Despite the utility poles connecting the network of overhead cables along the paved, two-lane road and other obvious signs of the 21^st century, Historic Halifax State Historic Site transported visitors to April 12, 1776, during “Halifax Resolves Days,” a weekend commemoration of North Carolina taking the first step toward freedom.

“Today is a huge day for North Carolina. Two hundred and fifty years ago today, the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina met here in Halifax and adopted the Halifax Resolves, the first official action by any colony to declare independence from the king,” Gov. Josh Stein said Sunday afternoon to the more than 300 gathered for the Halifax Resolves Ceremony.

Held under a sizable party tent near the Colonial Courthouse Site, where the 1760s wooden building once stood, the 250^th anniversary ceremony wrapped up the April 10-12 event. Visitors were able to watch living history reenactments, colonial life demonstrations, musical performances, and a ceremony led by the state-recognized Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe based in Halifax and Warren counties.

North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Secretary Pamela Brewington Cashwell introduced Stein before he took the podium.

During her brief comments, she explained that the department is responsible for organizing America 250 NC, the state’s celebration of the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and Halifax Resolves Days is a signature event of that celebration.

“We will also have a major event at the capitol in Raleigh this Fourth of July titled ‘Capitol 250: North Carolina Freedom Fest.’ We hope that if you don’t have something going on in your local community, that you will join us in Raleigh for another massive event,” she said, then directed the audience to visit the A250 website that details 700 events taking place this year as part of the celebration, from dramatic presentations, festivals, murals that have been painted in various communities.

When Stein welcomed the audience, he encouraged them to see the Halifax Resolves document on display in the new visitor center that officially opened that week. The governor and other state officials made a trip to Halifax April 7 for a ceremonial ribbon-cutting and to view the document that will be on loan from the National Archives until October.

Stein explained that leading up to the delegates meeting in Halifax, there was tension in the colonies between those who wanted to reconcile with the crown and those who wanted to rebel.

Even after the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 9, 1775, a large portion of the colonial population wanted to make accommodation with England. When the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in July of that year, they did not declare independence. Instead, they petitioned the king for more favorable terms. From 1775 to 1776, “the tide began to turn in favor of rebellion, but that path was by no means a certainty,” stein continued.

Then, Thomas Paine published “Common Sense” in January 1776, the pamphlet that Stein said made a “powerful argument for an independent, democratic nation founded on equality. Truly a radical notion.”

Then on Feb. 27, 1776, “a militia of patriots skirmished with loyalist troops at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge,” located just west of Wilmington. “The Patriots soundly defeated the Loyalists, putting an end to English rule in North Carolina, blocking an English invasion of the south and lighting a flame of liberty within North Carolinians,” Stein continued.

As these events were taking place, North Carolina’s provincial delegates met with residents across the colony, and brought all those perspectives to Halifax in April 1776 when the fourth North Carolina provincial Congress gathered.

The delegates in the Halifax Resolves detailed their neighbors’ grievances, “or in their words, the ‘usurpations and violences’ committed by the king. They wrote that the ‘king and Parliament of Great Britain have usurped the power over the persons and property of the people, unlimited and uncontrolled and disregarding their humble petitions for peace, liberty, and safety. They made diverse legislative acts denouncing war, famine and every species of calamity daily employed in destroying the people and committing the most horrid devastations in the country.’”

By adopting these resolves, Stein said that these 83 delegates “did something radical, something revolutionary, something patriotic. They unanimously empowered North Carolina’s representatives at the Second Continental Congress up in Philadelphia to vote to declare our nation’s independence from the crown,” he said. “With these Halifax Resolves, North Carolina became the first colony to take any action declaring our nation’s independence.”

Though the document set the colonies on a path of expanding freedom in this nation, Stein acknowledged that the resolves were “far from perfect,” but still encouraged reading the text, even though parts will make the reader “feel very uncomfortable.”

“It’s easy, when you look back at history, to assume some sort of inevitability, like of course, it happened, but this historic action and the fact that it was unanimous was by no means a foregone conclusion,” Stein said, noting that rebuking the world’s greatest superpower “would have been considered treason, a crime punishable by death.”

The colonists depended on England for military protection and economic security. “Failure objectively was likely, and failure could have been fatal,” Stein said. “With these stakes and these odds, this vote for independence was brave and truly incredible.”

The British Empire could have easily subdued a “ragtag militia or a single colony, but a united force at least stood a chance.” With every single delegate voting in favor of the Halifax Resolves, “it was a precursor of the unity that the revolution would require.”

Less than three months later, at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, “the 13 British colonies, so incredibly diverse and different from one another, declared that we were no longer 13 separate colonies. We are the United States of America,” Stein said.

And while “250 years ago, internal division was one of the greatest threats to our nation’s success. 250 years later, I would venture that that is still true,” Stein said. “There are so many forces seeking to divide us that profit from our distrust for one another. There are so many forces making the American Dream feel out of reach, telling us that our success requires others to fail, and too often, we hear crudeness, not civility and experience division, not decency. It does not have to be this way.”

Americans can chart a different course, lust like our forebears in Halifax, “After all, we are not red. We are not blue. We are red, white and blue,” Stein said.

“We have so much to gain from bridging our differences, not glossing over them, but having the confidence to find common ground and the patriotism to remember that we are all Americans, that we all love this place,” he concluded. “It is a revolutionary idea, and it is the North Carolina way.”

Rep. Don Davis, R-N.C., who represents the 1st District ecompassing 22 northeastern North Carolina counties, was among the handful of officials who spoke in addition to the governor.

Davis said that the day “shines a light on a true treasure from our great state and nation.”

“Right here in eastern North Carolina, 250 years ago, brave souls took courageous steps towards independence. Their actions remind us of our resilience and grit, illustrating what we can achieve together when we unite for common cause. The Halifax Resolves aren’t just a chapter in our history. They are evidence of hope for our future.”

Four new historic districts and 19 properties across the state, five of which are on the coast, have been added to the National Register of Historic Places in the last year, the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources announced this week.

Part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources, the National Historic Register is the “official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation,” that was authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and is under the National Park Service.

“Each addition to the National Register of Historic Places represents another step in preserving North Carolina’s unique story,” said the department’s Secretary Pamela Cashwell in a statement Thursday. “These sites help connect our communities to their past while supporting cultural tourism and local economies.” 

In Beaufort County, Pantego School No. 2 was listed Feb. 24. The Rosenwald-funded school building was completed in 1926 and remained operational as an integrated school after 1968, until it closed in the spring of 2001, the application states.

Winnabow is an 1845 Greek Revival frame house with a double-pile center-passage plan at 677 Governor Road, in Brunswick County that was was Dec. 29, 2025.

Clubfoot and Harlow Canal in Carteret and Craven counties, which was listed Feb. 23, is a roughly 3-mile artificial channel dug that opened July 1827 across a peninsula connecting Clubfoot Creek and the Neuse River at the north to Harlow Creek and the Newport River to the south.

The 1850 Adam Dough Etheridge House in Dare County was listed Aug. 11, 2025. The two-story, single pile, vernacular dwelling features a side-gabled roof and partially enclosed full-width porches on the façade, common among houses on Roanoke Island in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Located in Pasquotank County, Oak Grove Cemetery, which was listed Aug. 11, 2025, is Elizabeth City’s oldest extant Black cemetery. The Black community formally established it on 2.53 acres in 1886, expanded it twice in 1921, and again in 1955 to approximately 8 acres, which it remains today within a 14-acre parcel, according to documents.

The listing of a property in the National Register places no obligation or restriction on a private owner using private resources to maintain or alter the property.

Over the years, various federal and state incentives have been introduced to assist private preservation initiatives, including tax credits for the rehabilitation of National Register properties.

As of Dec. 31, 2025, there have been 4,455 completed historic rehabilitation projects with private investments of $4 billion statewide.

The Museum of the Albemarle is to welcome the author of a recently published book on the United States Coast Guard’s 235-year history on the North Carolina coast for its monthly “History for Lunch” program.

Starting at noon Wednesday, April 22, inside the Elizabeth City museum’s Gaither Auditorium, retired U.S. Coast Guard Capt. George E. Krietemeyer is scheduled to discuss his book, “Guardians of the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

His talk is to begin with the arrival of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Diligence in 1792, which was built in Washington to Alexander Hamilton’s design and specifications, the vessel’s primary mission was to collect tariffs but soon became involved in chasing pirates and aiding vessels in distress. The Coast Guard now has more than 5,000 members working in North Carolina, saving lives and overseeing oil spills all over the world.

Registration is not needed to attend the lecture in person but those wishing to attend virtually must sign up in advance to receive the meeting link. Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle support the virtual program.

The Museum of the Albemarle is a part of the Division of State History Museums, Office of Archives and History, under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City, and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Part of an ongoing series on coastal North Carolina’s observance of America’s 250th.

Tensions began to brew between the colonists and Britain in the early 1760s after the Seven Years War, also called the French and Indian War, in North America. The British decided to impose new taxes on the colonies to recoup the funds that went to the war, but instead incited widespread protest.

Britain passed the Stamp Act March 22, 1765, and then in June 1767, the Townshend Act imposed duties on paint, paper, tea and other commodities. British troops attempted to enforce the Townshend duties in Boston October 1768, ultimately leading in March 1770 to the Boston Massacre that left five dead.

The British, to help the struggling United East India Co., passed the Tea Act in May 1773, allowing the company to import and sell tea to the colonies duty-free, undercutting the Dutch who had been smuggling tea in, and creating a monopoly.

Then, on Nov. 28, 1773, the Dartmouth sails into Boston Harbor, and three more ships were expected to arrive, all carrying chests of tea.

Over the next few weeks, colonists met to figure out a way to fight back. On the night of Dec. 16, 1773, around four dozen men impersonating Native Americans boarded the ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

Almost a year later, 51 women in Edenton took a more peaceful approach to protesting the tea tax by drafting a document explaining their boycott. The women committed to no longer drinking tea or wearing British cloth because of taxation without representation and sent the final copy to England.

“This action forms one of the earliest-known political actions written and organized by women in the American colonies,”  the Edenton Historical Commission explains. “The events of the ‘Edenton Tea Party’ today form an iconic moment in our nation’s history, when a community of women used their own voices to stand by their loved ones and risk the wrath of the Crown by protesting injustice.”

The women of Wilmington responded to British taxation with a similar protest in the spring of 1775, though little is known about the gathering to publicly burn tea.

Burgwin-Wright House and Gardens Assistant Museum Director Hunter Ingram told Coastal Review that the Wilmington Tea Party is an oft-overlooked event in the final days before the start of the American Revolution.

In the port city of Wilmington, the import of tea had ground to a halt by the spring of 1775.

The Continental Congress had forbidden tea from coming through the colonies’ ports, so it had become a scarce commodity, he said. That is why events like the Boston Tea Party and the Edenton Tea Party were so crucial to the cause of resistance.

“Tea was hard to come by and sacrificing it sent a message to those who were already hurting from the disruption of its trade,” Ingram continued.

The Wilmington Tea Party happened in the spring of 1775 and is only documented in one place: the writings of Janet Schaw, a Scottish woman who was traveling through Wilmington to visit her brother.

“She wrote a single line about her observations of the tea resistance in Wilmington, which she did not support. ‘The Ladies have burnt their tea in a solemn procession, but they had delayed however ’til the sacrifice was not very considerable, as I do not think anyone offered above a quarter of a pound,’” Ingram said. 

While the simple description doesn’t give many specifics, Schaw was clear in what the protestors did, Ingram said. “Burning the tea was unique, and it meant the women of Wilmington, even in the eleventh hour before the outbreak of war, were willing to set a precious privilege blaze in the name of revolution.”

The Burgwin-Wright House is the oldest and largest historic site in Wilmington, comprised of four of the eight remaining colonial structures in town, Ingram said of the house’s importance during the Revolution.

“We have three buildings from the city’s first jail, circa 1744, and the mansion home built in 1770 on top of the main jail building after the prisoners were relocated. It has sat at the corner of Third and Market streets for 256 years, and it has watched Wilmington grow from small-but-mighty port city into a thriving town that was, for a time, the most populous area in the state,” Ingram explained.

“The colonial era in Wilmington doesn’t always get its due, but the surviving home built for merchant and politician John Burgwin can tell that story –– and has been for generations,” said Ingram.

Ingram explained that that the Burgwin-Wright House had partnered with the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk Chapter to commemorate the 251st anniversary of the protest with the “Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk.”

The Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk event begins at 10 a.m. Thursday, March 26, at 224 Market St. the program will include remarks from a few historic organizations and officials and samples of a brand-new tea blend by Cape Fear Spice Merchants.

“Guests can walk through the gardens, enjoy a presentation about Janet Schaw and then join members of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution as they walk, in a solemn procession, to river to burn tea in commemoration of this act of resistance on the eve of revolution,” he said.

The historic home is a good fit for the Wilmington Ladies Tea Walk because the site likely would have been “witness to that solemn procession into history, and the act of resistance that helped give Wilmington a reputation for rebellion even before the war.”

Schaw was also a Loyalist, as was Burgwin, and it’s “likely she would have visited the house during her time in Wilmington. This was a home built for a wealthy guest list, and Janet would have qualified,” he said.

Though the program is offered at no charge, registration is required. Call 910-762-0570 to register.

“If you can’t get in this year, we hope to make it a recurring event through multiyear A250 celebration,” Ingram said, referring to the state’s official celebration of 250 years of independence, America 250 NC, a program under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Part of an ongoing series on coastal North Carolina’s observance of America’s 250th.

The patriot victory over loyalist forces at the Battle of Moores Creek in the early morning of Feb. 27, 1776, set North Carolina up to be one of the first colonies to vote for independence from British Rule.

That bloody battle in a Pender County swamp is considered the first decisive win of the American Revolution and is commemorated every year with a wreath-laying ceremony by the National Park Service and regional partners at Moores Creek National Battlefield.

This year, the commemoration was expanded to two days, Feb. 27-28, and anchored the weeklong inaugural First in Freedom Festival held Feb. 21-28. Taking place at historical sites, museums and other locations in Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Duplin, New Hanover, Onslow, Pender and Sampson counties, the festival was supported by the state’s official celebration of independence, America 250 NC, under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The weekend was both somber and celebratory, with a wreath-laying ceremony that began the two-day commemoration, living history demonstrations with both loyalist and patriot reenactors who camped on the grounds near the earthworks built by patriots for the battle, a ribbon-cutting for two new exhibits in the visitor center, and special guest, Diana Gabaldon, creator of “Outlander.”

“Outlander,” both a series of books and a television show, is about a World War II nurse who travels through time to 18^th century Scotland, where she meets a young Highlander. The historical fiction series follows the couple from 1740s Scotland to the colony of North Carolina after the American Revolution.

While rainy conditions on the first day, Feb. 27, prevented a handful of the outdoor programs from taking place, including the weapons demonstrations. The weather, while still gloomy the next morning, allowed the sun to peek out later that day.

“Despite some challenges brought forward by the weather, the event was a great success, bringing over 17,500 visitors to Moores Creek National Battlefield during the event. The success was the result of a wonderful collaboration and partnership among the National Park Service, state and local partners, as well as volunteers, reenactors and living historians,” Battlefield Chief of Interpretation, Education and Volunteers Jason Collins told Coastal Review after the event.

With the steady pitter-patter of raindrops drummed on umbrellas and tents, leaves and puddles in the background, Michael Elston, president general of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, said from the podium during the wreath-laying ceremony that North Carolina was one of the earliest colonies to end royal rule and establish its freedom from Great Britain.

The last royal governor of the North Carolina Colony, Josiah Martin, fled to the safety of a royal naval ship in July 1775 and began plotting his return to power as head of an army of loyal colonists. “Unfortunately for Gov. Martin, he overestimated the support he had in North Carolina,” Elston said. About 1,600 loyalists answered met him in what is now Fayetteville and they began marching to the coast to join British forces.

Meanwhile, patriot forces maneuvered the loyalists toward Moores Creek Bridge, where they had established a strong position.

“The patriots fought on their terms and won an extremely short battle with only one man killed and another wounded in the aftermath,” Elston said, disrupting loyalist recruiting efforts in the state. “The battle put an end to loyalist organization in North Carolina, more than five months before the Declaration of Independence.”

Historic Halifax State Historic Site Assistant Site Manager Frank McMahon, also coordinator of the 3rd North Carolina reenacting group, took the podium as well, and filled in what happened next on the state’s road to freedom.

After the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, the people of North Carolina elected a provincial congress to lead the colony. The fourth provincial Congress, made up of 83 delegates representing 29 counties and six of North Carolina’s most populated towns, met in Halifax to define a new direction for the American Revolution.

On April 12, 1776, the members unanimously adopted the Halifax Resolves, the date for which on the North Carolina flag acting as a direct reminder of the significance of the event, McMahon said.

The document known as the Halifax Resolves was first read to the members of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June of 1776, and “would empower North Carolina’s members of the Continental Congress to collaborate with other united colonies to declare independence from Great Britain,” McMahon said.

McMahon took the opportunity to mention the next America 250 NC signature event, the “Halifax Resolves Days: Prelude to Revolution.” There will be living history activities, historic weapons demonstrations, guest speakers, food and live music at the site southeast just east of Interstate 95 near the Virginia line.

Special to the weekend is the original copy of the Halifax Resolves that was presented to the Continental Congress in 1776, on load from the National Archives. The document will be on display in the newly renovated historic Halifax State Historic Site visitor center.

Part of the afternoon activities was a ribbon-cutting ceremony to introduce two new exhibits in the visitor center.

Collins said from inside the building that the existing displays were installed in 2006 but only tell part of the story.

“A couple of the major parts of our history that we don’t get to tell are the stories of the naval stores and the story of music in this battle,” he said, which are the focus of the two new exhibits.

‘Outlander effect’

A “Weekend with Diana Gabaldon” featured three ticketed events, starting with “An Evening with Author Diana Gabaldon” Feb. 27 in Penderlea Auditorium in Willard, followed by a guided tour of the battlefield early Feb. 28, and concluded that afternoon with a book signing at a private venue. All events were sold out months ago.

During the evening program, Hunter Ingram, the assistant museum director for the colonial Burgwin-Wright House and Gardens, a 1770 structure open to the public, had a conversation with Gabaldon about how her path as a historical fiction writer brought her to Moores Creek and the influence her detailed accounts have had on tourism.

A lifelong and avid reader, Gabaldon said she knew at the age of 8 that she was supposed to write novels, “I just didn’t have any idea how.”

Before trying her hand at writing, Gabaldon pursued a career as a scientist, earning three degrees in the subject, including a master’s degree in marine biology and a doctorate in quantitative behavioral ecology. After she and her husband married, they just celebrated 54^th anniversary, they had three children in the space of four years.

“It was busy, and at this point in my life, and I’m not sure why, probably sleep deprivation, I decided that this was the time to start writing a novel,” Gabaldon said. “Two jobs and three small children and a husband who decided to quit his job and start his own business.”

The inspiration for “Outlander” came from a “really old rerun of ‘Doctor Who’ on public television,” she said. “Doctor Who” is British science fiction television series that began in 1963. 

“I was attracted, in this particular instance, to one of the doctor’s companions, who was a young Scotsman who appeared in his kilt, and I was thinking, ‘well, that’s kind of fetching’,” she explained, leading her to begin researching 18^th century Scotland.

“So that’s when I started writing ‘Outlander’,” she said, explaining that she opted for historical fiction because “it seemed easier to look things up than to make things up.”

She begins “Outlander,” the first book that was published in 1991, with “people disappear all the time.” The line came to her one day but wasn’t the first line she wrote.

“I was thinking, ‘Well, sure, they do, but why do they?’ and then the next couple of lines just sort of evolved. This is one reason. This is another reason. And it got more mysterious, and I was sitting there thinking, ‘Well, why do they disappear?’ And that’s why there’s time travel in these books.”

As for how the characters end up in North Carolina, it’s because she’s following history. After the Battle of Culloden April 1746 in the Scottish Highlands, she said there was no reason for her characters to go back to Scotland and brought them to the Americas. Culloden was the final conflict in the Jacobite Rising and is featured prominently in the series.

“I was following history,” she said and the Highlander migration across the state, which is how colonial historic sites became part of the “Outlander” story.

Ingram praises her detailed description of Moores Creek in “A Breath of Snow and Ashes,” which is set in 1770s North Carolina.

It is not often that there are examples of someone looking at the region’s history from the outside and making it part of something so globally beloved, he said, adding it’s an interesting way to look at not just Moores Creek, but local history in Wilmington, in the Cape Fear region, and across North Carolina.

“A lot of the historic sites have seen an impact from people being interested in ‘Outlander’,” Ingram said.

Gabaldon told the audience that she’s seen similar in Scotland and has been given honorary doctorate degrees for services to country by the University of Glasgow and the University of the Highlands, and the Scottish Government gave her a Thistle Award, which spotlights the tourism industry.

It is being called the “Outlander effect.”

She recounted that when the show first began filming, she was on set for about six weeks in a village near Glasgow. During lunch, she and another writer went to a café to buy sandwiches, but the shopkeeper didn’t have change. He then realized she is the creator of “Outlander,” and explained that she had had no idea what she had done for the economy there.  

Ingram said the effect has been noticeable at historic sites in the region and mentioned the discussion they when she was a special guest on the podcast he hosts for the Burgwin-Wright House called, “Outlander in the Cape Fear.”

He said that during the podcast, they discussed her impact and, “You said you felt it was a lovely side effect of the work that you’ve done, not just here in North Carolina — but we’re kind of biased that, you know, we want to see more people pay attention to our history — and so the fact that we’re all here on the 250th anniversary of Moores Creek today, I think, is a testament to what you’ve done.”

During the tour of the battlefield the next day with Historic Weapons Supervisor and Special Park Uses Coordinator Jason Howell and Gabaldon, Howell said something similar.

“She does a really good job of pulling you into the earthworks in the morning fog,” he said, adding how he remembered being captured by her writing. “And one thing Diana does is, she gets people like you interested in these sites. It’s from her viewpoint and it’s from an alternate viewpoint, but she captures your attention.”

And, as a result, he’s seen Outlander fans come to the site, who admit to not liking history that much but are interested in the battlefield.

