onslow at No. 38, Tyrrell at No. 16 and Washington at No. 8. Tier two counties include Perquimans ranked at No. 42, Craven at No. 58, Pamlico at No. 68, and Dare at No. 80, which has the highest adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-24 at $446,844.

Brunswick County had the highest population growth at 14.15%, while Hyde had the lowest, a decline of 6.49%.

Rhoades said that four equally weighted factors are used to calculate the tiers each year. These factors are average unemployment rate for the most recent 12 months, median household income for the most recent 12 months data are available, adjusted property tax base per capita for the most recent taxable year, and population growth for the previous three years.

When asked how second homes, which are many along the coast, affect the criteria, Rhoades explained that one of the economic factors that go into the calculation is the property tax base per capita of the county, and “the tax value of all properties in a county does play a role in the Tiers system.”

Rhoades said a resident may not feel much difference in their daily life from tier designation, but the tiers can impact the economic development strategies that local leaders employ. Tier 1 counties facing more economic distress can take advantage of more favorable terms and conditions from programs that tie their benefits to the tier system.

“Generally speaking, various state programs provide greater benefits to counties facing more economic distress. For example, the One North Carolina Fund, which is an incentive program administered by our department, requires a local funding match. The required terms of that match are more favorable for Tier 1 counties, where the local government only must match $1 for every $3 state dollars provided. In Tier 3 counties, local governments must match one for one each state dollar provided,” he said. 

Currituck County is ranked 100, or least distressed, with an adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-24 at $266,474, according to the department. The population growth for July 2019 to July 2022 is listed as 12.77% with a median income for 2021 of $82,759, the fourth-highest median household income, behind Wake, Union and Chatham, in that order. Unemployment from October 2022 to September 2023 was 3.2%.

McRee said the county had a 10.4% increase in population from 2020 to 2022, which ranked Currituck the second-fastest-growing county in North Carolina, and from 2010 to 2020, the county experienced a 20.2% increase in population over that decade, ranking it as the seventh-fastest-growing county in the state.

“We continue to question the validity of the criteria used by the Department of Commerce and the result of that criteria use, because it’s kind of befuddling to believe that Currituck County in rural northeastern North Carolina is the least economically distressed county of all counties in the state,” he said. “Less distressed than Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Pitt, I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense to us.”

McRee added that they’re trying to get the North Carolina General Assembly to at least study and determine whether this criteria is “really fair and applicable to what is in essence, a rural county.”

The consequence of being ranked as least distressed is the county is not eligible for multiple state grants, he continued. 

“We’re grateful to be an attractive, viable county, especially in northeastern North Carolina when so many counties are losing population,” McRee said, but the county’s growth increases the demand for services, such as fire, EMS, law enforcement, but particularly schools.

Currituck has been denied school construction grants, though some neighboring counties have received $30 million or more. “What we’re now having to do is construct with 100% Currituck County funds a $60 million elementary school at the north end of our county to keep up with our population growth,” he said.

What else could be an issue for Currituck is being a coastal county with a large number of absentee property owners with extremely high-value homes on the Currituck Outer Banks, and that should be taken into consideration, he said. 

“It appears to us and they need to reevaluate the criteria they’re going to use to determine whether a county is economically distressed or not,” he said. 

For Pasquotank, the county’s economic distress rank is No. 31, moving from No. 43 in 2023. 

Pasquotank County Assistant Manager John Shannon told Coastal Review Thursday that it was not unexpected for the county to return to Tier 1, which it has been ranked since 2014, minus last year.

“Pasquotank County has historically been grouped into Tier 1,” Shannon said, “with 2023 being more of an outlier.”

Pasquotank’s adjusted property tax for 2023-24 is $94,016, population growth July 2019 to July 2022 was 1.35%, median income for 2021 is $51,365, and unemployment is 4.24%.

“This shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s median household income rank, which moved from #73 last year to #45 this year,” according to the department. The median household income numbers used for last year were $56,654.

Shannon said that the county has currently not researched the specifics of the change in the median household income rank from year to year. 

Gates County, which experienced a population decline of 2.4%, is ranked as No. 38 for 2024, moving from No. 41 in 2023. This shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s unemployment rate rank, which moved from No. 73 last year at 3.29% to No. 60 this year, at 3.38%, officials said. The adjusted property tax base per capita for 2023-2024 is $93,952.

Manager Scott Sauer noted that the county’s median household income is $59,762, positioning Gates County near the first quarter of the 100 counties, or 72 out of 100, where 1 is the most distressed.