More information on America 250 NC events, including details on the Halifax Resolves Days, can be found at america250.nc.gov.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is, though, still work to be done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By all accounts, it was bitterly cold in the wee hours of Feb. 27, 1776, when loyalists, soaked to the bone from enduring days of rainfall, began a 6-mile march through swampy muck and dense brush in present-day Pender County to seize a patriot camp on the west bank of Moores Creek Bridge.

The move to confront the patriots at the Black River Road bridge that crosses Moores Creek was an unplanned step in a larger strategy for England to recapture North Carolina, a plan British Royal Governor Josiah Martin coordinated when he lost control of the colony and was exiled in the first half of 1775, according to the National Park Service.

After Martin convinced his superiors that his plan to raise an army of 10,000 and march to the coast to join with British forces would restore royal rule to the colony, he began recruiting at Cross Creek, now known as Fayetteville, in early 1776.

He ended up with 1,600 loyalists, mostly Scottish immigrants, marching east, but patriots thwarted their attempts to reach the coast.

By the end of February, the last direct route to Wilmington that the patriots hadn’t blocked was the sandy and narrow Black River Road.

Patriots knew that Moores Creek Bridge was the last defendable position and got the upper hand by arriving there first.

When the loyalists arrived Feb. 26, 1776, they offered the patriots a chance to forgo the battle and pledge allegiance to the crown, which the patriots declined. The loyalists had sent a scout to get a read on the patriots’ plans. The scout reported the troops were vulnerable, and loyalists decided to attack.

The loyalists left camp at 1 a.m. the next day to hike the 6 miles through backcountry to the patriot encampment, only to find it abandoned.

Unbeknownst to the loyalists, the patriots had moved camp the night before to the east side of Moores Creek Bridge, knowing that was the only way to cross the creek to continue along Black River Road to Wilmington.

The patriots were lying in wait, cannons and muskets ready, hidden behind earthworks they built on a ridge overlooking the creek.

Loyalist Lt. Col. Donald McLeod led about 50 loyalists to the bridge around 5 a.m., only to discover it partly dismantled. Planks had been removed and those that were left were slathered in soap and tallow.

Undeterred, McLeod was confident he had enough men to attack. The commander drew his weapon “and exclaimed, ‘King George and Broadswords.'”

The small group charged, not expecting around 1,000 patriots to be hidden behind the earthworks just 30 feet away until McLeod, and more than two dozen other loyalists, were fired upon and killed instantly.

“With McLeod, the Loyalist commander at the bridge, now dead, the attack stalled, and the remaining Loyalists gave up and retreated into the darkness,” the park service explains.

“This battle marked the last broadsword charge by Scottish Highlanders and the first significant victory for the Patriots in the American Revolution,” the park service website states.

“In the days that followed the battle, the resounding victory echoed though the colonies, and a new hope was born. On April 12, 1776 the Patriot leaders in North Carolina signed the Halifax Resolves, a document that gave the delegates of the colony sent to the Continental Congress the right to vote for Independence. North Carolina would become the first colony to take such action.”

Related: Battle of Moores Creek Bridge virtual program Feb. 19

Now preserved, the grounds are the centerpiece of the 88-acre Moores Creek National Battlefield, which is celebrating the 250 years that have elapsed since that significant battle.

“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle at Moores Creek Bridge, the first decisive patriot victory in the American Revolution and the moment that has set North Carolina on the path to becoming the first colony to call for independence,” Superintendent Matthew Woods told a handful of journalists during a recent press conference.

Woods, along with other project partners, invited media to the site to explain details about the inaugural First in Freedom Festival taking place Feb. 21-28. The weeklong regional celebration is a coordinated effort of eight counties to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the battle and the subsequent signing of the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. 

The anniversary is a “milestone, not only for this park, but for American history,” Woods continued, and the festival is a way of using this moment to shine a broader spotlight on the people, the places and the stories that define the state’s role in American history. 

“Over the course of the week of the North Carolina First in Freedom Festival, historic sites, art institutions and community partners across eight counties will come together to interpret more than 250 years of history through both heritage and the arts, culminating here at Moores Creek National Battlefield with a three-day commemorative event,” Woods said. 

Special to the inaugural celebration is a weekend with author Diana Gabaldon, creator of the “Outlander” series. Unfortunately for those who didn’t jump on the tickets when they went on sale in November, the three events with the author are sold out.

“Outlander” is a historical fantasy series about a World War II nurse, Claire, who travels through time, from 1945 Inverness to 1743 Scotland, where she meets Jamie. Both the novels and the show based on series follow their love story across time and then the ocean, when the characters immigrate from Scotland to North Carolina, making stops in New Bern, Wilmington, and Moores Creek, and take part in the American Revolution.

Gabaldon, in a virtual chat during the press conference, explained that she featured Moores Creek because of the importance of the battle for the American Revolution and the Scottish settlement in the colony. “That seemed a very logical place to set part of their story. Also, this is essentially where we began, so to speak. So if we’re going to work through the Revolution with them, it seemed like the just the normal place for them to be.”

More about the festival

Moores Creek Chief of Interpretation Jason Collins explained that the battlefield will welcome on Feb. 26 multiple school groups to experience living history demonstrations. Feb. 27 will begin with a traditional wreath-laying ceremony, followed by living history demonstrations and special speakers, and Feb. 28 is a celebration with music, games, “Freedom” Art Show, food trucks and living history displays.

“To pull back the curtain,” Collins said, there’s typically around 75 reenactors for an anniversary event. “Take that number and multiply it by about two and a half for the number of reenactors we’re expecting for this year’s event. Roughly around 200 — kind of — almost neatly split between loyalists and patrons, which is really exciting.”

Collins said First in Freedom is bigger than Moores Creek. From Feb. 21-28 and throughout the year, there will be activities in Onslow, Pender, New Hanover, Brunswick, Duplin, Sampson, Bladen and Columbus, the eight counties making up the region.

For example, on Feb. 21 is the Historical Society of Topsail Island’s Visit Colonial Topsail at the historic assembly building, living history events at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site, and a Black History Carnival in Wilmington. 

The following day, Feb. 22, Colonial Faire at Harmony Hall is to take place at 1615 River Road, White Oak, in Bladen County, as well as “North Carolina’s Black Patriots of the American Revolution” aboard the Battleship North Carolina and “Freedom’s Road: the refugee crisis of 1865 in the Lower Cape Fear,” at the Oak Island Library.

Collins continued that for this year’s celebration of the 250^th, First in Freedom Festival has released a companion passport, similar to the National Park Service’s passport program, for the festival.

“Folks are going to be able to visit different sites throughout the counties,” Collins said. At each site, they can have their passport stamped, and there will be different levels of prizes. Participants will need to turn their booklets in by Dec. 31 to receive a prize.

Flying Machine Brewery Sales Manager Allen Denning mentioned during the press conference that the taproom on Randall Parkway in Wilmington is featured on the passport, where the brewery will be serving its First in Freedom Battlefield Porter. The limited-edition beer was brewed using research-based colonial techniques for the 250th anniversary.

Denning explained that hops were hard to come by in the Americas at the time, so they got creative and used plants like spruce tips, he said, and the new beer is a nod to that ingenuity. 

Moores Creek National Battlefield Association President Jim Buell reiterated that Moores Creek was the first decisive patriot victory, and “North Carolina was the first colony to declare their independence.”

Buell said that Woods, the park superintendent, had the idea for the First in Freedom Festival that “has now sprouted and grown tremendously. And we’re here today to kick it off officially, and then we’re hoping that a lot of people come enjoy it.”

First in Freedom is taking place with the support of America 250 NC. The initiative coordinated under the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources helps the state’s communities commemorate 250 years of United States history.

Fort Fisher State Historic Site is commemorating Saturday, Jan. 17, the 161st anniversary of when the fort was captured at the end of the American Civil War.

The fort protected the port of Wilmington until it fell to U.S. forces in January 1865.

Activities are to take place between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. There are living history displays, artifact highlights and family activities planned as well as artillery demonstrations at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Admission to the event is free.

Above the Scenes guided tours will be offered at 10 a.m., noon, and 2 p.m. Tickets for the 90-minute walk along the trail includes an exclusive climb to the top of Fort Fisher’s earthworks. Tour tickets are $10 plus tax and are available at the first-floor information desk in the visitor center at 1610 S. Fort Fisher Blvd., in Kure Beach.

A full schedule is available on Fort Fisher State Historic Site’s website and social media channels. All programs are subject to change or cancellation.

Parking is available at the visitor center. The Federal Point History Center will offer concessions.

The site, which was designated in 1962 as a National Historic Landmark, is administered by the Division of State Historic Sites within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Editor’s note: The following is from historian David Cecelski’s “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” The Carteret County native introduced the nearly 20-part photo-essay series earlier this year on his website, explaining at the time that the images he selected from the N.C. Department of Conservation and Development Collection were taken in the late 1930s into the early 1950s of the state’s farms, industries, and working people.

In this photograph, we see a long line of fishing nets drying in the sun on Harkers Island, N.C., in the fall of 1944.

It is hard to see them, but there are two men talking in the midst of the net reels.

The photographer’s notes only identify one of the men: Stacy W. Davis, a local fisherman, charter boat captain, and fish dealer. That’s his fish house and dock on the far side of the net reels and fishing nets.

Capt. Stacy had built the fish house just before the war. He and his brother Leslie also owned the S.W. Davis & Brother Seafood Co. in Beaufort, on the other side of the North River.

The shoreline is beautiful, but in a way the tranquility of the scene belies the great upheaval that was happening on the island just before and during the Second World War.

When I was younger, old timers from Harkers Island often told me that it all seemed to start with the great hurricane of ’33, which is a story in itself and one that I think I’ll save for another time.

But not all storms come out of the Atlantic, and what happened over the next few years turned island life upside down more than any hurricane or nor’easter ever had.

Just a few years after the ’33 storm, in 1936, Harkers Island’s first road was paved. The age of automobiles and trucks was coming.

Three years later, in 1939, electricity arrived on the island, delivered via a submarine cable that ran beneath North River.

The stars would never be as bright again.

A year later, in the latter part of 1940, the biggest thing of all happened: workers finished building the first bridge from the mainland to Harkers Island. The bridge opened to the public a few weeks later.

That was on New Years Day 1941. Many a time, I have heard old timers say that it was the best and worst day in the island’s history. More than anything, it marked the end of one way of life, the dawn of another.

Then, of course, the war came. Young men and women went away to fight in distant lands and on distant seas. On the island, families crowded around radios to follow the news from places that few of us had known existed until that moment. Soldiers and sailors were everywhere.

An Army camp was built on the island. Soldiers and sailors seemed to be constantly coming and going.

During the war, untold numbers of islanders also crossed the new bridge and went out into the larger world to take jobs at shipyards, military bases, and defense factories. Some commuted every morning to defense jobs as close as the Naval Section Base in Morehead City; others moved as far away as the big shipyards in Wilmington and Newport News.

The Great Depression had worn people down, but suddenly there seemed to be work for any and all.

A hundred things about the war changed the island, but few things more than the War Department building the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station only 25 miles away in 1942.

Nearly 10,000 men came together at at a remote crossroads on the south side of the Neuse River to build Cherry Point – carpenters, brick masons, ditch diggers, logging crews, railroad builders, and many, many others. Among other things, they laid enough concrete to build what is believed to have been the largest aircraft runway in the world at that time.

Most of those workers were fresh off the farm or right off a fishing boat.

When Cherry Point was finished, people came from all over the country to work there, and most particularly to find jobs at the base’s assembly and repair department, a massive aircraft repair and refitting operation that relied on civilian workers and was usually just called “A&R.”

Those workers included many a Harkers Island fisherman. And when they left their boats and crossed the new bridge, they began a new life in more ways than they possibly could have imagined at the time.

Some of those islanders, my older friends on Harkers Island used to tell me, were saved by that trip to Cherry Point. Others lost.

For the island’s women, the coming of Cherry Point meant, if anything, even more. Because so many men had gone to war, the base employed thousands of women in jobs that would have traditionally fallen to men.

Those jobs ranged from aircraft painters to mechanics, PX and commissary managers to electronics specialists.

My grandmother was one of those women. She lived on a farm in Harlowe, about halfway between Harkers Island and Cherry Point, and she found a job in A&R’s machine shop during the war.

With the opening of Cherry Point, a daughter fresh out of school, perhaps still living with her parents, might suddenly be earning more than her fisherman father and all her brothers put together.

Of course, that changed things. Maybe not right away, but over time.

Likewise, with the coming of the bridge and the war, a lad that had never taken to the water — and there were plenty of young men like that even on Harkers Island — suddenly had a chance for a different kind of life.

I guess what I am saying is that photographs tell some stories, but not others.

Our tranquil scene of fishing nets drying in the sunshine also does not really speak to what had been happening out at sea during the war.

By 1944, things had calmed down out in the Atlantic, but only a couple years earlier, in the first months after Pearl Harbor, the war had seemed much closer to Harkers Island that it did to most of the United States.

Many of the island’s young fishermen had gone into the Navy and Coast Guard, and they were serving all over the world. But the U.S. Navy had also recruited the island’s fishermen for war duty closer to home.

As German submarines torpedoed merchant ships out in the Atlantic, one of the islanders patrolled the beaches out at Shackleford Banks, watching in the surf for the corpses.

Others, when they heard the explosions offshore, had the duty of taking their boats far out into the Atlantic to search for survivors and the dead.

Out in those seas, 15 and 20 miles off Cape Lookout, they often found themselves in a hellish seascape of charred hulls, burning oil slicks and scenes of which few of them would ever speak.

Special thanks as always to my friends at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

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A small gathering watches 2025’s final sunset Wednesday over Taylors Creek from the wooden deck at Harborside Park at 322 Front St. in Beaufort. Here are some of Coastal Review’s most-read stories of the year. We thank you for reading. Photo: Mark Hibbs

A portrait of the late Darrell McNary Collins, a beloved historian at the Wright Brothers National Memorial for over 40 years and president emeritus of the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum, was delivered Wednesday to the museum as a gift to Collins’ widow, Tonya Collins, who continues to serve as a board member and treasurer with the Pea Island Preservation Society Inc.

“It is heartwarming to receive such a special gift and refreshing to have someone honor Darrell since his passing,” Tonya Collins said in a statement from the nonprofit that operates the museum. “He would be humbled but appreciative and delighted to continue to play a pivotal role in raising funds to share and promote the remarkable history of the Outer Banks, a place and people he truly loved! “

The presentation of the portrait entitled “A Legacy of Greatness” and painted by Outer Banks artist James Melvin happened on “Honorable Darrell Collins Day,” as proclaimed by Manteo town officials in 2023.

Looking back: Darrell Collins remembered for giving life to Wrights’ story

The portrait is to be on temporary display at the Cookhouse Museum and the artist was to be on hand from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. Wednesday. A public viewing and program for a larger audience are planned and will be announced early next year.

Darrell Collins, who died on Christmas Eve last year, is remembered for his knowledge and storytelling associated with the Wright brothers and their famous first flight. In addition to working as a historian at the Wright Brothers National Memorial for over 40 years, he was considered among the top aviation historians, according to the news release.

“He was known especially for his ease in blending science and history and for his incredible storytelling technique about the history of flight using an engaging and interactive style that brought smiles and interest to creative people of all ages,” said Pea Island Preservation Society Director of Outreach and Education Joan L. Collins in the release.

In addition to his work with the Pea Island Preservation Society Inc., Collins served as a Manteo town commissioner for 18 years and as mayor pro tem. He also served on the town planning board for 10 years. He entered local government after the sudden death in 2006 of his mother Dellerva Collins, who had been a Manteo commissioner for over 21 years.

Collins’ storytelling earned numerous national and international awards, including the Order of the Long Life Pine, North Carolina’s highest civilian honor for exemplary community service.

He also spoke with authority about Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers, and he helped create and present a live program to fourth grade students at all Dare County schools for several years and an annual essay contest.

Collins was also a youth basketball coach and player for Dare County Parks and Recreation for more than 25 years.

“The new portrait is also intended to reflect the special connection Darrell had with youth,” Joan Collins said. “He especially enjoyed the smiles and questions he received as he brought to life stories that were considered complicated or especially difficult to hear and to understand.”

Collins’ family history is also connected to the Freedmen’s Colony on Roanoke Island, and the Native American history of the area.

This family history, museum officials said, also includes 400 years of combined service in the U.S. Life-Saving Service and its successor, the U.S. Coast Guard.

The museum on Roanoke Island honors the life-savers at the Pea Island from 1880 until 1947. It is located in the former Pea Island station cookhouse where the crew prepared and ate their meals.

A limited number of high-quality prints made on museum-grade paper and numbered and signed by the artist, will be offered for sale to businesses, organizations, and others as part of the museum’s fundraising efforts.

The museum would like to partner with area businesses and organizations interested in displaying the print for public viewing. 

And those interested in purchasing a limited-edition print are requested to contact the Pea Island Preservation Society by email at friends@peaislandpreservationsociety.com. A board member will then contact you to discuss preferred print size options and next steps.

The Preservation Society intends to make the prints available for shipment or pickup at the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum on Roanoke Island as soon as possible after the new year, so order right away. 

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The Duncan House at 105 Front St. in Beaufort, a structure that dates back to the mid-1700s, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of only 11 properties in North Carolina designated as Statewide Properties of Significance, is cordoned off Tuesday after a blaze consumed the unoccupied building on Monday. Photo: Dylan Ray

Sinking your teeth into a buttery, old-fashioned sweet potato biscuit is a legendary experience quickly fading into North Carolina culinary obscurity despite an almost unbelievable pedigree.

Sweet potato biscuits were reportedly served at the opening of the First Continental Congress in 1774. One hundred and forty-eight years later, the great African American botanist George Washington Carver championed this Southern delight as a crucial way farmers could diversify their crop usage.

That significant history is now mostly memorialized in memory. East Carolina University alumni long past their college days join locals in pining for the version once served at the late Venter’s Grill in Greenville. Shuttered Sweet Potatoes Restaurant in Winston-Salem was celebrated for a recipe that today endures only in cofounder Stephanie Tyson’s “Well Shut My Mouth” cookbook.

With North Carolina foodways vanishing as quickly as residential sprawl eats up the state’s farmland, sweet potato biscuits are becoming rare finds on menus and in the repertoire of home cooks. But in Camden, it stands as a delicious reminder of why such a simple thing is worth saving.

Beyond nostalgia

On a foggy morning in the tiny, coastal community, dogs bound excitedly through endless farm fields. Ruritan Club signs announcing a Brunswick stew sale dominate political H-stakes stuck along the roadside.

Inside a crossroads restaurant marked by an age-tangled oak tree, the caramelly aroma of roasting sweet potatoes fills the kitchen as chef Katherine “Kat” Silverwood’s wooden rolling pin squeaks across a cold-hard block of pastel-orange dough.

“We found that sweet potato biscuits actually act better if you make the dough day before,” she says. “It’s best to let it chill for at least a few hours.”

Silverwood knows what she’s talking about. Her Taylor’s Oak Restaurant produces hundreds of sweet potato biscuits each year, especially around Christmastime when fastidious locals, like many North Carolinians, relish fried country ham on their sweet potato biscuits.

 “You feed a bunch of old farmers, you better be making something from scratch,” Silverwood said.

That kind of cooking is what the chef grew up on in Camden. Vegetables fresh from her parents’ garden and baking with Grandma launched her interest in cooking as a child.

She never encountered sweet potato biscuits until around age 9 or 10. Her sister was dating and ultimately married a farmer. His mother made sweet potato biscuits. Silverwood was smitten at first bite. Within a year or so, she was baking her own.

“It’s like that perfect balance of the sweet and the savory,” she said.

As much as Silverwood loved cooking, she didn’t envision it as a worthwhile career. Instead, she joined the military and worked in construction but always had a kitchen side gig. Along the way, she honed her sweet potato biscuit recipe, testing tips from fellow chefs, like folding the dough during rolling to achieve flaky layers.

Eventually, Silverwood accepted her calling, taking a full-time chef position and dreaming of one day opening a restaurant. Her position left time for a night job. She asked the grandfather of a childhood friend if he needed a hand at the family’s new venture, Taylor’s Oak Restaurant. The spot held a special place in Silverwood’s own heritage. Her maternal aunt married into the Taylor family. The couple helped raise Silverwood’s mother after she lost her parents.

“They were only open one day a week. So, I asked if they would like some help, maybe get open for breakfast in the mornings. And that’s how I started here,” she says. “I wrote the recipe for sweet potato biscuits.”

When Silverwood had the opportunity to purchase the business a few years after starting at Taylor’s in 2018, the chapters of her sweet potato story culminated.

“As soon as we decided we were going to open up for dinner, I was like, ‘We got to have mini sweet potato biscuits go on the tables … that’s our signature,’” Silverwood says.

The perfect bite

Throughout telling her story, Silverwood shares many pointers for preparing and eating sweet potato biscuits. Besides chilling the dough before rolling, the Taylor’s team pinches cold butter into flour by hand, just like Silverwood was taught as a kid. They roast whole, skin-on sweet potatoes. Boiling would introduce too much moisture. Before mashing, they drain all liquid from the vegetable. Bags of the puree are frozen so that biscuits can be made quickly.

Just enough sugar goes into the dough to enhance the sweet potato flavor. That’s different from recipes like the one Venters’ chefs used all those years ago in Greenville. Silverwood’s biscuits are flaky and savory; Venters’ were soft, sweet and pillowy with pronounced notes of warm spices like cinnamon. The recipe for Sweet Potatoes Restaurant’s version falls somewhere in between.

“Everyone has their own different ‘you got to do it this way, you got to do it that way,’” Silverwood says, declining to share the family recipe that inspired her way.

Carver’s formula, among the earliest, verifiable printed recipes, leans soft and savory. Although the biscuits served at the First Continental Congress have been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, no original recipe has been found. Any biscuit recipe Jefferson favored was likely developed in kitchens run by enslaved Africans. This is also true for the sweet and salty combination of fried country ham sandwiched between a sweet potato biscuit.

Silverwood prefers less salty city ham rather than country ham. A slice of New Jersey’s Taylor pork roll (no relation) is even better, she reveals. Sausage plus a little mustard is tasty, too, as was the sandwich she offered with pimento cheese and spicy fried chicken.

Still, most Taylor’s Oak Restaurant customers ask for country ham. It’s easy to understand why when Silverwood finally splits open a hot sweet potato biscuit and lays on sizzling country ham directly from the griddle.

The hot ham melds with the biscuit’s interior, creating an almost creamy texture and old-fashioned flavor that fills your mind with memories of home, family and holiday anticipation. Suddenly, you’re wrapped in thoughts of icy mornings, coffee boiling on an old stove and the simple life you wonder why anyone would leave behind.

“I’ve had a couple people almost bring me to tears because they said ‘That’s just how my grandma used to make it taste,” Silverwood says, “‘exactly like that.’”

With each humble bite, the sweet potato biscuit becomes more than a meal; it is a profound, lasting link between generations. It is the legacy of a waning recipe that fatefully defined one woman’s life and continues, every day in Camden, to feed the soul of an entire community.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Take:

½ cupful mashed sweet potatoes

½ teaspoon salt

1 cupful flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

2 tablespoons butter or lard

Milk sufficient to make a soft dough.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together several times; add these to the potatoes, mixing in with a knife.

Now work the fat into the mixture lightly; add the milk; work quickly and lightly until a soft dough is formed; turn out on a floured board; pat and roll out lightly until about one-half inch thick; cut into biscuits; place on buttered or greased pans and bake 12 or 15 minutes in a quick oven.

Source: “How the Farmer Can Save His Sweet Potatoes and Ways of Preparing Them for the Table” by George Washington Carver (Tuskegee Institute Press 1937).

Anne Edwards’ grandmother rarely spoke about the young man wearing a Navy “Crackerjack” uniform in the photograph displayed on a table in the living room of her New Bern home.

As a child, Edwards would hear her mother occasionally refer to him as “uncle.” From what other relatives said, he was a sociable, kind man.

“There’s not a whole lot,” Edwards said. “My mother and grandmother really didn’t talk about it a lot. All I knew was that he died in Pearl Harbor.”

His photo from the table has since gone missing. The Navy does not have an official photo.

His death was untimely, violent — his remains could not be identified and returned to his family for burial. The pain of it all was likely too much for them to convey in conversation, Edwards assumes.

Last week, Edwards attended her great-uncle’s burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The Oct. 8 ceremony was held more than 80 years after he was killed in the attack that thrust the United States into World War II.

Navy Fireman 1^st Class Edward Bowden was aboard the USS California on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.

Early in the raid, two Japanese aerial torpedoes slammed the ship’s forward and aft, ripping a 40-foot hole in her hull. She would later be hit by a bomb that further opened her insides to flooding.

The attacks claimed the lives of 103 of her crew, including Bowden, a 29-year-old New Bern native. Bowden bore a striking resemblance to his sister who had raised him from the time he was roughly 10 or 11 after their parents died.

That would be about as much as Edwards would know about her late great-uncle, who died about three years before she came into the world, until a letter from the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency arrived at her Onslow County home more than six years ago.

Edwards called the agency, which works to identify the remains of unknown prisoners of war and those missing in action. She wanted to make sure the letter, one that requested a sample of her DNA, wasn’t some kind of a hoax.

It wasn’t.

This past April, Edwards got the call that Bowden’s remains, long since buried as an unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, were officially identified as those of her great-uncle.

She now has a document some two inches thick that contains details about the young man in the black-and-white photograph that was a staple in her grandmother’s house.

Bowden was 28 when he enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 28, 1940, in Raleigh. He reported to the USS California by November of that year.

His sister, who was 18 and married when he moved in with the young couple, signed an affidavit as his guardian, according to the paperwork provided by the casualty office.

Records do not reveal where in the ship Bowden was when it was hit and eventually sank to the bottom of the harbor three days after the attack.

Navy personnel recovered the remains of the ship’s crew between December 1941 to April 1942.

“The problem with identification came because their remains were comingled and so they didn’t really know who they were,” Edwards said.

In all, there would be 20 unresolved casualties from the USS California and 25 associated unknowns buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific.

Remains of servicemembers yet to be identified in the cemetery were all exhumed by March 2018. As of August, 10 had been identified as being from the USS California.

Edwards was given the discretion to decide where her great-uncle’s remains should be buried.

“Now he can always be found,” she said. “That’s the reason I chose Arlington. I want any family that might be out there related to him to be able to trace him and find out about him.”

Bowden’s military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, and World War II Victor Medal.

Edwards was joined by more than a dozen relatives for the Oct. 8 burial. Nieces, nephews, their children, cousins and their spouses traveled from New Bern, Greenville and Maryland to the exceptionally manicured grounds of the cemetery marked by rows and rows of glistening white crosses.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “Everything was perfect. I was very, very pleased that the young people from the family came. I was very pleased that they felt like they should honor him. I felt a sense of closure for him. He’s not just a name anymore.”

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.

Before ketchup and ranch dressing became as firmly entrenched in our culture as salt in the ocean, relishes and pickled goods were once a staple at everyone’s table.

Often engendering fierce competitions among the ladies and their “special” recipes, who doesn’t remember our grandmas proudly placing pickles or colorful relishes on the table, beautifully displayed in cut glass or crystal bowls?

Why would something that seems so simple have such an impact?

The same way herbs and spices bring out the flavors of food, relishes and pickles livened up what would otherwise most likely be bland meals.

While relishes and pickled goods are both methods of preservation, they differ somewhat. Both methods use vinegar to extend the shelf life of vegetables, providing vitamins and such when fresh produce was not in season.

Pickles, for instance, are generally whole or large pieces of whatever vegetable preserved in brine or vinegar. Most pickled vegetables, such as beets or okra, are intended to be eaten as-is, as a complement to other items on the menu.

Did anyone else’s grandma make pickled beets and add whole boiled and peeled eggs to make colorful pickled eggs?

Relishes consist of chopped or minced vegetables, often combined with others and then pickled. Designed to enhance the taste of other foods, relishes are used more for condiments than actual sides.

Along with salt, different spices are used to flavor varying dishes, such as chow-chow. Sugar can be added to make a sweeter pickle, such as bread-and-butter, or a sweet relish such as chutney. Add crushed red pepper flakes or cayenne if you like things spicier.

Like fermenting, pickling and making relishes have been around for centuries.

As with mining or harvesting and then transporting salt, vinegar was, and is, a time-consuming proposition. Simple enough to make, the acid content and enough suitable containers to store the product could present challenges.

For apple cider vinegar, all that’s really needed are apples, a bit of sweetener, water, and time. You can even use just the peels and cores. Submerse in sweetened water, cover loosely with cheesecloth, and put in a warm dark place. Stir every day and make sure the apple parts are covered by the liquid. After two to three weeks remove the peels. Put real lids on the jars and let ferment until it reaches the level of tartness you desire, usually somewhere around six months or so.

Maybe you’ve had cider that turned to vinegar or vinegar that turned cloudy. Filled with little floaty bits and a mother. What? Not that kind of mother, a SCOBY. That’s an acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.

Whatever you do, don’t throw it out!

Looking like an alien something or other, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast often forms on apple cider vinegar. Perfectly safe to consume, this film of beneficial bacteria can be used to speed up the time it takes to make a new batch of vinegar by adding some of it to your peel and water mixture.

Relishes and pickled items harken back to a time when nothing was wasted, thus using apple peels and cores to make cider vinegar. Do you know what else apple cores were used for? Pectin, the powdered stuff that comes in a box now and is probably made of some indefinable chemical substance. The stuff used to make jams and jellies jell.

How did earlier peoples know how much apple core pectin to use? If the jelly set, they were good. If it was runny, they’d add a few more apple cores while the jelly was still boiling.

Waste not, want not.

Dipping a cold spoon into the boiling liquid and seeing whether it dripped off quickly or moved slower and sheeted, or made a smiley face let them know if the jelly was thick enough.

Most of us know the story of Johnny Appleseed. Collecting apple seeds from cider mills and then going walkabout, seeding apple trees for the westward-bound settlers to find and utilize.

Whether true or a tall tale, there’s probably a grain of truth buried in there somewhere. The legend of Johnny Appleseed is entirely possible, because the apples used for cider weren’t from grafted trees, thus the seeds could be planted in order to gain an apple tree literally true to its roots.

Seeds from grafted trees will most likely revert to the rootstock, often crabapples or possibly some other rootstock that doesn’t bear edible apples. The apples used in cider mills were often a hard, tart apple and, while not much good for eating, they were better for making hard cider or cider vinegar.

Both items were indispensable to the settlers.

We all know the “stoplight” apples, Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, and green Granny Smith that have been popular for the last few decades. At one time, there were over 300 named varieties of apples in the United States, each with a different purpose, such as cider, eating, drying, and making apple butter among many others, but that’s fodder for another column.

Vinegar has a low pH, meaning it’s very acidic. This low pH is why vinegar works well in preserving foods. Harmful bacteria can’t survive the acidity. The acidity is also why crocks were so important for storage. The glazed interior of a crock keeps the acidic vinegar from eating a hole in the otherwise unprotected container.

Water can be added to raise the pH if the vinegar became too acidic.

White vinegar is also one of the best, and safest, household cleaners. It leaves no residue, kills germs, and at the same time, it’s safe for human skin.

So, what’s the difference between cider vinegar and white vinegar? White vinegar, distilled from grains, is more acidic than cider vinegar, and it’s most often used for scrubbing floors or cleaning coffee pots. Cider vinegar, made from apples, has a golden-amber color and a sweeter flavor and is most often used for vinaigrettes, marinades and seasonings.

Pickling can be an either/or proposition, with personal preference often being the deciding factor.

Three Montford Point Marines are to be honored Friday with a replica of the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by the U.S. Congress.

The ceremony is open to the public and part of the National Montford Point Marine Association’s annual Montford Point Marines Day Ceremony set for 8 a.m. Friday in Lejeune Memorial Gardens, Montford Landing Road.

The ceremony honors and remembers the first African Americans who enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II and trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, the present site of Camp Johnson.

Many of the Montford Point Marines have yet to be identified and the national effort continues to recognize these individuals, the challenges they endured, and the sacrifices they made on the battlefield, during 1942-1949.

Jacksonville Mayor Sammy Phillips is to provide welcoming remarks.

National Montford Point Marine Association Inc. Past President and retired U.S. Marine Chief Warrant Officer 5 Dr. James Averhart Jr. will provide the keynote address.

Col. Gregory Pace, Deputy Commander, Marine Corps Installations East, retired Master Gunnery and National Montford Point Marine Association Inc. President Sgt. Ronald C. Johnson are also expected to speak.

Because of construction at Lejeune Memorial Gardens, parking is limited. Parking will be available at the Coastal Carolina Veterans Cemetery and overflow parking will be available at the New River Shopping Center on Hargett Street.

Shuttle service will be provided from New River Shopping Center by Jacksonville Transit.

The ceremony will be broadcast on G10TV, g10tv.org, Cablecast, and made available on the city’s YouTube Channel.

For additional information about the Montford Point Marines and all annual convention activities, visit MontfordPointMarines.org.

A chance to climb to the top of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse and look over the expanse of uninhabited barrier islands, sounds and the Atlantic Ocean might be in the foreseeable future now that a much-anticipated, multiyear, projected $15 million renovation project is expected to begin this month.

National Park Service officials announced Friday that Stone and Lime Historic Restoration Inc. received the contract and the work that should start soon could take up to three years to complete.

“The Cape Lookout Lighthouse has long stood as a sentinel for mariners navigating the treacherous waters of the Southern Outer Banks. Time and elements have taken their toll on the structure, prompting the National Park Service to initiate a full preservation effort aimed at safeguarding the lighthouse for future generations,” officials said.

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is a double-walled, 163-foot-tall tower with a spiral cast iron staircase winding through the interior. First lit on Nov. 1, 1859, the structure, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, replaced the 1812 lighthouse that previously stood on the island. The National Park Service established in March 1966 the Cape Lookout National Seashore, which is made up of 56 miles of undeveloped barrier islands in Carteret County.

“This renovation marks a pivotal step in preserving one of North Carolina’s most iconic landmarks,” Acting Superintendent Katherine Cushinberry said in a statement. “The lighthouse is not only a critical aid to navigation but also a symbol of our coastal heritage.”

Cushinberry is in the temporary role following the retirement this summer of the seashore’s previous superintendent, Jeff West.

Chief of Interpretation and Public Information Officer BG Horvat told Coastal Review that the restoration project includes the repair or replacement of the 200-plus metal stairs, handrails, landings, glass panes, windows and doors, plus new paint for the black-and-white exterior, which will allow the original bricks to “breathe,” or allow air to flow throughout the tower, as it was designed.

Stone & Lime has overseen several lighthouse projects for the National Park Service, including the multi-year restoration of Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is suffering from similar structural and cosmetic concerns, the company said.

The Massachusetts-based restoration company in a June 6 press release announced that it had been selected to manage the Cape Lookout Lighthouse project and will “oversee a variety of historically sensitive repairs that ensure the public will be able to have access to the Lighthouse in the future while fortifying it against the impacts of the ocean environment, especially as hurricanes and other meteorological events growth in strength and frequency.”

Horvat told Coastal Review that the restoration company won the contract because “their bid was the most successful based on the needs of the project, their experience in historic preservation work, and what the park’s needs were to get the work done with high quality and historic preservation in mind.”

Safety issues for the structure are numerous, which is why the public climbing season stopped after an annual inspection of the tower in 2021, prompting discussions about a renovation, Horvat said.

The concerns were first noted during a preseason safety inspection early that year. That’s when staff pinpointed compromised structural components such as stairs and handrails. Engineers were then brought in for more in-depth inspections, resulting in a list of things to consider repairing.

“The lighthouse was built in 1859. The iron components of the tower are all original. In many areas it is corroded away, or deteriorating. For example, some of the landings are bowing. The metal doorway to the gallery at the top has a small hole in it. The handrails and stairs are rusty in several places,” he said. “The list is pretty big considering the age of all this metal that acts like the ‘bones’ of the whole structure.”

While the tower is undergoing repairs, “the biggest thing” visitors may notice is the refurbishing the ironwork of the watch, lantern and dome levels at the uppermost section of the lighthouse, Horvat said.

“The whole top of the lighthouse will come off, and a temporary cap will be placed atop of the lighthouse tower until the refurbishment is complete. Then, the top of the lighthouse will be placed back where it belongs, new and improved, adhering to historic preservation standards,” he explained.

Visitors will also notice that the lighthouse exterior will be stripped to bare red brick — the first time since 1873 — and then repainted with a breathable paint to help stabilize the moisture content of the bricks. 

Although the lighthouse was completed on Nov. 1, 1859, with its original red brick tower, back in those days, the Lighthouse Board “decided that each coastal light would have its own day-mark pattern, allowing mariners a way to note their location during daytime, as each lighthouse displays a distinct flash pattern at night,” he said.

The Bureau of Lighthouses, established in 1852, replaced the Lighthouse Board in 1910. The U.S. Coast Guard absorbed the bureau in 1939, caring for the lighthouse until 2003, when ownership was transferred to the National Park Service.

“In 1873, Cape Lookout Lighthouse was painted with its distinctive black-and-white diagonal checkers, or diamond pattern,” Horvat said. “Since then, there have been numerous paint jobs to brighten up the day-mark pattern on the lighthouse,” and for some of those layers, oil-based paint was used, which doesn’t allow the exterior to breathe and damages the masonry.

The more breathable types, such as water-based paints, “work with the original red brick masonry to allow moisture built up in the bricks to move freely, or evaporate rather than create pockets of condensation within the tower. Trapped moisture accelerates the deterioration of the bricks and lends to the corrosive problems on the interior metals as well,” he said.

Also, there have been various types of cements used inappropriately for patchwork over the years.

“Of course, materials like paint and cement have all changed over the last 166 years,” Horvat said.

Money for the restoration comes from a combination of sources, including National Park Service line-item construction funds, Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act revenues and cyclic maintenance funds.

“These resources enable us to enhance and maintain our facilities for the benefit of the public,” Horvat said.

While the lighthouse and the immediate area are closed to the public during the renovations over the next few years, visitors are encouraged to explore the rest of the park, like the scenic beaches, and the cultural historic sites. Interpretive programs and updates on the restoration progress will be available through the seashore’s website and social media.

With massive canines that could gore and then gnash its prey, prehistoric hell pigs were fierce predators before they went extinct 20 million years ago.

The four-hooved entelodonts, the scientific name for the land mammal that looked like a giant hippo-pig hybrid, had a skull half the size of its body with a jaw that could open more than 90 degrees to chomp its game.

“We’re talking, maybe 6 feet at the shoulder, closing in on 2,000 pounds, a massive head with these weird projections that made the skull look even more crazy,” Raleigh-based paleontologist Sean Moran told Coastal Review.

The hell pig, which isn’t a pig at all but is related to the hippo, is one of a dozen “exceedingly rare” early Miocene land mammal fossils recovered over the last several decades from a commercially owned rock quarry just outside Maysville, where Jones and Onslow counties meet.

These fossils help fill in the gaps of early Miocene biogeography, or how the animals were distributed across the Earth roughly 23 to 16 million years ago, according to a recent Cambridge University Press study.

“The Early Miocene is of great importance to understand the macroevolution and distribution of land mammals in North America. It marks the origins and major adaptive radiations of many modern families of mammals, and considerable faunal dispersal coinciding with global sea-level changes,” explains the paper titled, “Early Miocene land mammals and chronology of the Belgrade Formation, eastern North Carolina.”

Moran is an author of the paper and has been the paleontology and geology collections manager for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh since 2021.

The study looks at around 25 years’ worth of fossils collected from the Belgrade Formation, “where we only have a few dozen fossils of land mammals,” Moran said. He described the Belgrade Formation as a single, fairly thin stratigraphic, or rock, layer in Jones County and the vicinity.

The land mammal fossils found in Maysville “of this age are rare in eastern North America, north of Florida,” but similar fossils are found in abundance in Texas, Florida and Nebraska, the study says. “As such, the recovery of a small but biochronologically diagnostic assemblage of land mammals from (the Maysville quarry) makes it an important contribution to understand Early Miocene biogeography.” 

 A biochronologically diagnostic assemblage means that the group of fossils found together in the same rock layer indicate a specific geological time period. In this case, the late Oligocene or early Miocene, about 17 to 21 million years ago.

The fossils recovered from the Belgrade Formation are of “added importance” because land and marine animals are embedded in the same rock layer “which are likewise rare during this time in North America.”

Though there’s only been around three decades of collecting on and off in the Belgrade Formation, that “gets our hopes up that when we start looking more closely and collecting more diligently, that we might be able to build out a much greater fauna list of what might be there,” Moran said.

The discovery of the hell pig molar is surprising because hell pigs are “pretty rare in most places,” Moran explained in an interview.

The museum collection that Moran oversees includes a cast of that hell pig molar found around 15 years ago, which was donated to the Smithsonian, “but that’s representative of the whole group being here at that period of time when the sediments were deposited,” Moran said.

The first hell pig​s appeared in southern Asia about 40 million years ago, and ​are in a family called Entelodontidae. Their population spread across the rest of Asia and into Europe before eventually migrating into North America about 36 million years ago, Moran explained.

When he’s out doing field work in Nebraska, where he’s been since early last week, Moran said he expects to see fossils of much earlier versions of the hell pigs that are considerably smaller, a little more diverse, and consisted of a few more species. Whereas, the hell pigs that were in coastal North Carolina were “sort of the end of the lineage. It’s only a couple million years before we know it goes extinct.”

Moran said researchers are “pretty sure” hell pigs are omnivorous, given the shape of their teeth, and may have been predators within their ecosystem. The bulbous teeth indicate that they may be eating nuts and fruit and occasionally meat.

“Their teeth are large enough and are robust enough that they certainly could have,” Moran said. “They’re pretty wild animals. We’re still trying to figure out where they fit in the evolutionary tree.”

Other mammals noted in the paper are rhinos, which Moran said are fairly common in the North American fossil record, until they went extinct somewhere between 3.5 to 5 million years ago, and two different species of horse.

He explained that while the Spanish did bring horses to North America, the very first species of horse was on the continent millions of years ago.

“So, around 55 million years ago, we see the first species of horse in what is now Wyoming, and we have a great fossil record of horses all the way from 55 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, give or take, at the end of the ice ages,” Moran said. “Of course, only 500 years ago or so, they were brought back by the Spanish. But we have a really diverse fossil record of horses here in North Carolina.”

There’s a small weasel-like animal, and an animal called the protoceratid, which is deer-like, but not a true deer.

“I think one of the most interesting things that we have is a red panda, which is pretty unusual for North America. There are only a few places where they’ve been documented, especially this far back in time,” he said. “So they are diagnostic of the period of time we’re looking at when they were first found in Nebraska; that’s about the same age as what we’re seeing in Belgrade.”

Moran said it’s the nature of the climate on the East Coast that makes it rare to find these land mammal fossils.

“The eastern part of the U.S. is just much more humid and wet, so we can’t rely on the elements,” like in the western part of the country where there’s not enough rain to sustain heavy plant growth, and rock is exposed, Moran said.

In North Carolina, “you have to rely on rivers to cut through rocks of the right age that you’re interested in,” Moran said, or rely on development projects to cut into the rock and hope that you get access during development.

“One of the ways that we are reliably able to see these units is through quarries,” where the paleontologists do much of their work because the work to mine rock requires “cutting through stratigraphic records of sedimentary rock in the eastern part of the state.”

And, “Beaches are a great place for people to find fossils all throughout North Carolina, but the reality is, if we lived in a place where rock was exposed like in Nebraska, this likely would have been a fauna that was already well-known,” he explained. But, the fairly recent mining activities “allows us to see this as a new frontier for understanding the land mammals and land mammal evolution in the state,” he said.

Moran has been in Nebraska the past few weeks conducting field work with the museum’s paleontology crew, which travels each summer to search for new fossils.

Each week, one of the paleontologists hosts a “Dino Dig Live” talk, where the scientists call in to answer questions. Moran is scheduled to call in from the field site at noon Thursday. The talk will be streamed on YouTube.

The last talk for the summer is Saturday, Aug. 16, with SECU DinoLab Manager Eric Lund calling in from a field site in Montana, also available on YouTube.

The Outer Banks are known for vast, uncrowded beaches, towering lighthouses, and unique cottages, and while these features beckon millions of visitors, some Outer Banks communities are not as well-known.

Rather than towns, most communities here are unincorporated villages, each home to residential homes and unobtrusive tourist accommodations, a few businesses, and a post office. Hatteras may be one of the best known of these villages.