“One explanation for this higher-than-expected rating (72) is Gates County’s proximity to the Tidewater Virginia, area of Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Virginia Beach where many of our residents are employed,” he said in an email, adding that the county was tier two from 2020 until last year.

Sauer said he has had the opportunity and the honor since 1991 to serve in Caswell, Scotland, Sampson, Harnett, Bertie and Gates counties, and “Statistical rankings do not provide an accurate measure of economic standing.”

Though there is no chain grocery store, no hospital, no community college facility or satellite campus, and only one electric vehicle charging station for the many Tesla owners, “in Gates County, we enjoy a beautiful and pristine environment for fishing, water recreation and hunting — and Merchants Millpond State Park which just celebrated 75 years of operation,” he said.

“Our residents enjoy safe neighborhoods and safe schools, which are a valuable resource by any rational measure. Agriculture and timber production are the economic engines for Gates County and this region, and we continue to innovate and grow stronger each year,” Sauer continued.

Gates County is ninth in cotton production out of North Carolina’s 100 counties, and the opportunities for ecotourism, heritage tourism, agritourism, entrepreneurs, and small businesses are seemingly endless.

“Gates County’s designation as a Tier 1 county is good news from my perspective and can be beneficial as we strive to qualify for grant opportunities to better serve our residents and taxpayers,” Sauer said. “And as a tier one county we remain in good company — with Pitt County (and ECU), with Cumberland County (and Fort Bragg), with Wayne County (and Seymour Johnson Air Station) and Onslow County (with Camp Lejeune) just to name a few.”

Beaufort County’s economic distress rank is No. 34, moving from No. 45 in 2023. The shift was largely driven by a change in the county’s unemployment rate rank, which moved from No. 43 last year at 3.77% to No. 34 this year, at 3.91%, officials said.

Beaufort County Economic Development Director Brad Hufford said that most of the county’s neighbors are Tier 1.

“While not a perfect system for determining economic strength and weakness, it is the system the state uses, and we will take full advantage of the opportunity it presents,” Hufford told Coastal Review in an email. “Our tier ranking opens us up to some opportunities with state funding such as preferential grant treatment and the lowering or waiving of local matching requirements for some grants. The system was designed to help address the needs of Tier 1 communities and help them improve their economic ranking in the future. Because the ranking system is the way it is, there will always be a new batch of Tier 1 counties even if the rising tide lifts all boats generally.”

He said that the county has been historically closer to a Tier 1. 

“During the pandemic, our county performed better on the four factors than many of the other counties, with us holding steady while they had a more drastic cut off due to the pandemic,” Hufford said in an email. “For 2021-2023 we were a Tier 2, since the ranking system is not in a vacuum but is determined by the order of other counties. In order to make a sustained or permanent leap out of Tier 1 status, there has to be some fundamental economic and population growth in the county, like what has happened in the suburban counties around major metros in the state.”

Sadly, he continued, northeastern North Carolina and coastal communities largely have not seen these types of changes like the rest of the state.

Beaufort County’s unemployment rate went from 3.77% in 2023 to 3.91% for 2024, which is not too drastic of a change. 

“It is just that compared to all the other 99 counties in NC, our new unemployment rate grew while the other counties dipped. We did have a small business closure and one of our company’s put staff on a brief furlough, so besides normal attrition, that might have accounted for some of the unemployment rate change,” he said. 

Historically, the region has had most of the Tier 1, economically distressed counties, with only small pockets existing in the Piedmont and mountains. 

“Looking at the map, you see the large swath of contiguous Tier 1 counties. I think the region has been slower to make the change from an agriculture-based economy. There was already more industry in the middle part of the state and population there, so we were at a disadvantage. I think the state needs to have some fundamental push to encourage economic growth in our area,” Hufford said. “I think with all the success and new industry occurring on the 85 corridor and around the metros, it is creating growing pains in communities dealing with people moving to NC. To me our region offers a great opportunity to balance that growth and extend prosperity east. Of course, the coast has a great quality of life and reputation as a vacation destination, but we need more economic diversity and population growth to balance for long term change.”

State and federal transportation agencies did not violate environmental policy when approving a proposed toll bridge across Currituck Sound, an appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4^th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, late last month affirmed a district court ruling that sided with the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration, which have approved construction of a multi-million-dollar toll bridge connecting the northern Outer Banks with the mainland.

In its Feb. 23 ruling, the three-judge panel agreed that the agencies did not violate the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, by not issuing a supplemental study of the proposed bridge.

The North Carolina Wildlife Federation and No Mid-Currituck Bridge-Concerned Citizens and Visitors Opposed to The Mid-Currituck Bridge sued the agencies, arguing that state and federal officials erred when they did not create a supplemental environmental impact statement, or EIS, to update years-old plans for the bridge.

NCDOT and the highway administration published in 2008 a “statement of purpose and need” detailing the necessity of the proposed bridge. The agencies said at the time that the bridge would improve the flow of traffic on U.S. Highway 158 and N.C. 12, cut travel time between the Outer Banks and mainland, and reduce the time it takes for residents and visitors to evacuate the barrier island.

A final EIS was published in 2012. The study analyzed the potential environmental impacts from various construction options, including a no-build alternative or widening existing highways instead of building a bridge.

Before the agencies could issue a record of decision on their preferred alternative to build a bridge, the state pulled funding and the project was put on hold.

Three years after the final EIS was published, the state recommitted funds for the proposed project. The agencies then had to reevaluate the EIS.

The transportation agencies completed that reevaluation in 2019, cataloging “several changes affecting the project since publication of the EIS, including reductions in forecasted traffic, development, and growth; updated sea-level rise projections; and increased project cost,” according to the ruling.

The agencies decided a supplemental EIS was not needed because there were “no new issues of significance” associated with the project.

“It’s clear from the reevaluation report that the agencies took a ‘hard look’ at the traffic issue,” Judge Albert Diaz wrote in the opinion. “They prepared new traffic forecasts and network congestion measures, and conceded that travel-time benefits associated with the bridge might be lower than originally predicted.”

In a Feb. 23 news release, the Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the appeal last year on behalf of the plaintiffs, said the review of the project “is so out of date that federal regulations require it to be revisited again before the project can proceed.”

“The defective analysis ignored hundreds of acres of new development that would be caused by a new bridge to the roadless areas of the Outer Banks and failed to account for rising sea level projections, decreased traffic forecasts, increased bridge costs, and reduced costs for less harmful alternatives,” according to the release. “The court upheld the analysis on the basis that federal law permits ‘unwise’ action, so long as it is mostly informed. And indeed, the project remains unwise and infeasible. It currently lacks needed permits from at least five state and federal agencies and does not qualify for needed sources of funding under the state’s cost-benefit analysis, meaning that even the high proposed tolls on drivers each way would not cover its projected cost.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Kym Meyer, who argued the case, said in the statement that the state does not need the proposed bridge.

“We will continue to work to ensure that North Carolina money is not wasted on this costly, unwise project,” she said. “There are much more affordable solutions to ease traffic in this area of the Outer Banks, and those solutions can be put in place much more swiftly, and with less damage to the Currituck Sound.”

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services says invasive, nonnative and destructive gypsy moths have been detected in coastal areas including Currituck and Dare counties, and a decision on how to treat the infestation is being considered.

The decision on treatment alternatives is to come after area residents have had an opportunity to weigh in, including during an in-person meeting set for Tuesday, Feb. 8, in Duck. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Paul F. Keller Meeting Hall, 1200 Duck Road.

Residents may also submit comments through an online portal.

Proposed treatments

Organic products are to be used for all proposed gypsy moth treatments in 2022, according to the department.

One product is Btk, or a variant of Bacillus thuringiensis known as kurstaki, which is marketed under trade name Foray 48B and is a bacterium commonly found in forest soils worldwide. Btk, which, according to department information, is harmless to humans, must be consumed by caterpillars to be effective. Once ingested, the caterpillar’s alkaline gut activates the bacteria.

Another proposed method is mating disruption. This method uses a compound that serves as the female gypsy moth’s sex pheromone, decreasing mating success and suppressing the gypsy moth population. The compound is specific to gypsy moths only and does not affect off-target species, according to department information. Such a treatment is only effective at lower population densities. Three products are available for this treatment, including one in which the active ingredient is sandwiched between two outer layers of PVC plastic. All are are aerially applied.

Areas affected

Treatment areas on the North Carolina coast include the following:

Lake Drummond area: A 5,673-acre proposed treatment block is in Camden County and continues north into Virginia. On the North Carolina side, this block consists mostly of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and Dismal Swamp State Park. There are no residences in the block. In 2020, the department caught a total of four male moths in this block. In 2021, that number increased to 147, signifying that a reproducing population is present. One application of mating disruption is proposed for this block in late May or June.