While it is much smaller than incorporated coastal towns like Beaufort or Edenton, Hatteras is home to centuries of history and a number of notable sites, particularly on the southwest tip of its namesake island.

Hatteras Island was populated in the 16th century by the Croatoan Native Americans. They hunted, fished and ate oysters, depositing the shells in massive middens that are one of the few remaining visible indicators of where they lived. They were one of the many Native peoples that the Roanoke Colony interacted with in the 1580s.

The Croatans allied with the Europeans and counted among their numbers Manteo, the first Native American christened by the English in the New World. They factor into the story of the Lost Colony, since Hatteras Island was one of the many areas where the colonists were rumored to have gone after leaving Roanoke. Due to the shifting sands of Hatteras and the lack of definitive records, the fate of the colonists remains a mystery to this day.

Europeans returned to the area in the middle of the 17th century. Historian David Stick notes in his book, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” that the first documented English settlers on Hatteras Banks, Patrick Mackuen and William Reed, likely arrived there by 1711. People on Hatteras lived by fishing, farming, and piloting boats. They also took cargo from the many shipwrecks that regularly washed ashore from the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Despite a growing number of families living on Hatteras, the area was slow to develop as a proper town. Isolated and accessible only by water, Hatteras did not abut one of the major inlets that was open during the colonial period. As a result, it was ignored by the same legislative assemblies that facilitated town construction at nearby Portsmouth and Ocracoke islands. Although numerous people resided on the southwestern portion of the island by the late 18th century, colonial maps often showed just the empty banks and the cape. The area known today as Hatteras Village finally gained its first post office in 1858.

Hatteras remained mostly isolated through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But while it did not have obvious economic importance, it did have military significance to any group wanting to approach or protect North Carolina by water. This led to the construction of Confederate forts Hatteras and Clark on Hatteras Inlet in 1861.

The forts were surrendered to Union in the first combined action of the Army and Navy during the Civil War. This success, the first by Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside, helped the Union gain control of the North Carolina coast and allowed for future invasions of Roanoke Island and the eastern part of the state.

The post-Civil War period saw the emergence of coastal life-saving stations. These buildings housed crews organized to rescue victims from shipwrecks using the latest technology, such as the Lyle gun used to shoot rescue lines.

Three U.S. Life-saving Service stations lined Hatteras Island by 1905, from Durants near the village to Cape Hatteras at the eastern end of the island. Along with greater lifesaving capabilities came a new effort at political organization. Dare County, one of the last counties formed in North Carolina, was created in 1870 from what had been parts of Currituck, Hyde and Tyrrell counties to help administer the far-flung islands of the Outer Banks. Its southern boundary was the western tip of Hatteras Island.

The modern village of Hatteras began to develop in the early 20th century. Locals built a string of houses such as the Ellsworth and Lovie Ballance House, circa 1915, one of the oldest structures in the village and a survivor of numerous hurricanes over the past century, according to state historic preservation records. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

Growth came mainly from tourism. Greater rail and automobile transportation helped more and more visitors reach the beach from such areas as Raleigh, Charlotte and northern cities. More tourists meant an increase in ferry traffic and the growth of roads that made those ferries accessible, such as the highway that became U.S. 264 connecting Belhaven, Swan Quarter and U.S. Highway 64 near Manns Harbor.

In the 1930s, the conservation movement also brought nature tourism to the island through the authorization of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in 1937, one of the first seashore-protection programs in the country. Conservation protected a unique ecosystem that continues to bring thousands of birding, fishing, and native plant enthusiasts each year. 

With these dynamics in place, Hatteras became a popular vacation destination. Thousands flocked to the coast every summer and engaged in new recreational activities such as surfing and kiteboarding. Demand led to new transportation outlets. The state began to pave roads on Hatteras Island in the 1950s, but it was the completion of the Herbert S. Bonner Bridge in 1963 that provided a direct land connection between Hatteras and the rest of the country.

Soon, the island became home to shops, restaurants and hotels, as well as the familiar fishing shacks and isolated tourist cottages. A 1990 New York Times travel article that praised Hatteras Island’s beach as “one of the loveliest on the East Coast,” also singled out the village for offering “the color of a commercial fishing hub.”

Hatteras has become one of the most popular tourist destinations on the East Coast, growth that has fundamentally altered life in the sleepy fishing village. About 500 residents now live in Hatteras Village fulltime. There are about a dozen restaurants, several seafood markets, general stores, visitor centers, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. A number of these businesses operate year-round and cater to both locals and the summer influx of tourists.

Despite these changes, residents largely are thankful that Hatteras retains much of its village charm.

Patricia Peele, a lifelong resident of the island, told Coastal Review that as recently as 15 years ago, it was like “they used to roll the streets up at 9 p.m. on Labor Day.”

Now, there are always tourists, filling a plethora of mini-hotels across the island. But Peele said that despite the changes, she knows that Hatteras is still secluded compared to the rest of the Outer Banks. It is “not built up like a lot of other places are,” and with the protections provided by the National Park Service, growth will likely remain limited.

Still, Hatteras Village faces many of the same challenges as the rest of the Outer Banks, including those related to rising sea levels, limited resources and strong coastal storms.

The Basnight Bridge, which replaced the Bonner Bridge when the 2.8-mile, $254 million project was completed in 2019, keeps Hatteras Island connected to the mainland, and no matter the challenges, people of Hatteras will likely continue to adapt to life on their ocean sandbar — just as they always have.

NAGS HEAD — Jockey’s Ridge used to be known as the tallest natural sand dune on the East Coast, but now it’s described as its largest natural active sand dune system.

While it may not be as high as it was in 1973, the unique phenomenon of nature is still there — famously thanks to Carolista Baum, a young mother who that year physically blocked a developer’s bulldozer.

A celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jockey’s Ridge State Park held June 5-8 drew thousands of people, from folks who had rolled down the dune as children to tourists who climb it every summer to watch the sun set, to share in appreciation of the beloved Outer Banks landmark.

Festivities included a duneside performance last Friday by the popular indie band, the Connells — with a surprise appearance by North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein — followed by the Outer Banks’ first drone light show.

In his introduction to a documentary about “magical, awesome” Jockey’s Ridge screened at the park’s visitor center late that Saturday afternoon, park ranger Austin Paul said the 22-minute “collection of heartfelt stories” from the community and state officials about the site will continue to grow as more content is gathered.

“Jockey’s Ridge is kind of like the center point of the Outer Banks, Ann-Cabell Baum, Carolista Baum’s oldest daughter, says in the film. “Jockey’s Ridge is so many different things to so many different people … It’s part of our souls, it’s part of our hearts, it’s part of our families.”

Baum and her siblings used to play every day on Jockey’s Ridge, she recalled in a later interview with Coastal Review.

One day the children saw a bulldozer arrive to start digging on the backside of the dune, and Baum, then age 6 1/2, along with her sister Inglis, 5, and her brother Gibbs, 3 1/2, dashed back to their nearby home to tell their mother. Carolista immediately ran over to the spot and stood in front of the bulldozer, not moving until the operator gave up and left, Baum said. 

Her petite 33-year-old mother, a dark-haired Edenton farm girl who grew up with six brothers, then promptly removed the distributor cap, and went about rallying the community in what became the “Save our Sand Dune” campaign to get the state to preserve Jockey’s Ridge.

It wasn’t the first time that developers had raised the ire of the locals — by then the Villa Dunes subdivision was already built on the northern edges of the dunes, and plans for the new development had already been submitted to the town. But this time, the whole community got behind her mother, Baum remembered.

“She was sincere and loving and kind,” her daughter said about Carolista, remembering how people always would come by her jewelry shop to visit with her and chat.

A year after the bulldozer was banished, the dune was declared a National Natural Landmark, and the following year the state park was created.

As former Nags Head Mayor and Commissioner Renee Cahoon says in the documentary, the park is an asset to the town in multiple ways.

“No one else has a Jockey’s Ridge,” she says. “It’s not just cultural icon; it’s also a business icon.”

The park is routinely in the top five of the most-visited state parks in North Carolina.

Last year, 1.2 million people visited. But during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, visitation went through the roof, at 1.9 million and 1.8 million, respectively. Both years had the Nags Head park as the No. 1 most-visited state park. It is currently back to prepandemic visitation.

“It’s more than a fabulous sand pile,” Peggy Birkemeier, a member of the Friends of Jockey’s Ridge Board of Directors, says in the film.

As Birkemeier notes, Jockey’s Ridge has a bounty of natural resources that offer numerous “exciting experiences” for visitors.

The backside of the park abuts the Roanoke Sound, with its long shoreline meandering northward along brackish marshes and toward the ancient maritime forest of Nags Head Woods. It includes a sound beach access that is popular with families. There are also unpaved trails through shrub forest areas beyond the shoreline that lead to the lower expanse of the dunes.

And the night sky above the dunes presents some of the most dramatic scenes on the Outer Banks. In fact, any time of day or night, cloudy or starry, at sunrise or sunset, the sky from Jockey’s Ridge is a wonderment.

“It is certainly a place where many memories are made,” Birkemeier says about the park. 

Legacy projects for Jockey’s Ridge that are in the works include the creation of a trail that loops around the park with informational markers about 10 different significant areas — such as hang gliding and the sometimes-buried sand castle — and a time capsule with various artifacts that is tentatively planned to be kept on display at the visitor center museum.

When the park first opened on May 31, 1975, the big dune was 140 feet tall, Jockey’s Ridge State Park Superintendent Joy Cook explained to Coastal Review in an interview after the event. But shifting maritime winds continually rearranged its estimated 30 million tons of sand, mostly quartz blown in ages ago from the mountains, into different shapes, while surrounding development influenced sand travel. Now the dunes are a system of three smaller hills that are 60 to 80 feet tall. 

“It’s moving 1- to 6-feet to the south each year,” she said. “The prominent wind is out of the north. The dunes are north-south orientation, and the southeast corner is moving faster than the rest of it.”

About six years ago, she said, the park had to relocate the sides of the corner that were moving into the road, and it will probably have to be moved again in a few years.

But even at its decreased height, being on top of Jockey’s Ridge is close to a surreal experience, and it’s not only because of the panoramic view of sea, sound and landscape. The vast expanse of undulating sand at times feels nearly mystical. Depending on the time of day, as well as the weather conditions, the shadows cast by the light and the wind-carved designs in the sand can transform the dunes into art.

But as every local knows, Jockey’s Ridge is the last place a person would want to be in extremes of any weather: a blazing hot summer day, a very windy or rainy day, or any degree of thunderstorm. And sometimes being on top in the middle of all that sand can be disorienting — it’s not unusual for visitors to lose their bearings.

On the flipside, kids delight in rolling and leaping down the dune, and young adults love to slide down them on boogie boards — especially if there’s a rare snowfall. Not to mention that the hang-gliding and kite flying, if the wind cooperates, is extraordinary.

Carolista Baum, an artist and a jeweler, died at 50 from a brain tumor. She remains as one of the most admired personalities in Outer Banks history, not only for her vibrancy and strength of character, but for her courage to stand her ground and protest what she believed was wrong.

As many recognized during the anniversary celebration, without Carolista taking action at that moment, and creating the momentum and inspiration in the community for the preservation fight, it’s likely that Jockey’s Ridge would not have been here to celebrate its 50-year anniversary.

“In 1973, she stood in front of a bulldozer and probably wouldn’t have been arrested,” Baum said. “It was a different time then. But I think she still would have stood in front of a bulldozer if that happened today.”

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A lone cypress stands apart from those closer to the shoreline at the old mill pond in Carteret County that was originally part of a tract owned by Welshman Robert Williams, who settled in Carteret County in 1763. Williams created the mill pond by having a dam built on Black Creek. A gristmill and a sawmill operated at each end of the dam, which is now below a bridge span on Mill Creek Road. Williams was also one of two county landowners whom historians say received money to build salt works in the county to assist in the Revolution. Photo: Dylan Ray

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Fog blankets the cannons Monday at Fort Macon State Park at the east end of Bogue Banks in Carteret County. Built during the decade after the War of 1812 to defend Beaufort Inlet, the fort was taken by Union forces early during the Civil War and was never again relinquished to the Confederates. Now, Fort Macon is one of the state’s most visited parks, welcoming more than a million visitors annually. Photo: Dylan Ray

MANTEO — The structure that serves as the visitor center and park store for Bodie Island is closed indefinitely after fire damaged parts of the interior earlier this week.

The fire on Tuesday in the Bodie Island Double Keepers’ Quarters was extinguished with no reported injuries.

According to the National Park Service, staff from Eastern National, which operates the building’s retail store, spotted smoke and called 911 at around noon Tuesday. Everyone evacuated to safety.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials were evaluating the internal damage to the structure and working with the Nags Head Fire Department to investigate the cause.

The building will remain closed pending completion of the investigation and needed repairs.

The Nags Head Fire Department, upon arriving at the scene, reported seeing smoke coming from the structure’s four chimneys.

“Cape Hatteras National Seashore is grateful for the timely response to this afternoon’s fire by multiple local fire departments,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said in a statement. “Their efforts minimized damages to this historic structure.”

In addition to Nags Head, the Roanoke Island Volunteer Fire Department, Kill Devil Hills Fire Department, Colington Fire Department and Dare County Emergency Medical Services all responded to the incident, according to the park service.

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Visitors during a recent chilly day carry fishing poles while strolling along the water’s edge at Cedar Street Park in downtown Beaufort, with the construction site of the 103-room Compass Hotel Beaufort by Margaritaville Resorts on Gallants Channel in the background. Photo: Dylan Ray

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A tiny Z-scale model train operated by Mike Basher of Basher and Sons Hobbies rounds the bend during an appearance earlier this month at the 30th annual John Costlow Train Show at the North Carolina Maritime Museum Harvey W. Smith Watercraft Center in Beaufort. The three-day show included model train layouts of various scales, including working antiques.

This model transported a yellow rubber ducky on a flatcar.

Basher said the Z-scale, a ratio to actual size of 1:220, is his scale of choice due to its diminutive size and a lack of space at home.

“My permanent layout at home consists of a Z-scale layout inside a glass-top coffee table that sits inconspicuously in our living room, ready to be operated at a moment’s notice,” he told Coastal Review.

But Z is not the smallest model railroad scale — there’s at least one smaller: the T-gauge, a scale of 1:450, or about half the size of Z-scale models.

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A rainbow reaches skyward from the Newport River as viewed from the marsh at Radio Island following Sunday showers. The island was formed by the placement of dredge spoils from an early channel-deepening project at the Morehead City port in the 1930s and takes its name from Carteret Broadcasting Co.’s WMBL, which began broadcasting in 1947 at 740 kHz. Photo: Mark Hibbs

Former Pine Knoll Shores resident Walt Zaenker authored a 2015 blog post about how Radio Island got its name.

This special news feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

NEW BERN — Special Deputy Attorney General Mary Lucasse gestured to the projector screen behind her as she began her presentation to a couple dozen last month about the rules governing the last five decades of coastal development.

On the screen, a black-and-white photograph taken over a century ago depicting three, nattily dressed men in a rowboat, gliding across Bogue Sound with the expanse of undeveloped waterfront in the background a reminder of how much North Carolina’s coastline has changed.

When the photo was taken in 1912, the character of coastal North Carolina was “so different than it is today, 100 years later. We didn’t have bridges to the coast, people were not building on barrier islands,” Lucasse explained.

Lucasse joined the state Department of Justice in 2009, and works in the department’s Environmental Division. Her presentation, “50th Anniversary of the Coastal Area Management Act,” opened the daylong Shape of the Coast legal symposium, held in conjunction with North Carolina Sea Grant’s biennial Coastal Conference, Nov. 13-14 at the Riverfront Convention Center.

North Carolina Sea Grant, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Office of General Counsel and the National Sea Grant Law Center partnered on the symposium that featured speakers on concerns regarding homeowner’s insurance, oceanfront homes, wetlands, sand for beach nourishment and other aspects.

“Development really started on the oceanfront after World War II, and even later than that, and what North Carolina was experiencing was a destruction of wetlands, indiscriminate development, dredging, septic tanks that were improperly sited, declining water quality,” Lucasse said. “And as the population in coastal North Carolina grew, the governor at that time realized that we lacked the public infrastructure and regulations that would allow North Carolina the capacity to handle an increase in population and development.”

The governor at the time, Bob Scott, worked with legislature to put together the Dredge and Fill Act in 1969. Lucasse called the measure “the start” of the state’s work to protect its coastal and the natural resources. The act put limits on dredging and filling of wetlands. Scott also directed a committee to design what would become the Coastal Area Management Act.

When North Carolina was looking to protect its coastal resources, the federal level was doing the same, resulting in the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972, which Lucasse called “an important partner as we protect and manage the coastal resources here in North Carolina.”

CAMA was first drafted in 1973 but there was a lot of pushback from utilities, agriculture and building interests.

“At first, CAMA was opposed by 90% of the coastal legislators,” which she said was in part because coastal stakeholders wanted a larger role in the process. Legislators in response reworked the proposed act to include their feedback.

CAMA was enacted in 1974 and created the Coastal Resources Commission.

The commission adopts rules, establishes procedures for processing and enforcing major and minor development permits, considers variances from coastal development rules and appeals of permitting decisions, and other development rules.

Lucasse has been legal counsel to the commission since 2011, In that role, Lucasse advises members on open meeting laws, meeting procedures, handles public records requests, writes the commission’s final decisions, represent the commission on any litigation, and works with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management. Division staff implement commission rules and issues CAMA permits.

“When I talk about CAMA, I always talk about the fact that this is a balancing statute. This is not about, ‘Let’s do everything we can to only protect natural resources.’ No, we balance the rights of development, the rights of property owners, with the need to protect natural resources,” she said.

CAMA protects the rights of neighbors, the public trust, the right to use ocean beaches, and to use navigable waters, she added.

A large part of CAMA is its land-use planning component. At the local level, the plans provide a blueprint for community growth and are used to guide development. At the state level, the plans review development requests and determine consistency both with state guidelines and federal regulations.

CAMA also gives the Coastal Resources Commission the power to determine areas of environmental concern. In the 1970s, the commission was directed to establish AECs.

They decided that all the barrier islands would fall under that designation, and there was “a lot of pushback for that,” Lucasse said. “They realized that really, the rules of the commission had to focus on critical areas. They began thinking about buffers, ocean beaches, not upland areas, but areas that are critical for protecting the North Carolina coastal resources.”

Now, areas environmental concern include estuarine system areas, ocean hazard areas, public water supplies, and natural and cultural resource areas. Examples are estuarine waters, coastal wetlands, beaches, frontal dunes, inlets and surface water and water supplies.

Another major aspect of CAMA is permitting and enforcement.

“I think of permits as the teeth of CAMA,” Lucasse said, because before any development in an any of the CAMA-designated areas, a permit is required, in addition to any required at the local or federal level.

CAMA grew to include in 1981 the Public Beach and Coastal Waterfront Access Program, a way to allow everyone to enjoy the shoreline.

“North Carolina realized that it was very important not only to protect the natural resources, but to allow the public to exercise their public trust rights. And this program was created to identify, to acquire, to improve and to maintain public access ways to public trust resources,” she said, noting that the legislature provided about $2 million in first-year funding.

In the decades since, appropriations have been at just over $1 million a year, she said. “Historically, the requests for funding have exceeded the amount of funding available. But since 1981, the division of coastal management has awarded over 500 grants that total about $45 million.”

Starting in 1982, the state began adding to CAMA reserve sites. Now, there are 10 coastal reserve sites making up the North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve that protects about 44,000 acres along the coast.

“The reserves are really important component,” Lucasse said, adding that the sites allow for stewardship of these natural resources, research and education. Students visit the reserve sites to experience the natural resources.

Lucasse, in her presentation, was joined by Zach Griffith, a second-year law student at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Griffith said that CAMA had undergone significant changes since 1994, including the exemption of floating structures associated with the shellfish industry from regulation, how lobbyists changed how the state interpreted sea level rise policy, the repeal of a ban on terminal groins to now allowing seven terminal groin permits that can potentially be issued.

Once a vital part of our ecosystem, hedgerows are mostly considered a nuisance nowadays.

Used for well over a thousand years in Europe to delineate boundaries or roads or fields, they have fallen out of favor, both in Europe and here in the United States.

The ones here are often sprayed or string-trimmed or bushhogged into oblivion in keeping with the idea of perfect golf course yards. After World War II, many of the hedgerows that divided smaller fields in Europe were bulldozed and combined into larger, more crop-productive acreage better suited to then-modern farming methods, and also to meet increased housing demands.

Thankfully, Europe has halted the destruction of their hedgerows and they are now protected.

Just to give you an idea of how impenetrable the European hedges are, despite the World War II-era military higher-ups having tons of aerial footage of the countryside around Normandy, our guys got trapped and slaughtered. For whatever reason, the higher-ups didn’t take the hedgerows into serious consideration.

Perhaps they assumed European hedgerows were like the natural ones here; a scruff of bushes and then somewhat clear inside. The hedgerows in Normandy, however, became deathtraps. Our soldiers couldn’t get around or through them, and they became sitting ducks for the enemy.

Whether it’s a hedge — those made up of mostly one type of plant — or a hedgerow, which consists of a multitude of different plants, both serve a purpose. A hedge can be a screen along a driveway or fence, or the hedge can be a fence.

A hedgerow, on the other hand, while it can be a fence, is more often a habitat, a hide-away, a highway.

It’s thought that the first hedgerows originated from strips of woodland left around cleared fields and spaces. Humans figured out that hedgerows worked pretty well for delineating boundaries and keeping livestock from wandering away. The rest, as is often said, is history.

Ancient hedgerows were often planted in a specific way, and the method of construction can be used to determine the age. One method showcases rocks or dirt banked as a foundation for a row of plants above, usually hawthorn whips or something similar that’s allowed to grow straight up before being slashed near the bottom of the trunk and then bent sideways.

Usually done in the winter, the following spring would see the slashed plants sending up lots of straight branches. Successive rows of various plants would be interspersed alongside this main planting. A few seasons of growth resulted in a nearly impenetrable explosion of plants.

Once the hedgerow was started, other than an occasional trimming, those hedgerows thickened pretty much by themselves. With a lot of help from birds and small mammals and reptiles, they soon became thriving ecosystems, teeming with wildlife and plant species.

As the birds perched and roosted, they spread berries and seeds, which encouraged more types of plants to grow. Same with mammals.

Hedgerows can be planted intentionally, but some of the best ones evolve naturally.

Around here, and specifically, the hedgerow beside the Newport Garden Center, provides endless opportunities for observation and enjoyment for me, but to the guys who keep it trimmed back, not so much!

Here, hedgerows consist of natives, especially along ditch banks, where it starts with a few scrub bushes, followed by a few pines and maybe some sweet gums or maples. A bit more scrub grows up around the base of the trunks, and so very gradually — you hardly notice — the hedgerow expands outward.

Privet appears, seemingly overnight, and soon wild roses begin to wind and cascade. Southern wax myrtle, or myrkle as it’s known locally, is next, then maybe poison ivy, wild grape vines, honeysuckle, jasmine, magnolias, persimmons, dogwoods, blackberries, smilax, Virginia creeper, and around the verge, mosses and ferns, thistles, grassy weeds and just plain weeds.

But how? Magic? Kind of.

Many seeds, magnolia for example, have to be scarified. What is that? It simply means the seed has an extremely hard coating that needs to be filed or scratched in order to germinate. When a bird eats a magnolia seed, as the seed travels through the bird’s crop and intestines, the outer coating is scarified. The bird perches on a branch, does what birds do, and voila!

Eventually, instead of a lone tree with a gauzy skirt of scrub brush, a whole ecosystem develops. The outer edges of the hedgerow present a solid front. The interior is made up of a tangle of countless trunks and branches and vines, twisting every which way. This wall and tangle, while offensive to humankind’s sense of order, is a haven for critters.

The more species of plants that end up thriving in a hedgerow, the more diverse the animal life that takes advantage of the habitat: Birds, of course, but also raccoons, possums, squirrels, foxes, turtles, rabbits, insects, lizards, toads, snakes … the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, no matter how great your hedgerow becomes, you’ll never attract hedgehogs, not here. Wouldn’t that be neat?

Still, hedgerows not only provide above-ground habitat, they also improve the soil and provide homes for earthworms and grubs and snails. Their extensive root systems help hold the soil in place, slowing erosion. The leaf detritus from the fallen leaves adds nutritious mulch to the earth, and will eventually turn into rich soil, as will the windblown leaves that get caught along the edges.

Established hedgerows provide numerous other benefits, not the least as windbreaks. They provide ample forage and shelter, protected paths for animals to travel from one place to another, blossoms to feed bees and butterflies, seeds and berries for the birds and critters to feast upon.

Europeans have long taken advantage of their hedgerows for wilding, harvesting herbs and mushrooms and rose hips, among many other things from their hedgerows. Some hedgerows are even deliberately underplanted with perennial edibles that are left to grow and spread. There are also hedgerows used as a renewable source of firewood.

Far more than just a useless tangle of brambles and weeds, hedgerows are amazing places. Ever-evolving, what was once hedgerow will eventually become forest. Pushing outward, the cycle continues endlessly.

In the fall of 1927, G. Albert Lyon, millionaire businessman, gifted inventor, and renowned sportsman was restless and looking for a challenge.

It could be almost anything: a new gadget to tinker with in his home laboratory, a journey to an exotic country to hunt big game, or maybe a fall fishing adventure in Cape Hatteras, one of his favorite places in the world.

Lyon grew up in Philadelphia and worked as a mechanic. By day, he repaired engines, but at night, he tinkered and explored. Friends described the ebullient entrepreneur as bursting with energy and ideas. A dropout, Lyon was smarter by years than many of his better-educated companions, and more ambitious as well.

At the age of 19, he was awarded his first patent for an automobile bumper, and soon thereafter borrowed $100 to start a manufacturing company. As with many of Lyon’s ideas, the one for a bumper came from everyday life. One morning, Lyon was walking to his job at the garage when he saw a woman lose control of her sedan and crash into a street lamp, crumpling the hood. The accident left Lyon to wonder why the sedan didn’t have some sort of protective girdle or skirt, and he set about designing one. His timing was impeccable. Automobiles were transforming the daily lives of Americans and sales were booming. Within a few years, Lyon had earned his first million; many more would follow.

Patents would also keep coming, year after year: for bumpers, hub caps and stainless-steel wheel covers, fender wells and skirts, steering wheel attachments, luggage carriers, rims, disks, radiator baffles, side mirrors, horns and, later, helmets, sailboats, even aluminum masts for yachts. In all, Lyon would be awarded nearly 1,000 patents, establishing him as one of the most prolific inventors in history.

But Lyon’s unique spirit of inquiry wasn’t limited to tinkering. He also painted portraits, designed his own vacation home, studied the planets and stars, dove on coral reefs in the Bahamas, kept two or three chess games going at once, and amused his friends with his skills at the slingshot.

Lyon later moved to Allenhurst, New Jersey, from Philadelphia, but also spent part of his time in Detroit.

According to century-old newspaper stories, Lyon first visited the Outer Banks in the early 1920s to go fishing with his friends Rex Beach, a popular author of outdoor adventures tales, and Van Campen Heilner, a silver spoon explorer, and the son of a wealthy coal magnate. Heilner and Lyon both lived near Asbury Park, on the northern New Jersey coast, then a kind of arcadia for sportsmen, artists, and writers. They fished and hunted for waterfowl along Barnegat Bay with the noted illustrator, Frank Stick, who also lived nearby.

During one of their adventures, Lyon’s yacht, Alberta, exploded and burned to the waterline near the mouth of the Barnegat Inlet. Lyon and Stick saved themselves by jumping into the swirling waters.

Lyon and his pals made the long journey to the Outer Banks to take advantage of the world-famous fishing there. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream hug the coastline near Cape Hatteras, drawing some of the Atlantic’s largest and most-prized species – yellowfin tuna, blue marlin, and red drum.

Heilner already had a small fishing camp between Hatteras Village and the inlet. He also owned a 1920 Model T outfitted with fishing rods and gear, known locally as “The Pride of Pamlico.” They used the sedan to travel up and down the banks in search of fishing holes, landing 100 channel bass during one adventure, scores of red drum during another.

Lyon decided it was time to own a piece of Hatteras for himself. He purchased a 1,500-acre tract at the southern tip of Hatteras Island, not far from the world-famous inlet, from Andrew S. Austin, a local merchant. The following year, Austin helped Lyon build a hunting lodge, later named the Gooseville Gun Club. The simple structure wasn’t as large or elaborate as some of the other hunting lodges, but it served its purpose and over the years was greatly enjoyed by Lyon and his guests. Aptly, the land surrounding the lodge was shaped like a fishhook and included a creek, nearby sand reef and two miles of unspoiled oceanfront.

Luther Austin, the brother of Andrew and the longtime manager of the hunting lodge, recalled that Lyon would “travel down to Gooseville on his yacht,” which was also named Alberta, for one of his daughters, to hunt and fish with his family and friends. Rex Beach was a frequent companion and kept a houseboat nearby.

“He stopped in here and they hunted. This feller Rex had a houseboat. He had all of his hunting equipment on it. They stopped in here and old man Lyon was with him. That’s why he built the place here,” Luther Austin explained to Elizabeth Farrow and several co-authors in a history of the Gooseville Gun Club.

The hunting parties used a small boat to get out to the sand reef, where they had blinds, batteries and sink boxes, Austin recalled. The boxes were made from concrete and sunk in the sand. When the tide came in, they pulled a canvas cover around themselves and used iron decoys to sink the wooden batteries low in the water. Of course, there were wooden decoys as well. So many, it took several trips to haul them all out, Austin told the authors.

In the 1930s, Lyon hired a well-known local pilot, David Driskill, to ferry wealthy guests from Manteo and other locations to his hunting lodge. The design and operation of airplanes had improved dramatically since the Wright Brothers made their first heavier-than-air flight in 1903. But coastal flight, with its unpredictable winds, layers of marine fog, and beach landings, was still challenging. As if to prove the point, Driskill lost one of his wheels during a takeoff when it became stuck in the beach sand, according to published reports.

During the Great Depression, Driskill delivered mail, food and supplies to the federal work camps scattered up and down the Outer Banks. Thousands of poor, itinerant workers were building an artificial sand dike from the Virginia border to Ocracoke Island. According to a 2018 Driskill profile by the historian Casey Huegel, Driskill also flew more than 500 injured workers from Cape Hatteras to a Marine Corps base hospital in Norfolk. Later, Driskill became one of the first test pilots for prototype helicopters and flew one over the Outer Banks photographing the government’s sand dune. In October, 1949, Driskill was killed while testing an experimental helicopter near Moorestown, New Jersey.

Over the years, Lyon entertained scores of visitors at the Gooseville Gun Club. Many of them were wealthy business acquaintances and artists. At the same time, he tried to maintain good relations with locals from the nearby villages. In 1930, he donated $35,000 for a club building and library for high school girls in Hatteras. The hope, speculated one writer, was that the club would positively direct the girls’ “energies which in some instances, might otherwise go astray.”

Lyon’s attitude toward the locals stiffened after he found hundreds of red drum left to rot on the beach by a careless angler. Afterward, he positioned a guard on his property and angered locals by blocking them from hunting and fishing. For a time, he also battled efforts by the National Park Service to condemn his property for a national seashore on the Outer Banks. In 1954, Lyon finally sold his club and land to the Park Service for $47,000.

Lyon shifted his attention to the tiny tropical island of Bimini, in the Bahamas, where he built a million-dollar mansion on Paradise Point and spent his days snorkeling and fishing the gin-clear waters for bonefish and tuna. In 1957, a writer for Sports Illustrated profiled Lyon, calling him “The Commodore of Bimini.” The writer described a typical Lyon day this way:

“Guests find a typical day can begin in the predawn darkness with the Commodore rousing the house to come look at a favorite star through his telescope on the roof. A swim in the pool or sea may follow, and after breakfast the day really gets under way. The morning may be taken up with deep sea fishing for giant tuna or blue marlin; or a skin-diving expedition, led by the Commodore, to the wrecks around the reefs and an hour of water skiing, and always a continuous chess game aboard either of the two fishing cruisers which act as floating bases for the day’s sports.”

Featured Image

Webs around a vent in the tiled storefront wall of the old, now vacant, M. Mann’s & Sons building in Newport create a ghostly appearance peering out slightly menacingly at passersby from the longtime home of the former C.M. Hill Hardware, where Chatham, East Chatham and Market streets all converge with the North Carolina Railroad Co. line and East and West Railroad boulevards. Photo: Mark Hibbs

There was little doubt that North Carolina would vote to support the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.”

The state had been dry since 1908. The first Southern state to go dry.

It was the Volstead Act passed into law in 1919 that allowed enforcement of the amendment. The law was challenged in the courts, and on Jan. 5, 1920, when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling upholding the act, prohibitionists were overjoyed.

“Supreme Court’s Action Hailed as a Sweeping Victory,” exclaimed the headline in the Jan. 6 Wilmington Morning Star, with a subhead telling readers, “Dry Forces Jubilant at Upholding of Volstead Prohibition Enforcement Act.”

If the dry forces of the state saw Prohibition as the dawn of a new and healthier society for farmers and lumber workers in northeastern North Carolina, who often lived in remote and barely accessibly areas, Prohibition offered something entirely different.

It was for them, a government-sponsored golden parachute. The once seemingly inexhaustible supply of lumber had, in fact, been exhausted. In 1920, farm income was roughly equivalent to household incomes nationwide, but over the next decade and into the 1930s, as commodity prices fell and foreign competition became more robust, farm income lagged even further behind the rest of the country.

It’s unclear how much moonshine liquor was being distilled in northeastern North Carolina before the Volstead Act. Following a 1919 raid in Currituck County, W.O. Saunders, publisher of the Elizabeth City Independent wrote, “Prior to the inauguration of Bone-Dry prohibition the illicit manufacture of liquor in the Elizabeth City territory was unknown. The news in this paper last week telling of the capture of stills in Camden and Currituck counties came as a shock to the thousands who had a vague idea that ‘moonshining’ belonged to the mountain fastnesses of western North Carolina.”

The rare discovery of a still in these parts seems to have become more regular after the Volstead Act took effect, although it was not solely the Volstead Act that created the change.

Chris Barber, whose book “When Ghosts Made Moonshine: Prohibition in the Albemarle,” examines Prohibition in northeastern North Carolina, recently told Coastal Review about the factors involved and how the illegal practice may have started here.

“This was just making a little bit of money to feed their families originally,” she said. “There was a small depression following World War I when soldiers came back. So people needed to make money,” and Buffalo City, a logging town near East Lake in Dare County long since lost to the forest, “that was a remote location.”

Barber’s title was drawn from a 1931 New York Herald Tribune article, “A Ghost That Makes Booze,” by Ben Dixon MacNeill. The story was picked up by a number of papers including the Independent where the story ran with the headline, “Buffalo City Written up in N.Y. Newspaper.”

“The ghost makes liquor,” MacNeill writes. “Makes liquor with a prodigality and completeness that is without parallel anywhere else in this country, and liquor of an exceedingly high and desirable quality.”

By 1931, the East Lake area had become a thriving center of liquor production — mostly rye whiskey, but corn whiskey, as well.

Back in 1920, production had been small and distribution limited, although that would soon change. The federal government was unprepared to enforce the new law.

“The government provided funds for only 1,500 agents at first to enforce Prohibition across the country. They were issued guns and given access to vehicles, but many had little or no training,” the Mob Museum in Las Vegas notes on its Prohibition webpage.

Although there would eventually be more agents assigned to the area, when Robert Tuttle, the first federal Prohibition agent, arrived in Elizabeth City in February 1920, he was alone covering all of northeastern North Carolina. 

Even after more agents arrived, it remained clear how ill-prepared the government was.

“The government paid them poorly,” Barber said, referring to the work that needed to be done. Cars were not provided.

In order to raid a suspected site in Camden County that borders Elizabeth City, agents had to hire jitney drivers, the equivalent a taxi. When the they arrived at the location, “It was obvious that the people they were going to raid knew it,” Barber said.

What was happening in counties close by Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County was dwarfed by what was happening on the Dare County mainland.

In the 1920s, there were no roads in the East Lake District. The main connection with the outside world was a dock at Buffalo City on Milltail Creek. The area was a virtually impenetrable swamp and sparsely populated. The people who lived there were self-sufficient and tightknit, and they had one other advantage — a well-established connection to Elizabeth City, at that time a transportation hub.

In her 2019 Eastern Carolina University master’s thesis in marine archeology, Reconstructing Buffalo City (1887-1986), Sara Mackenzie Parkin, points to the remoteness of the location and a well-established transportation network as key to an explosive growth in bootleg whiskey production.

“The strategic advantage of their remote location coupled with the proximity of well-traveled trade routes lent itself well to the illegal manufacturing and sale of Buffalo City’s newest trade good,” she wrote.

Federal Prohibition agents were aware of East Lake and in June 1922, with the help of the Coast Guard, they made their first raid.

“By nine o’clock Saturday morning they captured two sixty-gallon corn whiskey plants and destroyed nine hundred gallons of mash at East Lake. They arrested no one,” Barber wrote in her book.

Less than a year later, they agents returned. Again they arrested no one, but Barber writes, “They discovered buildings and equipment. This was more than a still; it was a large, well-organized operation.”

The agents found a still capable, they estimated, of producing 100 gallons of whiskey a day and 7,500 gallons of beer in containers ready to be shipped.

A pattern was emerging. As more federal agents arrived in Elizabeth City working with county sheriffs, they were often able to surprise bootleggers at their stills in areas accessible by car.

“Local Sheriff Found Still Running,” announced the headline in the Sept. 22, 1922, edition of the Independent. The article goes on to report the arrest of “Bruce Burgess, Henry Hughes and a 19-year-old boy named Jones.”

But at East Lake, although the agents could often seize equipment, the men who possessed the knowledge and expertise required to make whiskey were never there.

“Part of the story is the underground network and spies and informants. So agents could rarely go to East Lake and surprise anybody. It was just not possible because (East Lake residents) already knew,” Barber said.

The spies were not always successful, though. To get to East Lake, federal agents had to rely on the Coast Guard for water transportation. The AB-21, the 65-foot-long boat the Coast Guard used to cross Albemarle Sound from Elizabeth City, had a top speed of 6.5 knots, or about 7.5 mph. Almost any motorboat would be able to get to East Lake before it did.

But in August 1927 the AB-21 left after dark and anchored off Durant Island off the north end of East Lake, waiting for daylight. The strategy paid off.

“Sudden Federal Raid at East Lake Brings in Men and Liquor” according to the Aug. 27, 1927, Elizabeth City Daily Advance headline.

In the two-day raid, agents were able to arrest three men and seize “distilling equipment and supplies valued at $33,000 to $36,000.” That would be $585,000 to $638,000 in today’s dollars.

It was apparent that what was happening on mainland Dare County was distinct from anything happening in other areas of northeastern North Carolina.

“Eastlake (and) Buffalo City, liquor became more of an industrial style production. They had bunkhouses left over from timber days,” Barber said. And sometimes, “they had generators and they ran stills around the clock.”

To sustain production on that level, there had to be a way to get the product to market and the product had to be good enough to create demand. East Lake whiskey, apparently, checked both boxes. From Elizabeth City north up the East Coast to New York City, East Lake whiskey was renowned.

“Its smoothness and quality allegedly drove up demand for the product,” Parkin wrote.

This distribution network’s success relied on the active collusion of law enforcement officials here and elsewhere.

The city manager of Norfolk, Virginia, I. Walk Truxton, had learned that honest city officials were seemingly being intimidated by dishonest police and bootleggers and in 1926 he took his suspicions to Prohibition Officer Leighton Blood.

Blood came up with the idea of opening a speakeasy in Norfolk, buying illegal booze from bootleggers there. His plan did snare some 22 people, according to Barber in her book, but the speakeasy was only phase one of the plan.

Agent David Mayne came from upstate New York and he was tasked with breaking up the distribution network. To do that he set up his own still and bootlegging operation at Pierceville in Camden County. Mayne, however, was working from the Virginia Prohibition office. North Carolina Prohibition officers did not know his still had been bought and paid for with federal funds or that it was producing whiskey as part of an ongoing investigation.

On Sept. 15, 1926, North Carolina agents raided the still.

As facts emerged of what the Prohibition agents had been doing, the public was outraged.

“Facts Support Startling Charges That Government Dry Agents Had Moonshine Still Near This City,” read the front-page Daily Advance headline on Jan. 14, 1927.

The outrage, though, was not confined to local papers. Rep. Fiorello Henry LaGuardia, the prominent New York Republican, brought the actions of the agents to the attention of Congress.

On Jan. 10, 1927, Sen. James Read of Missouri introduced a measure demanding that Internal Revenue Commissioner David H. Blair, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Lincoln C. Andrews furnish to the Senate “copies of all orders and correspondence relative to the employment of what is known as undercover agents employed in the enforcement of the prohibition statutes.”

Included in Read’s resolution was an article in the Washington Star Ledger describing in detail the agents’ actions.

In Congress there was growing uncertainty about Prohibition. As early as 1924, Samuel Gompers, head of the powerful American Federation of Labor, sent a letter to Congress. Citing, “the lawless vender of forbidden liquor on the one side, and the lawless enforcement officer on the other, the public has suffered irreparable damage,” Gompers declared. He asked for a modification of the Volstead Act.

A 1931 congressional report showed the failure of Prohibition operations over the previous decade, concluding that, “The evidence before us tends to show a great increase in the number of stills and a universality of operating extending all over the country. The amount of moonshine liquor in this country per year can not be estimated within reasonable bounds.”

In late 1932, with newly elected Franklin Roosevelt about to be sworn in as president, Congress bowed to the inevitable. Both the Democratic and Republican party platforms called for the end of Prohibition. Support in Congress grew for a joint resolution to repeal the 18th Amendment, which the 21^st Amendment did the following year.

First of two parts

In 1972, between 50 and 100 people called the Currituck Banks home. The actual number isn’t important. It could have been a little more or even a little less. The point is no one really knew or cared. The miles of scrubby sand dunes, low-lying interior flats, and sprawling brackish marsh was largely empty except for birds and fish, and that was how the natives preferred it. 

That it couldn’t stay unspoiled was more or less a given. Currituck, a poor, centuries-old economy based on agriculture, needed money, and developing its 23 miles of unspoiled oceanfront seemed to be the answer. Developers had already purchased thousands of acres and were busy laying out designs for resorts from Duck to Corolla. The county had a rough plan to manage what was coming but needed time and help to pull it off. It was, in a way, an existential moment. No less than the future of the Currituck Banks, so bright yet also so perilous, stood in the balance.

One night that year, Earl Slick, a multimillionaire developer from Winston-Salem, took a surprising phone call from a Currituck duck hunting guide. Carl P. White knew every inch of the sound, sure. But more than that he was a savvy investor who listened closely to the wealthy industrialists who hunted the Banks and used that knowledge to buy stocks and land. A few years earlier, White had steered Slick to purchase the Narrows Island Club, a 1,000-acre strip of rich mainland marsh south of Poplar Branch Landing. Now, White proposed another deal. The longtime owners of the Pine Island Hunt Club, the Barney family from Hartford, Connecticut, were looking for a buyer. The property included nearly five miles of unblemished marsh and oceanfront stretching from the Dare County border north.

Slick knew the property. He had been a guest at the club and enjoyed shooting there. But he already owned The Narrows and planned to build a larger, more accommodating family lodge there. His answer was no. Still, the idea of owning Pine Island nagged at him and over the course of several days, Slick found himself wavering back and forth. Finally, he asked White to find out how much the Widow Barney wanted.

Slick’s decision would have an outsized impact on the future direction of the Currituck Banks, both dramatically preserving and altering its landscape, reshaping the architecture, even helping to shift the economics from an economy based on second homes to an investment-driven market. Not that many of the visitors teeming onto the Northern Banks would recognize these impacts. Most have never heard of Earl Slick or know his history. And for Slick, who died in 2007 at the age of 86, that would have been just fine.

When asked his profession, Slick jokingly called himself a “dog-trainer.” Yet here was a maverick, instinctual investor who owned airlines, cattle farms, wineries, and television stations, among his many and varied interests. And while Slick rarely sought publicity, he built two of the most talked-about resorts on the Currituck Banks – Sanderling, a rustic, nature-themed community, and the sprawling Pine Island resort, with more than 300 luxury-styled beach mansions. In a way, Earl Slick’s story mirrors the larger, complicated story of the Banks themselves, a mix of breathtaking natural reserves, waterways and maritime forests, interposed with a conveyor belt of ever-larger, more exclusive vacation resorts — a cultural and environmental drift that has been playing out now for decades.