Knotts Island area: This 311-acre proposed treatment block is in Currituck County and continues north into Virginia. In 2020, 482 male moths were captured in this block. In 2021, that number increased to 852. One application of mating disruption is proposed for this block in May or June.

Martin Point area: This 3,168-acre proposed treatment block is the Duck area in Dare County. In 2020, two male moths were captured in this block. In 2021, that number increased to 27. One application of mating disruption is proposed for this block in May or June.

Mossey Island area: This 1,933-acre proposed treatment block is in Currituck County. In 2020, no male moths were caught in this block, but in 2021, 23 were captured. One application of mating disruption is proposed for this block in May or June.

Buxton area: This 1,194-acre proposed treatment block is on the west side of Buxton in Dare County and includes a mix of residential areas, commercial development and a large maritime forest. There are small streams, canals and swamps in the block and the Pamlico Sound borders the north side. Wooded areas are composed of oaks, pines, and various other hardwoods and conifers. Past treatments of mating disruption and Gypchek and Btk at this site reduced the population significantly, but follow-up trapping indicates there is still a reproducing population present here. In 2020, 39 male moths were captured in this block. In 2021, that number decreased to 20. One application of mating disruption is proposed for this block in May or June.

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties.

Currituck County is arguably better known than all of the other Albemarle counties. But it is not known for its 17^th century settlers or its roots of American Quakerism like other nearby counties.

Instead, Currituck County contains a stretch of the Outer Banks, a region of sand and surf visited by over 1 million people each year. But Currituck County’s history is more than beach homes and recreation. It is a county of agriculture, political leadership, and stories of intriguing people who lived on both sides of Currituck Sound.

The best way to understand the history of this unique county is by its two geographic halves. The western half of Currituck County, stretching from North River to Currituck Sound and the Virginia border, was settled around 1650 as part of the Virginian migration to the Albemarle region. According to David Leroy Corbitt, Currituck started out as one of the original precincts of Albemarle County before becoming a county of its own in 1739.

One of the earliest settlers was Thomas Jarvis, who originally lived in Perquimans County near leaders such as George Durant and Nathaniel Batts. Jarvis eventually served on the governor’s council and as deputy governor of North Carolina. Before his death in 1694, Jarvis moved to his plantation on Whites Island in Currituck County, now known as Church Island east of Coinjock. 

The Jarvis family ended up being one of the most influential in the county’s history. Samuel Jarvis was a longtime political leader in the county who fought in the Revolution according to David Stick. Thomas Jordan Jarvis served as governor of North Carolina and helped to found what later became East Carolina University.

Agriculture has dominated the history and economy of Currituck County’s western half. Early wheat and tobacco culture was supplemented by logging and shingle production from the trees in the county’s swamps. These pursuits, like nearly all agricultural processes in eastern North Carolina at this time, used slaves. According to the Hergesheimer map of 1860, Currituck’s population was 35% enslaved, which was the lowest total in the Albemarle yet higher than 45 other North Carolina counties.

In transportation, Currituck County benefitted from one of North Carolina’s few antebellum canals. The Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, completed in 1857 as noted in Alexander Crosby Brown’s book, connected the Albemarle Sound with Norfolk by way of a channel cut through Currituck County at the town of Coinjock. There was also a port in Currituck County for a time, but it was always of negligible size and ceased to function when Currituck Inlet closed up in the 18^th century.

Like Camden County to the west, there are no incorporated towns in Currituck County. The largest communities in the western half are Moyock, Grandy, and Coinjock. Currituck is a small community on Currituck Sound that contains the historic jail and the 19^th century courthouse, a sizable brick structure described by Ruth Little-Stokes as having notable neoclassical details.

One of North Carolina’s few remaining Rosenwald schools, which are schools built for African Americans in the early 20th century, is currently being restored nearby. Currituck also contains a ferry to Knotts Island, a historic island in Currituck Sound that contains a wildlife refuge and a vineyard.

The eastern half of Currituck County has a much different history dominated by tourism and the shifting nature of the Outer Banks. Known as Currituck Banks, this section used to be an island until Currituck Inlet at the northern edge closed up in the 19^th century. Until the formation of Dare County in 1870, Currituck County’s eastern section originally stretched down to the area of present-day Kitty Hawk; the current border, a line north of Duck, used to be the now-filled Caffey’s Inlet. 

The first European to visit the area may have been Giovanni De Verazzano, who explored parts of the Outer Banks in 1524. Early settlers were few and far between. William Byrd discussed two of them in a tale relayed by David Stick in his “History of the Outer Banks.” The residents described by Byrd were hermits who lived in a hut, “subsisted chiefly upon Oysters,” and wore no clothing except for their beards and hair.

In the mid-19th century, Currituck Banks began to attract wealthy visitors. Motivated by stories of massive flocks of geese, the first shooting club opened in the area in 1874. It was followed in 1922 by the Whalehead Club, an ornate lodge occupying 35 acres of what was then undisturbed marsh.

One of North Carolina’s famed lighthouses, the Currituck Beach Light, was built in 1875 in the community of Corolla. It is tied for the second-tallest lighthouse in North Carolina with the Bodie Island Light and can be climbed several months out of the year.

By the 1920s, eastern Currituck County started to open up to tourists from across the country. Tourism was facilitated by the Good Roads Movement and a number of essential bridges, most notably the Baum Bridge in 1928 and the Wright Memorial Bridge in 1930. Visitors enjoyed the white sand beaches, hunting grounds, and the wild horses in Corolla.

Eventually, Carova Beach became a secluded tourist destination. It is notable for being only accessible by boat or by driving on the beach. As Kip Tabb wrote in a 2017 article on development at the beach, “Although traffic has been increasing, the lack of infrastructure and paved roads has kept visitation modest by comparison to other parts of the Outer Banks.”

The differences between eastern and western Currituck County are stark. Eastern Currituck County’s population swells in the summer months to about 50,000 people, more than double the year-round population of the entire county. Tourists are limited in the western half while comprising nearly the entire economy of the eastern half.

The vacationers and tourists on Currituck Banks include some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia owned a house in Corolla, and Bill Gates was rumored in 2021 to have once rented one. In contrast, western Currituck County, which is the home of the majority of Currituck’s 1,377 African Americans, is rural, isolated and mostly free from celebrity sightings.

These disparate situations between the two halves will only continue to grow. The western half will likely be bolstered by the mid-Currituck bridge and the growth of Elizabeth City and Hampton Roads. This section of Currituck County may become either a stop on the way to the Outer Banks or a distant bedroom community for Chesapeake and Suffolk, Virginia.

The eastern half, on the other hand, will continue to attract tourists but is cut off from Virginia by False Cape State Park, which does not allow vehicular access from North Carolina. These differing paths and experiences give Currituck County its character and make it one of the most remarkable counties in all of North Carolina.

Currituck County now has a legal solution to the problem of abandoned vessels in the county’s navigable waterways, the Outer Banks Voice reported.

Commissioners recently approved an ordinance that allows the county to deal with abandoned watercraft in the same way it handles abandoned or junked vehicles.

The county’s code enforcement department will attempt to track down the owner of a boat that has been abandoned or is a hazard to other vessels and ask the owner to remove it. If the owner doesn’t comply, the county has the right to remove and dispose of the abandoned vessel at the owner’s expense.

Under the ordinance, abandoned vessels are those that have been moored for 30 days or more without the permission of a marina owner, dock owner, slip owner or property owner, county attorney Ike McRee told the board during its July 18 meeting.

The ordinance also covers vessels that are in danger of sinking, have sunk or are a hazard to navigation and an immediate danger to other vessels, McRee added. The new law won’t apply to shipwrecks or cargo that have been underwater for more than 10 years.

Reporting

• To report an abandoned boat, call code enforcement at 252-232-6027, or file an online complaint.

CURRITUCK — A group in Currituck County that has expressed suspicions about the motives behind terms like “smart growth” and “green projects” said it is not giving up despite the county’s recent approval of a long-term planning document.

“To me, it has definite ties to UN Agenda 21 because it allows public-private partnerships,” Jill Rolfes, one of the founders of Currituck County Citizens Against UN Agenda 21, said about the Unified Development Ordinance that the county Board of Commissioners passed unanimously last week. “Community good is put over the loss of a person’s private property.”

Rolfes said that the county excluded public input in the final draft that she said was only out for one week. She also said that the planning board was dictating the choices available to them, rather than following the public’s lead on what is right for the county.

“We should’ve had a fair chance to look at it, and we didn’t,” she said. “The UDO hands 13 processes over to the planning board, which means that our citizens are no longer telling our public officials what should be done. The planning board is telling them what should be done.”

County officials counter that the ordinance was the subject of 50 public meetings over two years.

According to the American Planning Association, UN Agenda 21 is a non-binding plan that was drafted in 1992 during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. With the involvement of 178 governments, the plan, the association said, supports sustainable and responsible policies on settlement, poverty and the environment.