~

Earl Frates Slick was born in 1920 in western Pennsylvania but grew up in Oklahoma City, where his father moved the family to hunt for oil. Tom Baker Slick was a man of the American moment: independent, hard-charging, seemingly tireless. But he was so luckless at first, locals took to calling him “Dry Hole Slick.” That changed in a heartbeat when Tom B. struck oil at the No. 4 Eakin well, producing 10,000 barrels a day. Another well produced a staggering 43,000 barrels a day. Soon, the same locals were calling Tom B. the luckiest wildcatter around — hell, “The King of all wildcatters,” the most famous wildcatter in the world!

Money spilled all around. Millions and millions of dollars. Earl and his older brother, Tom Jr., grew up in wealth and privilege, boarding at Exeter and attending Yale, with a $10,000-a-year living stipend. But life wasn’t always easy. They lost their father to a stroke at the age of 46. The boys were only 14 and 10. Their mother remarried Tom B.’s partner, Charles Urschel, who continued running the oil business. Years later, Tom Jr., considered a brilliantly esoteric student, became obsessed with hunting the Yeti. He, too, died at 46 when a plane he was piloting crashed returning from a Canadian adventure. Those who knew Earl Slick said he was haunted by the deaths and worried that he was destined to die young as well.

After Yale, Slick flew cargo transports in the war and saw the business possibilities of using planes to haul food and cargo from coast to coast. Shortly after being discharged, in December 1945, he learned that the military planned to auction nine surplus Army Curtus Commandos and headed to Washington. According to a short profile in Time Magazine, he walked into the surplus plane division at 1 p.m. and came out 15 minutes later owning the planes. “After that, things really began to move fast,” he told the reporter.

Slick was all of 25. Clearly, he wouldn’t have been able to buy the planes, which cost $247,000, without family money. Yet, like his father, he was relentless, impatient, and endlessly creative. Over the years, he would build Slick Airways into one of the two-largest air transport businesses in the nation, hauling fresh fruit and vegetables in refrigerated cargo planes from California to the East Coast, later contracting to transport military equipment back and forth to Southeast Asia.

While building Slick Airways, Earl was also on the prowl for other business opportunities. In 1948, he sold two cotton ranches to Lloyd Bentsen Sr., father of the future U.S. senator and candidate for vice president. He also bought a 16,000-acre quail-hunting farm, Mossy Dell, in Georgia, where the boyishly handsome six-footer would shoot from the saddle, and invested in a sprawling cattle ranch in southwestern Australia with the television host Art Linkletter and other celebrities. In time, he would expand into commercial real estate development, building one of the first Thruway Shopping Centers in North Carolina, invest in a vineyard, renovate historic buildings, buy stakes in radio and television stations, build nursing homes, fund a Formula 1 racing team, Slick Racers Inc., collect expensive artwork, and exhibit show horses, including Beau Black, a solid black gelding that, according to newspaper stories, “seldom tasted defeat in the show ring.”

“Earl loved the adventure,” recalled Paul Mickey Jr., an attorney and family friend. “I think he kind of liked the life of Ernest Hemingway. I never got the sense he was a deep thinker so much as a resourceful, canny businessman. Whenever I saw him, he was in fatigues. He was a sportsman.” 

In 1952, Earl moved the operations of Slick Airways to Los Angeles while relocating his family to Winston-Salem, a small but prosperous center of textile and tobacco industries. William E. Hollan Jr., a family friend and longtime business colleague, explained that it was probably so Slick could be closer to Washington, D.C., where he and his air transport business were represented by the powerful regulatory law firm, Steptoe & Johnson. “This was before jets. It was propeller-driven planes … and it was a long flight from San Antonio to Washington. Winston-Salem was a lot closer. He could get up and back in a day,” Hollan said.

Slick also liked the close-knit, genteel culture of Winston-Salem. He quickly became friends with CEOs from Hanes textiles, Chatham Manufacturing, Reynolds Tobacco, as well as Paul Mickey Sr., a managing partner at Steptoe & Johnson, who also was from Winston-Salem. Earl and his wife Jane built a retreat at Roaring Gap, a small, exclusive mountain resort where corporate elites from Winston-Salem socialized. There, they fell into a comfortable rhythm among a small group of friends who valued their privacy and privilege.

“There was a lot of money, yes,” said Hollan, who acted as a spokesman for the family for this article, “but it was not showy wealth, like the Yankees up North. Earl admired that. There was a lot of Southern charm. It was much more his style of things.”

Earlier in his career, Slick spoke to the press and even seemed to enjoy it. But as he aged, he became more discreet, even publicity shy. Pictures rarely appeared in the papers and he avoided interviews. His philanthropy, often generous, wasn’t broadcast. When different rumors and stories circulated, he instructed his employees not to respond. A code of behavior was evolving. His approach extended to hunting on the Currituck Banks, which Slick first appears to have visited in 1952 as a guest of Steptoe & Johnson. When he purchased his own club and had guests down, they discovered there were strict rules. Guests never shot before dawn and once they were given a blind, they weren’t allowed to change. They were provided one box of shells – always copper, never lead because lead was poisonous – and when they were gone, that was it. For Slick, hunting was about the experience and the camaraderie, not how many birds a hunter put in his bag.

There is another possible explanation for Slick’s penchant for privacy. In the 1930s, his stepfather Charles Urschel was kidnapped from their Oklahoma City mansion while playing bridge with friends. The kidnappers were led by the infamous George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife Kathryn. Urschel was returned home after nine days. But the family was never the same, withdrawing from public life and hiring armed guards to surround their house.

Now, as he debated whether to buy the Pine Island Club, Slick wavered between his roles as a conservationist who loved the outdoors, and as a developer who made millions buying and selling land. How could he balance these seemingly opposing forces? Should he even try? Or should he just walk away from the deal?

Next in the series: The story of Pine Island

This special commentary feature is part of Coastal Review’s 12-month observance of the Coastal Area Management Act’s 50th year.

When first considered 50 years ago, the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) was the most controversial environmental legislation considered in the state. It was then and remains the state’s only attempt to forge a state-local government partnership for regional resource management. Many observers in 1974 thought that if not repealed, this new law would collapse from the weight of its overly ambitious design.

Yet CAMA is still with us. This article reviews how the law came to be, how it has worked, and the challenges it faces moving forward.

Adoption

Gov. Bob Scott first proposed a state coastal program in 1969. Given the complexity of developing a “comprehensive and enforceable plan” for the coastal zone, in 1971 a 25-member Blue Ribbon Committee with diverse interests was created to develop legislation. It took the committee two years to develop a draft bill that served as the framework for CAMA.

In early 1973, the administration of newly elected Republican Gov. Jim Holshouser supported moving forward with the bill. It was introduced by the Democratic chairs of the House and Senate committees that would consider the bill, Rep. Willis Whichard of Durham and Sen. Bill Staton of Lee County. Coastal local governments quickly expressed reservations about the state taking over traditional local powers relative to land use management. So, the sponsors decided to conduct a series of hearings in the coastal area between the 1973 and 1974 legislative sessions to further refine the legislation.

After these hearings and much deliberation, the bill was revised to that strengthened the role of local government and move most policy decisions to a Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) composed of citizens with a broad range of differing interests and expertise (rather than with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary as originally proposed). A Coastal Resources Advisory Committee with strong local representation was added to bolster local involvement. The bill still faced strong opposition from some in the development community, from private property rights advocates, and some coastal local governments. Most coastal legislators remained in opposition. But with strong bipartisan support from Gov. Holshouser and Lt. Gov. Jim Hunt (who at that time was the presiding officer in the Senate), and after several legislative near-death experiences, the bill was enacted on April 11, 1974.

This four-year effort to develop CAMA modelled what has been a defining feature of coastal management in North Carolina – proceeding cautiously but ambitiously and only after a great deal of discussion and consensus building amongst affected interests.

Judicial and Legislative Challenges

The threat of judicial invalidation was a serious immediate concern. The three principal legal challenges were that application of the law to coastal counties rather than making it a statewide program rendered it a “local law” prohibited by the state constitution, that the broad authority granted to the CRC constituted an unlawful delegation of legislative discretion, and that the development regulations would be an unconstitutional taking of private property. In 1978 the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the law on the local act and unlawful delegation claims and held the takings claim was premature.

There have since been nearly 30 state appellate court decisions regarding CAMA. Most have dealt with the process for making individual permit appeals to the courts, the details of specific enforcement orders, and the occasional interpretation of development standards and variance rules as applied to individual applications. No cases have found that CAMA rules unconstitutionally constrain private property rights, notably upholding decisions to deny permits for fill for a road in wetlands and for construction of shoreline erosion control structures.

The threat of legislative repeal of the law did not materialize. That is not to say there has not been ongoing legislative opposition. In the early 1980s a prominent coastal legislator threatened to “gut CAMA like a fish on the wharf in Wanchese” and unsuccessfully sought to eliminate most of its budget. While the General Assembly has continually tweaked and refined the law, most of the legislative changes strengthened or refined the details of the law rather than weakening it. Budgetary support has waxed and waned over the years, but as part of broader trends affecting all environmental programs.

Program Accomplishments

CAMA has successfully met most of its lofty goals.

Land use planning. When CAMA was enacted only a small handful of coastal cities or counties had land use plans and local development regulations. That was not surprising given the rural and small-town nature of much of the coastal region. So, building local institutional planning capacity was an early focus of CAMA. By 1993 all 20 coastal counties and 67 municipalities (including 59 cities with populations under 5,000) had adopted plans and had them approved by the CRC.

The state’s planning guidelines have evolved over time to promote local attention to key policy areas, including addressing storm hazards and rebuilding, beach access, coastal water quality, and more resilient and sustainable development patterns. Greater flexibility has been granted to local governments to tailor planning to their particular circumstances. While the quality of individual local plans still varies a good deal, the level of citizen and local government engagement in addressing future land use and development has moved from nearly nonexistent to robust. This would have happened for only a few local governments without the CAMA planning mandate and the substantial state and federal funding provided to prepare and implement local plans.

Development standards. The second early focus of the program was developing a permit program for critical coastal environmental areas. In 1977 the CRC designated coastal waters and wetlands and about 3% of the coastal land area as its permit jurisdiction. While the areas have been tweaked and modestly expanded several times since, the scope of CAMA permit jurisdiction has been accepted and noncontroversial. Initiatives to consolidate and streamline permit processing have been adopted over the years, including exemptions for minor development and expedited general permits for routine work.

The standards for development have prevented unwise and harmful development while not deterring beneficial and desirable development. The wholesale filling and excavation of coastal marshes taking place in the 1950s and 1960s was halted. Piers, bulkheads, and marinas are built without destroying critical fisheries habitats or interfering with public use of coastal waters. “Living shorelines” and other innovations for dealing with estuarine shoreline erosion are being encouraged. Redevelopment of urban waterfronts and enhancement of the state’s ports proceeds in a responsible fashion.

The standards adopted for development in ocean hazard areas are one of the more significant program accomplishments. Oceanfront setbacks have prevented construction of new structures that would shortly be in danger of falling into the ocean. When these setbacks were enacted in 1979, it was estimated there were nearly 800 existing oceanfront lots that could not meet the new setback requirements. The doubled setback later adopted for large structures further reduces future losses, particularly when major storms strike the coast. CAMA standards prohibit the construction of oceanfront bulkheads that would eventually destroy the public beach. These measures, which would not exist without CAMA, have been critical in preserving the attractive ocean beaches that are a beloved state treasure and essential to the tourism industry.

Beach and water access. The General Assembly significantly improved CAMA by adding an ocean beach access program in 1981 and extending it to estuarine shorelines and waters in 1983. These laws declared, and the courts subsequently confirmed, that the public has a right to free use of ocean beaches and public trust waters. These programs provided the walkways, dune crossovers, piers, parking, and restrooms needed for people to get to and use these public resources. Since an initial $1 million beach access appropriation in 1981, the state has provided over $50 million in grants to support nearly 500 access projects. This extensive access program has been a rousing success.

Preservation of natural areas. As with beach access, CAMA did not originally include a program for preservation of natural areas that were not already under public ownership. That was rectified when the state secured approval for a four-site National Estuarine Research Reserve in 1982. Additional sites were added in the mid-1980s as state protected areas. The General Assembly formalized this initiative with the adoption of legislation establishing a state coastal reserve program in 1989. There are now 10 coastal reserve sites containing over 44,000 acres, assuring the long-term preservation of important natural areas for research, education, and public enjoyment.

Challenges

Coastal management is never “solved.” The appropriate balance between competing legitimate public interests in development and conservation is always in flux. New issues and challenges emerge. Old conflicts and controversies are resurrected. Interest groups on all sides continually jockey for some new advantage.

Two additional factors will make resolution of ongoing coastal issues more challenging in the coming decades.

The state’s population, which was under 5.5 million when CAMA was enacted, is now over 10.5 million and is expected to top 14 million by 2050. While coastal population growth in the 1960s created the need for CAMA, the coming decades will see even greater growth. Six of our oceanfront counties are projected to have population increases of over 25% by 2050. Accommodating this growth will put significant pressures on natural resources and public infrastructure. Many of our beach towns are nearly built out at the current low-density levels desired by residents and visitors alike. Securing affordable housing and maintaining the traditional character and charm of coastal communities will be difficult. At the same time, six of our coastal counties are facing population losses of over 10% by 2050, which poses different but no less significant challenges for these more rural coastal areas.

There has been an understandable pressure on the state program since the mid-1980s to focus its efforts and attention on improving the permitting program that it directly manages. However, as those who crafted CAMA clearly understood, the permitting program alone will be inadequate to meet this coming growth challenge. Renewed funding and attention to the collaborative state-local land use planning built into CAMA will be necessary.

The second factor that will increasingly challenge CAMA success is the accelerating impacts of climate change in general and sea level rise particularly. Accommodating new development and protecting natural resources will be more difficult given more frequent and widespread flooding and storms, increasing habitat loss, threats to transportation and utilities infrastructure, and the near-certain eventual need to address major post-storm recovery and rebuilding. While meaningful attention is now being given to adaptation and resilience issues, going well beyond “business as usual” will be essential to deal with these longer-term impacts. The integrated use of regulation, planning, acquisition, and public education that is built into CAMA provides the opportunity to do this.

Keys to Continued Success

Legislative support and funding have always been and will continue to be fragile. Those disappointed by policies adopted by the CRC seek to persuade the legislature to intervene, a perennial practice that will no doubt continue. Building continuing and constructive legislative engagement is necessary for program success.

The question of who makes the key program policy decisions was one of the most hotly debated issues 50 years ago and continues today with debate on how the CRC should be composed and who should appoint its members. How that is resolved is critical as the program will thrive only with quality appointments. The CRC members’ expertise, judgment, dedication, and leadership are indispensable elements for program success.

Broad public engagement and education, which was absolutely essential to creation of the program and its early success, is all the more difficult with the loss of local newspapers, fractured electronic media, and increasingly rigid partisan and ideological polarization. Building a shared understanding of the impacts of and threats to coastal development is necessary to build the consensus needed to address coming challenges.

The guiding principle for those crafting CAMA and responsible for its early successes was an abiding dedication to long-term protection of the coast for the beneficial use and enjoyment of all its residents and visitors. In the early 1980s, then-CRC Chair Parker Chesson would often remind the CRC, CRAC, staff, and public at the end of long and sometimes fractious discussion, “We’ve heard from everybody and now it’s time to decide what is in the best long-term public interest.”

Adherence to that admonition, along with a lot of hard work by a lot of good people, will be necessary if we want to have a 100-year celebration of the enactment of CAMA.

In 1976, Walter Davis purchased 4 miles of oceanfront near Kitty Hawk for $2.1 million. It was not his first foray on the Outer Banks. The colorful oilman turned land speculator had been gobbling up large chunks of the Banks for the better part of a decade, with an eye toward controlling the oceanfront from Kitty Hawk to Corolla. 

Davis, who grew up on a soybean farm near Elizabeth City, worked as a stockboy for $9.50 a week at F.W. Woolworth’s, then built a billion-dollar empire stretching from Texas to New York, wasn’t interested in building beach houses. He saw the sandy tract as an investment and one day hoped to sell it at a hefty profit. After all, he was a speculator and that’s what speculators do. They don’t get rich by betting small. They bet big. Which is what Walter Davis had been doing for decades, sometimes rashly, but almost always without regret.

Still, this latest purchase was different. Southern Shores was an actual development with hundreds of houses and at least that many empty lots waiting to be built. Davis was like a dog chasing a car. Now that he had finally caught the car, he didn’t know what to do. He needed help.

He turned to Charles Hayes Jr., better known as Mickey, a talented young landscape architect who had grown up in Virginia Beach and spent part of his youth frolicking on the Banks. Davis called Hayes to come visit him at an upstate office in Cary. When Hayes arrived, Davis was nowhere to be found. So, he plopped down in a chair to wait. And wait. When Davis finally emerged from an interior office, Mickey Hayes saw that he was wrapped in a spider’s web of telephone wires.

“He had three telephones going at once. It was a Sunday and he had $350,000 bet on pro football games. He was in there managing his bets,” Hayes recalled.

It is unclear if Davis won or lost that day. He bet so much, and so often, it was hard to keep score. It was a different story for Mickey Hayes. Not only did he win a job, Davis gave him “full autonomy” to finish designing and building Southern Shores, today considered one of the more attractive communities on the Outer Banks. Walter Davis’ bet on Southern Shores eventually paid off as well. In 1985, he agreed to sell the development for $6 million – or about three times his original investment.

~

How do you begin to describe someone who in many ways is indescribable?

Walter Royal Davis was a singular, larger-than-life American: self-possessed, enigmatic, impulsive, quick-tempered, yet wildly, even rashly, generous. Booted from several high schools for his indifference to classroom schooling, he nonetheless prized learning and later gave away millions for scholarships and libraries and was invited to sit on the boards of prestigious universities. But his philanthropy wasn’t limited to slapping his name on buildings. Stories abound in Eastern North Carolina of Davis leaving $100 tips for $1 cups of coffee. A rare raconteur who also listened closely, Davis would lean into a waitress and ask about her life and goals. If she dreamed of going to college, Davis would make it happen.

According to a family biography written by North Carolina journalist Ned Cline, Davis once paid to bring the comedian Bill Cosby to a school in Manteo as a reward to the children. By the time he died in 2008, at the age of 88, it is estimated that Davis had given away over $100 million. His generosity included his ex-wives. Davis was married six times to four different women (two, twice). Cline recounts that Davis agreed to settle one divorce for $1 million but insisted that the money be delivered in $1 bills by armored truck. That was also Davis: an unrepentant rogue. But not one you wanted to rub the wrong way.

Davis’s politics veered from Democrat to Republican, depending which party happened to be in office. He gave generously to all, millions by his count, not necessarily expecting anything in return except that the politicians would pick up the telephone when he called, which they did. Walter Davis could make or break careers and legislation. He knew everyone and, if he didn’t know someone, he quickly found a way to befriend him. When he returned to his native North Carolina from the Texas oil fields, he kept a suite at the Radisson Inn in Raleigh Triangle Park, where politicians paraded by for his drinks, advice and money. In the late 1960s, he bought a shabby motel in Kitty Hawk and spruced up one of the rooms to host all-night poker parties. Among his guests were Sen. William J. Fulbright of Arkansas and House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. He also knew Henry Kissinger and Dean Rusk, and once socialized with French President Charles de Gaulle, according to his biographical sketch.

When young Marc Basnight was considering a run for the North Carolina Senate in the 1980s, Davis pulled him aside and told him he wasn’t ready. Still, he saw something. Like Davis, Basnight had barely escaped high school yet was preternaturally smart and good around people. Davis bought Basnight a subscription to The Economist magazine and quizzed him weekly while they tooled around Manteo in his Lincoln Town Car. When it appeared Basnight wasn’t keeping up, Davis called him stupid and advised the would-be politician to pick up the pace. Basnight won his election and went on to serve as Senate pro tempore, the second-most important position in North Carolina politics. Visitors to his Raleigh office recalled it being filled with magazines of all stripes — many of which were dogeared or marked-up. Clearly, he had gotten the message. Dumb wasn’t going to cut it.

~

After quitting Woolworth’s, Davis rotated through different jobs, working as a long-haul trucker, office manager and restauranteur. He spent three months in federal prison for failing to pay business taxes, then relocated to Salinas, California, where he met another rebellious entrepreneur, Fred Rumbley, who quickly recognized Davis’s innate business savvy. The pair worked profitably together for a quarter-century. In the 1950s, Rumbley backed Davis on a new venture: hauling oil from wells to refineries in the booming Texas Panhandle. Davis moved to Midland, the hard-driving, hard-drinking center of the oil fields, and began buying tanker trucks and making friends, including the future president, George H.W. Bush. The flamboyant Davis became so popular, bartenders named a drink for him at the Midland Petroleum Club – the “Walter Davis,” straight Seagram’s VO over ice, according to Cline’s biography.

After a number of years, Davis was hauling a half-million barrels of crude a day and making millions for the Rumbley-Davis partnership. In time, he would branch out, adding real estate and manufacturing businesses, and his wealth would grow to preposterous levels. But the Texas Panhandle was brutally hot in summer and Davis decided to split his time at a Nags Head bungalow he bought. In the late ’60s, he began to invest in Outer Banks real estate, picking up a home here and there, the old Sea Ranch Motel, even a fishing pier.

Davis had more stories than a dog. One that stands out is how, one summer day in 1968, he was looking for a bottle of Orange Crush soda on a Kitty Hawk pier. When he couldn’t find one, he complained to the pier manager, who apparently didn’t recognize Davis and told him, “Tough,” and if he didn’t like it, he should buy the pier. Which Davis did, writing a check on the spot for $96,000. A decade later, he sold the pier for $2.5 million – a testament to Davis’s skill, luck, and the soaring real estate values on the Outer Banks.

About this time, Davis was introduced to Armand Hammer, volatile chairman of the board of Occidental Petroleum. The meeting was arranged by North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford and took place at an Outer Banks marina, where Hammer’s yacht docked beside Davis’s prized boat, Gemel 1. Initially, Davis liked Hammer. He was an impulsive gambler, like him. Two years later, he merged his oil business with Occidental. It would prove to be a horrible mistake, Davis would later say. The worst decision he ever made.