But in the 20 years since the report was issued, a number of groups, and increasingly, those with conservative political affiliations, have viewed the report in a more sinister light. They see it as a threat to private property rights, down to ownership of vehicles and farms. And, they say, it would also restrict free choice on travel, among other restrictions. Agenda 21 opponents regard the policies the report promotes to be attainable through redistribution of wealth and by diminishment of national sovereignty in the interest of social justice.

Glenn Beck

A March article in Salon magazine said the roots of Agenda 21 conspiracy theories go back to 2002, when California physician Dr. Stanley Monteith, who runs the conservative Christian website Radio Liberty, lectured on the dangers of Agenda 21. Conspiracy embers were fanned over the years by numerous ad-hoc groups, conservative media and individuals, but the issue took off, Salon said, when Glenn Beck devoted an entire show on Fox News to the UN initiative in July 2011. “Sustainable development is just a really nice way of saying centralized control over all of human life on Planet Earth,” Glenn said, according to Salon. “Whenever you start unraveling this, it is like an onion . . . its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues.”

The Republican National Committee passed a resolution in January declaring that Agenda 21 conspires to deceive — reminiscent of the similar-sounding “Area 51,” a secret military base proported to be associated with government deception about alien landings in New Mexico. The UN report, the RNC said, is “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control” initiated at a UN conference held in Brazil 20 years ago.

The committee concluded that all levels of government “be well-informed of the underlying harmful implications of implementation of United Nations Agenda 21 destructive strategies for ‘sustainable development’ “and rejected its “radical policies” and any of its associated grant monies.

Ben Woody, county planning and community development director, said that Currituck’s UDO, which was last updated in 1989, is “a very locally-driven document” based on the 2006 land use plan that is focused on the county’s development. He said a technical advisory group of citizens and professionals helped balance the rewrite process, which took about two years and 50 meetings.

“Our goal had nothing to do with Agenda 21 whatsoever,” he said. “In my opinion as county staff, I understand what their concerns are with Agenda 21. But to me what they haven’t done is demonstrate how that comes through in the Unified Development Ordinance we’ve been working on.

“I don’t think that exists because there’s not that connection.”

Woody said that, in part, the approved document included revisions on architectural standards, parking requirements and landscaping. It also focused on ways to improve the appearance of the U.S. 168/158 corridor through the county.

“I’m not saying it’s a perfect document,” he said. “But I’m very pleased with it. I think it reflects our adopted land use plan and I think it reflects the values of the community.”

Rolfes said the 200-member regional citizens group opposed to Agenda 21 has not given up the fight. The next step, she said, is to find candidates to oppose the all-Republican Currituck board that approved the UDO. One member, Toni Tabb, has already stepped up to the plate.

Although Rolfes said that the anti-Agenda 21 effort is non-partisan, she said that “typically, the Tea Party candidates and conservative Republicans know more about it.”

“What ended up happening was they never really took any of our concerns seriously,” she said about the county officials. “They were so on guard and so aggressive. It was just shocking.”

Neighboring Dare County, on the other hand, approved a resolution in February opposing Agenda 21.

Warren Judge

Brought to the table by Republican commissioner Jack Shea, the Dare County Board of Commissioners voted to approve the resolution based on Dare’s sensitivity to being dominated by big government regulations, said board chairman Warren Judge, a Democrat.

“There’s parts of Agenda 21 that flies in the face of issues we deal with all the time, like access to beaches, access to fishing,” he said. “The government that governs best is at the local level.”

Dare is just fed up with government bodies making one rule after another that affects the county, Judge said, and it just seemed appropriate to react negatively to any more strictures that may be in Agenda 21.

“We feel like we don’t have to be dictated to by the UN,” he said, “or by Congress in Washington, or by the legislature in Raleigh.”

Moore and Gaston counties also recently passed similar resolutions. In February, the Wake County Board of Commissioners rejected much of a task force report on growth, saying it reflected Agenda 21-style collectivism. The board had commissioned a 65-member sustainability task force in 2010 to create the report.

Mattie Lawson, a Republican candidate for the state House of Representatives District 6, also opposes Agenda 21. In a recent letter to the editor, Lawson said that Agenda 21 works “through insidious stealth” to promote such concepts as the common good and the elevation of teamwork over personal achievement.

“Understand that the end goal of Agenda 21,” she wrote, “is to create a one-world-government led by an elitist class of overlords.”