In the late ’60s, Davis began to buy large tracts along the pristine Currituck Banks, including 4 miles of oceanfront for $1.2 million from the members of the Currituck Shooting Club. He used Carl P. White, a legendary waterfowl guide and hunt lodge manager who speculated in land on the side, as his proxy. White acquired an option and then sold it back to Davis.

A year later, Davis turned to White again, this time to buy the Pine Island Hunt Club, which had been owned since the 1930s by the Barney family from Connecticut. The tract included roughly 5 miles of gently rolling sand dunes, interior forests and sprawling salt marsh from the Atlantic Ocean to the Currituck Sound. Davis, then a vice president of Occidental, used a company subsidiary to pay for the $2.5 million option on the land. According to legend, when Hammer learned about the deal, he quickly canceled the payment. Not long after, an embittered Davis left Occidental.

With his plans to control the Currituck Banks scuttled, Davis sold the Currituck Shooting Club land to James Johnson and Coastland Realty, which developed the popular Ocean Sands resort. But Davis wasn’t quite done. In 1976, he purchased the 2,700-acre Southern Shores property from David Stick, the local historian and developer, who was having money issues. Davis and Stick had become friends while working together on the initial Coastal Resources Commission Advisory Committee a few years earlier. Stick was divorced and in debt and wanted to devote more time to his writing. According to Mickey Hayes, “Mr. Davis thought a lot of David. He had no interest in the real estate. He wanted to help David and that is what he did.”

Davis left Hayes to finish Southern Shores. Hayes said he worked tirelessly during the day laying out the undeveloped lots, “trying to make the houses fit the land,” and his nights designing houses on the side. One house he designed was for Davis along the northern oceanfront in Southern Shores. Hayes laid it out horizontally, not vertically, like most beach houses today. “It was a huge house and had everything you could put in there,” he said. “It didn’t matter what it cost. Mr. Davis said: `Do what you can do.’ And I did.”

This historical profile is presented as part of Coastal Review’s 2024 yearlong examination of 50 years of the North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act, including the science that helped to inform and the advocacy and leadership that resulted in passage of the landmark 1974 legislation, as well as the coastal environmental challenges yet ahead.

Robert Dolan and Paul Godfrey didn’t meet the way scientists often do, at a conference or sharing a drink after a long, technical talk. Instead, they met on a wind-blown beach near Cape Lookout, part of the long, winding bands of sand we know as the Outer Banks. It was 1971.

Godfrey, a quiet but creative botanist, and his wife Melinda, a pathbreaking marine biologist, had been digging cores along transects in the sand and mud for a research project trying to determine the history of the remote, 28,000-acre Cape Lookout National Seashore. Each layer of sand, peat and mud was like a chapter in a book, they recalled, secrets revealed here, surprises there, building to an unexpected ending.

Dolan, a coastal geologist who specialized in sedimentology, was also digging cores, near Cape Hatteras. He had arrived there almost on a lark in 1959 searching for a topic for his doctoral dissertation. “Why not study the Outer Banks?” one of his professors at Louisiana State University suggested. At the time, little was known about the chain of islands’ geology; some scientists even theorized the Outer Banks must be anchored to a coral reef, which prevented the islands from washing away. Ever confident and always up for an adventure, Dolan packed the family wagon, collected his wife and young daughter, and off they went. A decade later, he was still studying the islands and publishing seminal papers when it was suggested he meet Paul Godfrey and his wife, who were doing similarly impressive work a couple of hours away by boat on the undeveloped Core Banks.

Dolan and Godfrey knew one another from their work and contacts in the National Park Service, which manages the seashores. But they had never spoken, let alone met. Paul and Melinda took Dolan and several park service officials to see their cores, which Melinda had cleverly engineered with PVC piping.

Paul Godfrey, now 83, and living on a nature preserve in Western Massachusetts, recently recalled: “I think Bob was really intrigued. All of the species we identified as being adapted to the coast, he picked up on that right away. He saw we were coming to similar conclusions. The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

“The islands weren’t fixed in place like people thought. Nor were they washing away. They were fine, healthy, moving and adapting, the same way humans do.”

— Paul Godfrey

After their meeting, Dolan and Godfrey began to work together on various projects while they consulted for the park service and held down jobs as young professors at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts, respectively.

Their collaborations would forever change the way coastal scientists looked at barrier islands and prompt the National Park Service to reverse its decades-old policy of trying to hold the islands in place by constructing artificial sand dunes, engineering the beach, bulldozing sand around after storms, even fertilizing the grass and shrubs by plane.

It all sounds so simple today — allow water, wind and storms to naturally sculpt the islands — but it was a revolutionary idea in the early 1970s, even heretical. Many villagers had grown accustomed to the park service protecting them and keeping open N.C. Highway 12, the only route on and off the islands. Even today, decades later, the politics are challenging, with the park service expected to provide a buffer between the ocean and the ever-larger and more expensive vacation homes that line the eroding shoreline and fuel the Banks’ billion-dollar tourism economy.

~

They made an unlikely pair. Robert Dolan grew up in Southern California and was an avid surfer and self-described beach bum at a time when surfing was considered novel and daring in the Golden State. Following a stint in the Navy, he earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in the Earth sciences at Oregon State University. He then headed south, to Baton Rouge, to work on his doctorate in coastal geology at Louisiana State University. Various profiles of Dolan, including one in John Alexander’s 1992 book, “Ribbon of Sand,” described him as confident, exuberant, passionate and adventurous.

Paul Godfrey grew up on a small farm in central Connecticut where he developed an abiding respect for nature. Melinda: around water on Cape Cod, where she learned how to handle boats and measure her own confidence in a world dominated by men. The future couple met in graduate school at Duke University, where Paul was pursuing a PhD, Melinda a master’s. One day, Melinda walked into a call on soil composition affectionately called “Dirt.”

“It was all men,” Paul recalled. “Melinda walked in and all these men were saying, ‘What is she doing here?’” They became lab partners and later Paul followed Melinda to Beaufort, where she worked as an assistant in the school’s renowned marine lab. “It was how I got interested in the coast. Melinda taught me. She was pretty, too,” he laughed.

After arriving on the Outer Banks, Dolan settled his wife and young daughter in a Nags Head cottage about 200 yards from the Atlantic Ocean. In the early morning of March 7, 1962, Dolan awoke to find the ocean rushing under their cottage. Another cottage, seaward of his own, had broken loose and was crashing toward them.

“In record time, I packed my personal belongings and research gear into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and headed for high ground,” he wrote 25 years later in an editorial for the Journal of Coastal Research.     

Dolan had wanted to study the effects of powerful storms on barrier islands. Here was his chance. After delivering his wife and daughter to higher ground, he returned to take measure of the damage. The Ash Wednesday Storm, a three-day nor’easter featuring five high tides, each one higher than the last, was one of the strongest storms to ever strike the Outer Banks. It flooded or flattened scores of homes, crumpled a pier where Dolan had recently installed a tidal gage, and washed away a 30-foot aluminum tower he had built to take photos of the beach.

But the storm also answered some of his research questions. For example, it showed that the massive artificial dunes that Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps workers had constructed during the Great Depression to “stabilize” the islands were no match for the storm surge and waves. It also demonstrated how the storm washed large fans of sand across the road to the middle of the island, elevating it, a form of coastal adaptation now known as overwash. As long as man didn’t interfere, barrier islands would heal themselves even after epochal storms, Dolan concluded, shifting sand inland, slowly rebuilding foredunes, widening the marsh along the tidal inlets and sounds.

Dolan had also used a machine to dig 140 cores to study sand samples and test the theory that the islands were anchored to coral reefs. He dug and dug. But all he found was sand, layer after layer, one older than the last — a clear indication that the islands weren’t fixed in place, but were moving. Always moving.

Paul and Melinda Godfrey arrived at similar conclusions near Cape Lookout. Melinda had ingeniously found a way to use PVC piping to take deep samples of sand and mud. She and Paul then pored over each layer, studying the shells, clams and plants for hints that helped to date the formation of the island. The wider and deeper they dug, the more surprises they found: snails near the beach that only could have come from the marsh; shells near the marsh that only could have come from the beach. It was their eureka moment, “powerfully proving,” Godfrey said, “that the islands were moving, slowly rolling over themselves as they inched their way toward land.”       

~

Dolan had begun writing up his findings in research papers for the National Park Service while becoming increasingly vocal about the threats that rampant development posed to Cape Hatteras National Seashore. In 1972, he was joined by Paul Godfrey in a paper questioning the park service’s decades-old practice of spending millions of dollars on dune-building and beach-engineering after storms. The service’s practices gave “the false impression of safety and stability offered by the [artificial] barrier dunes,” they wrote. “As the system is stabilized, man builds roads and utilities that establish a `line-of-development’ which soon becomes a ‘line-of-defense.’”

As you might imagine, the criticism made for some tense moments between the researchers and the park service. “But to their credit, they came around,” said Godfrey. In 1973, Director Ronald H. Walker announced that the park service would no longer try to hold the line against the forces of nature. “There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature,” he told reporters. “We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

“There is just no way the National Park Service can continue to fight nature. We’ve spent all of this money; tried various ways to control the situation, but none of them has worked.”

— Ronald H. Walker, Director, National Park Service, in 1973

The policy shift was the direct result of the work of Dolan, who died in 2016, and Paul and Melinda Godfrey showing that the Outer Banks were “dynamic natural landscapes” that will adapt and repair themselves after storms, losing sand in some places but gaining it in others as part of the natural evolutionary process of barrier islands.

Despite their warnings, developers and governments continued to add thousands of vacation houses and investment properties along the shifting shorelines – scores of which quickly were threatened by rising seas and storms. In the last few decades alone, county, state and federal taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars renourishing beaches, building and rebuilding artificial dunes, and constructing multimillion-dollar bridges to bypass storm-damaged roads.

In 2021, the park service adopted a revised sand management policy to help speed up the permitting process, allowing state workers to repair dunes and scrape sand off of N.C. 12 and other applicants to seek sand management permits within national seashore boundaries. But even that may not be enough to satisfy property owners and politicians.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a Republican representing North Carolina’s 3rd District, drafted language directing Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac “to identify potential long-term, cost-effective sediment management activities to minimize the impacts of beach erosion.”

The spending bill provision and ever-evolving policy could place the National Park Service back in the beach-building business.

Footnote: Dolan and the Godfreys continued to study the Outer Banks for decades, bringing hundreds of eager students to dig cores, study the ecology and geology, and experience the unfiltered beauty of the Banks.

Reprinted from the Daily Advance.

HERTFORD — Hertford town officials are exploring a possible historic district designation for an area in West Hertford.

Hertford Town Council voted unanimously last week to accept a proposal from Landmark Preservation Associates to perform the work needed to secure the designation.

Town Manager Janice Cole recommended the firm based in Lexington, Virginia, to conduct a study in preparation for applying for an official historic district designation.

Landmark’s work would cost the town between $24,000 and $26,000, with the final amount to be determined in negotiation with the town. Cole said she had been told to expect a fee of $30,000, so she was pleased with the proposed amount.

Dan Pezzoni of Landmark Preservation Associates states on his website that he “provides architectural history and preservation consulting services” and has done work “from the East Coast to the Mountain West in states as diverse as Nevada and North Carolina, Kansas and West Virginia.”

According to the website, the firm’s clients include homeowners and municipalities seeking assistance with historic designations like the National Register of Historic Places, which is what the town of Hertford is hiring Landmark Preservation Associates to help with.

Other clients include “business owners planning the rehabilitation of a historic building; historical organizations in need of research and editing for their architectural history; and archaeologists and architects in need of an architectural historian as a team member.”

In another matter, the town council approved a preliminary resolution for financing the purchase of a new fire truck.

Cole said the town has been trying to buy a new fire truck and has identified one at a price of $650,000. She recalled that the council had indicated it plans to take half the cost of the truck from fund balance and seek a loan for the remainder.

Fund balance is the town’s reserve that is set aside for items such as emergencies and special capital projects.

The N.C. Local Government Commission requires the preliminary resolution as a first step toward approving the town’s borrowing of the funds.

Council also voted to accept a $5,000 grant from ElectriCities for tree trimming around utility lines.

Former Councilman Quentin Jackson asked to address the council during public comment but was told he could not do so since he had not signed up before 6 p.m. in accordance with the town’s established procedure.

The Daily Advance is a newspaper based in Elizabeth City and serving Chowan, Camden, Currituck, Pasquotank and Perquimans counties. Coastal Review is partnering with The Daily Advance to provide readers with more stories of interest about our coast.

In 1860, Edmund Ruffin described the Corolla wild horses, the Banker horses, in his book, “Sketches of Lower North Carolina, and the Similar Adjacent Lands,” in unflattering language.

“These horses are all of small size, with rough and shaggy coats, and long manes. They are generally ugly,” he wrote.

Ruffin’s description is apt: The Corolla horses are small, and they tend to have rough, shaggy coats and long manes. Beautiful and ugly are in the eyes of the beholder, but even Meg Puckett, herd manager for the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, agrees they are not show animals.

“Some of them are, we call them marshy, swampy ones. But those are the ones that survive, and they look like that way for a reason,” she said.

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund is the horses’ protector.

The Corolla wild horses are feral animals, a species that has been introduced into an environment and is not native to it. They are certainly horses, but their behavior has little in common with domestic horses, something Puckett knows from experience.

“I’ve had domestic horses my whole life,” she said. “And they’re so different. The way they think, the way they behave, just everything. Nothing is the same.”

How or when they first came to coastal North Carolina is unknown. Genetic testing has shown a direct link between the Corolla herd and the mustangs of the Conquistadors, although there are other genetic influences in their makeup.

Whatever their origins may have been, the Banker horses long thrived. Writing for the National Geographic in 1926, Melville Charter estimated that, “Between 5,000 and 6,000 of these wild horses roam the sandy banks of the North Carolina coast …”

After the 1920s, however, the population plummeted. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which was worried that the herd would compete with migratory waterfowl for resources when it established the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge in 1938, placed a bounty on the horses.

Other factors, including a change in North Carolina open range laws that required the once free ranging horses to be penned, also contributed to a steep decline in the population.

The last remnants of that herd now live on the Shackelford Banks on Onslow Bay or Carova, the area that stretches 11 miles north of Corolla to the Virginia state line. Carova is an area with no paved roads, although large vacation homes dot the landscape.

A landrace breed

Banker horses have adapted to their environment. More than 160 years ago, Ruffin noted that the herd could survive where other breeds would die.

“To introduce horses of more noble race … if turned loose here, would scarcely live through either the plague of blood-sucking insects of the first summer, or the severe privations of the first winter,” he wrote.

The ability of the horses to survive in an environment that would most likely kill other breeds differentiates the Banker horses.

“They are considered a landrace breed, which means that they are a breed that has developed in a specific region and has developed adaptations, physical and behavioral adaptations, based on where they live,” Puckett said. “That sets them apart, regardless of anything else. And that’s what makes them Banker horses and culturally significant.”

It’s a hot and humid day on the Carova beach north of Corolla. On the dunes lining the beach, there is a small harem, a stallion, two mares, and a colt grazing on the sea oats.

The sea oats and other grasses that grow in the dunes are part of their adaptation. Puckett points out that what grows in the sandy soil of Carova would not sustain a domestic horse.

“They couldn’t process it and it also wouldn’t be enough calories,” she said. “That’s the big thing with these horses, they just do not need the calories.”

The reverse is also true — the Corolla horse cannot process the nutrient-rich grass that most horses eat. As development continues in the Carova area, some homeowners have planted grass. For the horse, it’s another place to graze, but Puckett notes, “that green grass is not that great for them.”

There are times a horse must be removed from the herd, usually to save its life, and after recovery from an injury or illness, the animal cannot go back to the wild. The Corolla Wild Horse Fund has a 10-acre farm where rescued horses are placed.

“You can’t put them out in the pasture at first because it’s just too much. They go out in the dirt paddock … because the grass will kill them,” Puckett said.

Managing the herd

Because a significant portion of the land where the horses roam is in the Currituck National Wildlife Refuge, the size of the herd is limited to 130 horses by a management agreement with U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Puckett said the current population is 101, although there could be some uncounted animals in the marsh islands on the north end of Currituck Sound.

Recently a mare and her foal were added to the herd, and Puckett, who has named well over half the herd and knows them all by sight, is certain the pair had not been seen in the past.

“The mother of this foal has a very distinctive marking on her face, so I am positive that she’s not in our file,” she said.

That illustrates how difficult it is to get an accurate count of the herd.

“From what we’ve seen, there were five total out on that island. But you know, the horses go back and forth between those islands all the time,” she said.

Difficult decisions

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund has two goals with the herd, and Puckett said the two objectives can be at odds with each other at times.

“Managing a population of wild animals and also managing breed conservation do not always go hand in hand,” she said. “Not only are we trying to allow a wild population of animals to stay here and remain wild, but we have to make sure that they can do that. We have such a small population that every individual is critically so important that we can’t afford to lose them. So, at what point do you step in? And at what point do you let nature take its course? And it can be tricky.”

Puckett said the horses can survive injuries that a domestic horse does not encounter, such as after a fight between stallions.

“They can survive injuries and issues that a domestic horse would just lay down and die. You’ll have a stallion with a neck bite or something like that, but they’re tough. It’s very, very rare that you need to intervene when it comes to natural injuries. My general rule of thumb is, if something happened to it naturally, I’m not messing with it. It doesn’t need me giving antibiotics. That’s a part of life for these horses,” Puckett said.

There are injuries and diseases in which a horse must be treated, and sometimes difficult decisions must be made.

Equine pythiosis is almost always fatal to a horse if untreated. Sometimes called swamp cancer, the pathogen that causes it is Pythium insidiosum.

The Louisiana State University Ag Center website describes the disease as, “traditionally thought of as an aquatic fungi or water mold and typically occurs in wetland conditions.”

It begins at a small cut. The wound does not heal and develops into tumor-like lesions. Over time, the pathogen will infect the animal’s entire system, eventually killing it.

Since 2020, there have been four cases of the disease among the Corolla herd …

“… that we know of,” Puckett stressed.

The first case that was detected illustrates the often-difficult decisions that must be made balancing herd management and breed conservation.

“The first mare that got it, she had just had a foal. So we said, ‘Alright, this is fatal, but it’s not immediately fatal.’ The quality of life really doesn’t begin to deteriorate right away,” she said.

The options were to take the mare in for treatment immediately at the North Carolina State University College for Veterinary Medicine or allow her to raise her colt.

Although quality of life for the mare was not yet affected, Puckett and the vets who were aware of the situation decided the disease was too far advanced for a successful outcome. But, if they pulled the mare from herd before the colt was weaned, the colt would also have to be taken from the herd and raised at the farm.

“The chances of us being able to save her at this point were pretty slim,” Puckett explained. “We’ve now lost her and the foal from the herd, or we can leave her here, let her raise him and then next year when he’s old enough, we’ll take her and see what we can do about treating her. That’s what we decided to do. She unfortunately did not survive.”

“But the colt is still here. He has a harem of his own now,” she added.

Human interaction

Many of the people who encounter the Banker horses do so when the animals come out of the dunes and wade into the surf.

“Especially when it’s really buggy and hot,” Puckett said.

The beach is a crowded place, with four-wheel-drive vehicles lined up for miles. On this recent day, a stallion and two mares can be seen walking along the wet sand. A Currituck County ordinance mandates a 50-foot separation between people and the horses, and on this day, the beachgoers are doing a good job of keeping their distance.

The horses don’t seem to be bothered by the families and all the cars.

“They don’t care about people,” Puckett said. “They’re going to go where they’re most comfortable. But, do I think that it does change their behavior? Some. If it’s really, really crowded, that could certainly deter them from wanting to go out there. But at the same time, they’re used to it.”

The Corolla Wild Horse Fund is a mostly volunteer operation, and Puckett noted that in the summer there are almost always two volunteers on the beach trying to let people know about how to avoid interacting with the horses.

“I think that people don’t understand how lucky they are that these horses are so generally good-natured. There could be a lot more pain and suffering that could happen if they were more reactive,” she said, adding, “It can happen in a heartbeat. They are very wild. Last Sunday we had a group of stallions that were fighting, and they ran over the dunes and ran right through people on the beach.”

She looked over at a harem grazing on sea oats and the sparse grasses. The colt stayed close to his mother and Puckett smiled.

“It never gets old,” she said. “Never, never gets old.”

Four miles before the eastern end of U.S. Highway 70, there is a right turn that brings travelers across a small bridge and into the town of Beaufort, North Carolina.

Beaufort is humming with activity in all months of the year, whether with government business near the 115-year-old Carteret County courthouse or tourist activity closer to the waterfront. The town has nearly as many restaurants and museums as it has accolades from national magazines.

But for much of its history, Beaufort was almost forgotten. It was a small outpost that represented a bypassed hope for the future of North Carolina. Over the span of a century, Beaufort has turned itself into a center for history, water activities, and environmental study. It has gone on a long journey to become one of the most memorable places on the North Carolina coast.

Beaufort was laid out in 1713 and incorporated in 1723, making it the fourth oldest town in North Carolina. It was part of the English attempt to turn North Carolina into a productive colony. Beaufort was founded near Beaufort Inlet, one of the few longstanding ocean inlets along the Outer Banks. Given the primacy of water transportation at the time, the hope was that ocean-going traffic through Beaufort Inlet would help bring North Carolina the prosperity that Virginia was experiencing at the time through its wide, deep Chesapeake Bay.

Unlike two of the first four towns, Edenton and New Bern, Beaufort remained isolated throughout its first several decades. Edenton was the colonial capital for several decades and close to Tidewater Virginia, while New Bern benefitted from substantial growth in the Neuse and Trent River basins. Beaufort remained isolated, like the original town of Bath, and did not attract settlement to the mainland area of Carteret County. Consequently, the town only had a few dozen people in 1765, according to a French traveler’s account cited in the downtown district’s nomination form to the National Register of Historic Places.

Even after Beaufort grew to a few hundred residents by the first census in 1790, Carteret County was the state’s second-least-populated county in that census and remained one of the 10 smallest for decades. Beaufort also was not as defined by plantation slavery as the other larger, early towns. Despite the lesser reliance on large cotton or tobacco plantations, enslaved people still worked in agriculture and in maritime professions throughout the town and the coastal area of Carteret County.

Despite its small size, Beaufort had several resident political leaders. These included Otway Burns, the famed privateer of the War of 1812, and revolutionary leader William Thompson. Some of these leaders were interred in the Old Burying Ground, one of the state’s oldest cemeteries. According to land records, the earliest potential burial at this Beaufort graveyard dates to 1724. There are dozens of stories about its most notable graves, from the British officer buried standing up (and facing England) to the little girl buried in a barrel of rum.

Another early heritage of Beaufort is its historic houses. The housing landscape in Beaufort today stretches back to the late 18th century. There was once a theory that one of the oldest houses in town, the Hammock House, was built in the early 18th century and was even visited by Blackbeard. Despite its popularity among locals and mid-20th-century writers, this theory is almost certainly false. It would have been difficult for residents so far from centers of commerce and industry to have brought together the materials and expertise to build such a substantial home in the 1710s. Instead, Beaufort’s earliest standing houses were likely built around the 1780s, which still ranks them as some of the oldest in the state.

Beaufort was only of nominal strategic importance during the Civil War. Beaufort Inlet never grew to the size and depth that the town would have required to become a major port. The Union captured the town early in 1862 after subduing nearby Fort Macon and held it for the rest of the war. There were no substantial battles to rival those in important towns like Wilmington, New Bern, or even Plymouth, where the Confederates secured arguably their greatest North Carolina victory in 1864. Instead, Beaufort was taken with almost no effort.

The 20th century was defined by two developments that continue to shape the town to the present day. One was the growth of industry. Beaufort counted a number of businesses by 1916 including two manufacturing plants, two banks, nine building contractors, and eighteen grocers.

The study of marine biology also brought experts and attention to the town. One of the nation’s first centers for the study of marine biology was opened in the Gibbs House by Johns Hopkins in 1880. The Johns Hopkins Seaside Laboratory eventually helped prompt the foundation of the numerous marine labs currently located on Pivers Island, including a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility and the Duke University Marine Lab. 

The other major development of the past century, of course, was tourism. With the railroad’s arrival in 1906, travelers began to see the benefits of the quaint coastal town. Beaufort also benefited from having been small throughout the 19th century. Unlike more developed towns such as Elizabeth City or Wilmington, limited growth meant that the town kept its original cityscape. While the town began adding hotels, restaurants, and marinas in the 20th century, it retained its 18th-century homes and street grid. A 1988 report in the New York Times noted, “though surrounded today by modern shipping facilities and undistinguished commercial development, the heart of Beaufort has changed little since it was laid out in 1713.”

One of the legacies of tourism’s impact in the town is its keen interest in historic preservation. It is an attractive place for new homeowners to move in, restore old houses, and showcase those houses to the greater community.

One of these homeowners is Eric Lindstrom, who recently finished renovating the 18^th century Piver House on Ann Street.

Lindstrom had worked on historical rehabs in Fayetteville for many years and had been on the lookout for a historic home project before settling on Beaufort. Lindstrom said that the biggest challenge to this renovation was not material or labor but time.

“The work takes a long time and we wanted to do it right,” he said.

The project included some modernization but also a strenuous effort to retain original material such as period-appropriate windows. With the renovation, Lindstrom joined a community of other historic homeowners in Beaufort who share tips and open up their homes for the Beaufort Historical Association’s annual Old Homes Tour.

Today, Beaufort could be viewed as an economic success story. As of June, it had 21 restaurants, one of the highest totals for any North Carolina town with fewer than 5,000 permanent residents.

Beaufort was voted America’s Coolest Small Town in 2012 and has been featured on HGTV and other television channels. It has also started to work harder to acknowledge its African American history with attention to historic Purvis Church and a regular African American bus history tour.

The town is 7 miles from the nearest beach and yet has the kind of summer traffic that sand-adjacent towns often enjoy.

Beaufort stayed mostly the same for over 100 years, but a combination of economic development, tourist attention, and rising sea levels have made change a reality. Now, Beaufort looks to move beyond its small-town identity as it grapples with this newfound importance in its fourth century of incorporation.

ROANOKE ISLAND — Archaeologists have unearthed artifacts that appear to confirm the site of the Algonquian village on Roanoke Island, where Native Americans shared their dinner with the first English explorers.

“This is firm evidence that this locality was Roanoac, the village of first contact,” Eric Klingelhofer, vice president for research of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation, told a small group of reporters Friday during a briefing at the excavation site. “We’ve known about the village because that’s the place where English explorers sent by Raleigh first came.”

Pointing to broken pieces of pottery laid out on a makeshift table — a sample of the finds — the veteran archaeologist explained that the sherds came from Algonquian Colington ware and burnished ware pottery, both found during a recent excavation of the 16^th century strata. 

“Now that’s not the full story,” Klingelhofer added with a sly grin as he reached for small plastic bag. ‘’We found something else.”

He then gently pulled out a thread of copper that was bent into a ring shape, and was buried about 3 feet down in the top layer. Copper was much sought-after by Natives in the Southeast, but it was rare in the region and was nearly all acquired through trade.

“I was extremely pleased because I knew what it meant,” said Klingelhofer, referring to English contact. As he spoke, the waters of Roanoke Sound could be heard lapping at the shoreline behind the dig site, hidden by lush trees and bushes at the privately owned Elizabethan Gardens adjacent to Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

Copper was a known currency for the first generation of American colonization, Klingelhofer said, adding that the copper strand most likely was a trade item that may have been worn by a Native as a ring. 

“There’s no other reason it would be here,” he said. “It must have come from the colonists.”

The Foundation team has asked conservators at Jamestown to analyze the copper, he said.

English explorers Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe visited Roanoac in 1584 as part of a reconnaissance mission planned by Sir Walter Raleigh. The men were welcomed by the Algonquians, who invited them to dine and exchanged gifts with them. The Englishmen later described Roanoac as having nine cedar houses fortified in a round of “sharp trees.”

The following year, Ralph Lane, who was part of a larger Raleigh expedition, had been sent to Roanoke Island with about 100 soldiers to establish a fort and a settlement. Lane abandoned the island in 1586 because of hostilities — much apparently provoked by him — between the Native population and the English. Nonetheless, about 117 men, women and children from England arrived on Roanoke Island in 1587 to establish a permanent settlement. Known today as the “Lost Colony,” it disappeared without a trace and is often called the oldest mystery in American history.

Founded in 2003 by Klingelhofer and other professional archaeologists, the First Colony Foundation has conducted numerous archaeological explorations in and around Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on the north end of Roanoke Island, which is where the Lost Colony settlement is likely to have been built, as well as sites in Bertie County at the headwaters of the Albemarle Sound where, artifacts show, a small number of colonists likely had fled.

Findings over the years from Foundation digs have ranged from remnants of early wells, sherds from olive jars and pottery, a Cashie-type Indian pot, tobacco pipes, French ceramic flasks, glass trade beads, and an entire necklace of cut diamond-shaped copper sheets that the team believes may have been presented to a Roanoac noble. Advancements with remote-sensing technology have enabled First Colony researchers to eliminate some sites while homing in on other areas.

Klingelhofer and Foundation Co-Vice President Nick Luccketti had been part of late archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume’s Virginia Company Foundation team in the 1990s that determined that an area presumed to be associated with the reconstructed “Fort Raleigh” earthworks was instead the 1585-1586 workshop used by scientist Thomas Harriot and the metallurgist Joachim Gans — a notable discovery.

Further tests revealed evidence nearby of charcoal making and a brick kiln and led to other digs to the north and west that found 16th century artifacts. The work with Hume directly influenced establishing the First Colony group to create a partnership agreement with the National Park Service so that Elizabethan-era explorations could continue.

Although the Foundation, which includes academics and historians with expertise in precolonial and early colonial American activity and Native American culture, would welcome finding evidence of the Lost Colony, its focus has always been the broader story of the 1584-1590 Roanoke Voyages, which served as the playbook for English colonization and ultimately, for what became America.

Klingelhofer said that the team is up against time, as increased shoreline erosion consumes places to explore, and storms reconfigure potential historic areas.

Going back as far as the Great Chesapeake Hurricane in 1769, sand had buried the 16^th century site where archaeologists have recently dug. So far, Klingelhofer said, about 100 feet of shoreline has been lost on the north end of Roanoke Island, and water in the Albemarle Sound is about 3 feet higher than it was in the 1580s.

For the time being, he said, work on Roanoke Island is done. Meanwhile, he said he was looking forward to publication in November of a book detailing archaeology and historic research done by the Foundation and its predecessors, “Excavating the Lost Colony Mystery, The Map, the Search, the Discovery,” which is edited by Klingelhofer.

But the team plans to resume explorations soon at other sites in and around Fort Raleigh and Bertie County. They will also expand beyond the Native American village excavation to see how far it goes, now that the location has been nailed down to their satisfaction.

“So it’s been a good little dig,” Klingelhofer said. “We are very happy to bring our search for Roanoac to a conclusion.”

Part of a history series examining each of North Carolina’s 20 coastal counties. This post has been updated.

Brunswick County is the state’s southeast corner and in numerous ways a microcosm of the entire coastal region.

Brunswick has swamps, former plantations and a historical legacy that stretches back centuries. The county today is dealing with the effects of booming tourism, rapid growth and the threat of rising sea levels. And while its beaches may not be as famous as those in Carteret or Dare counties, and its towns are not as large as Edenton or New Bern, Brunswick County does share many of the traits that make coastal North Carolina such a fascinating region of the state.

Following the Tuscarora War, a number of English families settled along the rivers of central and southern North Carolina. One popular destination was the western side of the Cape Fear River near the South Carolina border. Sometime prior to 1728, Maurice Moore had reached the area and helped found Brunswick Town.

Moore had been a captain in the South Carolina militia and had become familiar with North Carolina in the fight against the Tuscarora. He settled along with his brother, Roger Moore, who built the famous Orton Plantation at Winnabow in 1735. Orton, which was enlarged in the 1840s, remains one of the best-preserved plantation homes in the state.

Brunswick Town became one of the colony’s most important towns over the next 30 years. It was a significant port and a seat of government, with governors Arthur Dobbs and William Tryon living in the town and attending its considerable church, St. Philip’s, the ruins of which can be seen today.

The county of Brunswick itself was formed in 1764 from New Hanover and Bladen counties. Its original boundaries were the Northwest Cape Fear River, the South Carolina boundary, the Atlantic Ocean, and a western line drawn near Waccamaw River and Juniper Creek, according to historian David Leroy Corbitt.

The late 18th century was a pivotal time in the history of Brunswick County. Brunswick Town faced competition starting in the 1730s with the formation of Newton on the other side of the Cape Fear River. Newton, which was incorporated as Wilmington in 1760, quickly outpaced its rival to the southwest.

Brunswick Town’s population declined. It was described by Scottish visitor Janet Schaw in her travelogue of North Carolina, where she stayed for nearly a year in 1775. Schaw wrote that Brunswick was “the best sea port in the province” but that “the town is very poor — a few scattered houses on the edge of the woods, without street or regularity.” The town was later abandoned after being burned during the Revolutionary War.

The burning of Brunswick Town led to a substantial southward shift in the county’s population. The town of Smithville was incorporated in 1805 and became the county seat three years later. It was the home of Fort Johnston, a colonial fort where Gov. Josiah Martin sought refuge before fleeing North Carolina entirely.

One of the county’s barrier islands also contained Fort Caswell, a Third System, or masonry, coastal fort built to protect the American coastline after the War of 1812. Benjamin Smith, the 16th governor of North Carolina, 1810-11, lived in Smithville and was buried in the town’s Burying Ground.

The antebellum period saw modest growth in Brunswick County as well as Smithville. The county received its first brick courthouse in Smithville in 1844. Several plantation owners in the country grew substantially wealthy, mainly through the cultivation of naval stores as well as corn and sometimes cotton. Well-known families in the county included the Smiths, Moores, and Drys.

Their success, of course, was built upon slave labor. More than 44% of the county’s population was enslaved in 1860 according to the Hergesheimer Map. The county was one of the few in the state that cultivated rice, a specialized process that used flooded fields and skills that enslaved people had brought from West Africa.

The Civil War renewed the Brunswick Town area. Confederates built Fort Anderson on the town’s ruins to protect the Cape Fear River and Wilmington from the Union blockade. Fort Anderson, along with Fort Caswell and the much larger Fort Fisher, helped form one of the Confederacy’s largest defensive formations. It held out until the last few months of the war. Much of Fort Anderson remains today and is accessible to tourists.

Brunswick County stagnated somewhat in the late 19th century. It avoided much of the industrial and commercial development of its neighbor to the east, New Hanover County. Brunswick’s population grew by only about 20% between 1860 and 1890.

The railroad did not reach the county seat until the early 1900s. But Brunswick still underwent some substantial changes. The most notable was the change of Smithville’s name to Southport in 1887, which heralded the growth of new industry and houses in the small town.

As the author of Southport’s National Register nomination form wrote, “In contrast with the slow and often stagnant growth of antebellum Smithville, the new town of Southport bustled with building activity …”

Tourism began to change Brunswick County’s fortunes starting in the 1930s. During that decade, beach development began in the county. The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, completed in the 1930s, went through the county and facilitated water commerce. A bridge from the mainland to Oak Island spanning the waterway was completed soon after.

By 1958, Oak Island had a number of homes, businesses, and one of the state’s tallest lighthouses. Successful development on that island later inspired settlements on the county’s other barrier islands. The state incorporated six towns on Brunswick barrier islands between 1955 and 1975, which grew along with the nonincorporated, ferry-access-only community at Bald Head Island.

Tourists have also frequented several other historic and notable towns on the mainland. Brunswick Town became a state historic site in 1952 and attracts thousands of visitors each year. Southport has become known for its naval museum, historic sites and multiple locations from notable films. There is also Calabash, a town known throughout the country for its fried seafood.

A number of important people have called Brunswick County home. Many have been from Southport, including civil rights activist Bertha McNeil, baseball player Quinton McCracken, and military pioneer Margaret Craighill. Another was George Rappleyea, a businessman who helped organize the Scopes Monkey Trial and lived in Southport late in life.

Today, Brunswick County is a center for tourism and suburban development. It contains several bedroom communities for commuters to the thriving city of Wilmington. In Leland, the largest of these communities, the population grew 598% between 2000 and 2010. The southwestern corner of the county has also grown due to its proximity to Myrtle Beach.

More houses and communities have put strain on county resources and have exacerbated flooding caused by higher sea levels. Brunswick County’s prime location has bought it great benefits throughout its history, but this location may also fuel the challenges the county will face over the next few decades.

The Old Oregon Inlet Life-Saving Station is one of the most beautiful historic buildings on the Outer Banks, situated at a dramatic coastal location that would befit a movie setting. 

But it’s got to go.

Where and when and to whom is what the North Carolina Aquariums — the building’s current owner — is trying to figure out.

“It’s a piece of history — we would really like to see it preserved,” Larry Warner, the director of N.C. Aquarium on Roanoke Island, recently told Coastal Review. “Our goal now is to move it.”

Built in 1898 for about $7,000 on a picturesque corner of beach between the Atlantic Ocean and the East Coast’s most unruly inlet, the station has not been in use since it was decommissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1988. Standing exposed for decades on the northern tip of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, the deteriorating building was nearly buried in sand and a magnet for vandals.

In 2007-08, the state paid $7 million to elevate and renovate the structure, demolish 1970s-era dormitories, weatherize the building and restore its historic good looks.

Around that time, the North Carolina Aquariums system was planning to turn the site into a satellite facility for students and interns to study in what was envisioned as a marine and coastal wildlife research center on the Outer Banks.

“Then Jennette’s Pier jumped into the picture,” Warner said. “All the focus and all the funds went into the pier.”

With Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head since transformed into a major research/educational asset and attraction for the aquariums, the fate of the life-saving station was put on the back burner.

In the governor’s proposed fiscal 2022-23 budget, Warner said, the Aquariums requested $600,000 to relocate the station, potentially to a 16-acre site near the Roanoke Island aquarium. But the funds never made it into the final budget, and it’s not clear when or if another request will be submitted.

Although the Aquariums is seeking the move, it’s still open to where it might go.

“We are not married to the building coming over to the aquarium,” Warner said.

In addition to the station, the state owns 10 acres under and surrounding it. The Pea Island refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has an easement at the site for management of wildlife, said Rebekah Martin, manager of Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex.

During the construction of the Marc Basnight Bridge, which opened in 2019 to replace the 1963 Bonner Bridge, the state Department of Transportation right of way easement was modified, she said, resulting in DOT abandoning some of it and maintaining portions of it. The refuge easement was part of the mitigation DOT agreed to provide.

DOT had briefly proposed building a boardwalk between the parking lot and the station, Martin said. But at the realization that it would be constantly covered in sand, the idea was dropped.

The refuge has neither demanded nor requested that the station be moved from Pea Island, Martin added.

Last year the state presented a concept that included moving the building to Roanoke Island, she said, with the condition that costs would be shared by DOT and Fish and Wildlife. But Martin said in a later email that there is no record that she is aware of that documents the discussion between the agencies about the proposed move or the potential cost share.

“From our perspective, we would certainly support the relocation of the building to a safer site,” Martin said in the interview. “We don’t have the funding available to move the building at this point.”

Since the refuge does not own the footprint property or the building, any decision, and the timing, to move the station would be up to the state, she said.

Meanwhile, the refuge continues to manage wildlife on the 10 acres with implementation of seasonal shorebird nesting closures and coordination of bird and other species’ monitoring, Martin said.

Today the station, backdropped by a vista of swirling sea, sitting amid undulating dunes and facing the inlet, presents a living postcard of 19th-century maritime life to drivers crossing the inlet heading south over the Basnight Bridge.

But with its doors and windows reinforced against intruders, the building is inaccessible. Curious sightseers can park at a public lot near the station and follow a foot path in the sand to get a closer look at its exterior.

It’s a rather sad plight for one of the few authentic life-saving stations remaining at its original location on the coast. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the station, deemed to be in remarkably good condition, has had a bumpy road to its state of benign uselessness.

After the Coast Guard departed, relocating to its current station on the calmer northwest side of the inlet, the old 11,361-square-foot, wood-frame station was turned over to Dare County. That prompted a long battle with heirs of Jesse Etheridge, who gave the U.S. Lifesaving Service the land in 1897 with the condition that it would revert to him if the property ceased being held by the service. But evidently the eventual heirs did not make a timely claim to the property, and the U.S. government deeded the station to the county.  Finally, in 2000, the county handed the property over to the state, which promptly assigned it to the N.C. Aquariums to administer.

Aquariums Divisions Director Maylon White said that the situation with the proposed relocation of the station “remains status quo.”

White said that it is too soon to know if the Oregon Inlet station relocation request will be part of this year’s new proposed budget.

“We’re very much interested in preserving it,” he said in a recent interview. But he reiterated that conservation more than location is the overriding goal.

“We’re open to suggestions,” he said. “What we need to get is funding, and then we need to have discussions if there are better places to put it.”

If the relocation is eventually funded, he added, the N.C. Aquariums would “be happy” to discuss the potential transfer of the state’s 10 acres it owns at the station to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

One contender who has put their name in the hat for a location for the station is the nonprofit Pea Island Preservation Society, which owns and operates the Pea Island Lifesaving Station Cookhouse, which was moved from Rodanthe to Collins Park in Manteo.

According to its website, the group’s primary mission is to preserve and interpret the history of the station and of its keeper, Richard Etheridge, the only Black Life-Saving Station keeper in the history of the Lifesaving Service, which was inherited by the Coast Guard.

Etheridge’s gravesite has been memorialized at the Roanoke Island aquarium grounds.

Joan Collins, the Pea Island Preservation Society director of outreach and education, said that the group is in the preliminary stages of investigating the possibility of moving the Oregon Inlet station to a lot near the Cookhouse site in Manteo.

“It’s such a beautiful building and it connects to our history,” she told Coastal Review. But securing that relocation, she acknowledged, would require numerous steps and much planning.

“We would love to get it if we could,” Collins said. “If we can acquire the funding.”

Dec. 1, 1922, was an overcast day with a strong wind from the south in New Bern. It was the day after Thanksgiving — it was not until 1942 that the holiday became the fourth Thursday of the month.

Also, it was the day a quarter of the city went up in flames. A fire that, according to New Bern historian Bill Hand, is still the largest urban fire in North Carolina history.

For most of the residents of the city it was a workday, although hundreds were in Raleigh to cheer the high school football team on to victory in the state tournament.

At the time, lumber and wood product factories were some of the city’s biggest employers, and along the Neuse River, sawmills lined the riverfront.

Sometime around 8 a.m. the Morning New Bernian reported in its Dec. 2, 1922, edition that a fire had begun at the largest facility in the city, the Rowland Lumber Co., and quickly engulfed the business.

“The blaze is said to have originated from friction caused by a belt on the leg jack in the saw mill building. This was discovered shortly after it had originated but the spread of the flames was so rapid that before an alarm could be sounded and water gotten to the fire, the building was a mass of flames,” the newspaper reported.

The Rowland Lumber Co. fire was the beginning of a series of seemingly unconnected coincidences that led to an estimated 900 to 1,000 structures destroyed, leaving as many as 3,000 people homeless.

At the time, there were two volunteer fire companies protecting the city: the Atlantic Fire Co. and the Button Co. There was tremendous rivalry between the companies and in hope of toning down the competition, the city decreed that the chief of each company would alternate odd and even years as the city fire chief.

“So, we know that the chief on the day the fire was actually the chief of the Atlantic Volunteer Fire Company as well,” Pat Dunleavy, a volunteer at the New Bern Firehouse Museum said during a recent presentation at the firehouse.

Both companies responded to the fire, and Atlantic Chief James Bryan decided to keep his company on hand and send the Button Company home.

“The standard practice at the time was that if the chief decided he didn’t really have to have both companies, they’d send one back to their fire station in case there was another fire alarm,” Dunleavy explained.

Around 9 a.m., an alarm came in for a fire at a home in the city’s housing area for Black residents.

Chief Bryan left the Rowland Mills fire and after arriving on the scene, found that the residents had formed a bucket brigade and extinguished the flames themselves.

An hour later, a third alarm sounded at Kilmarnock Street.

“The chief breaks away, comes down to take a look and discovers that it’s not a single house fire, but three houses have already burned down and three blocks of houses are on fire,” Dunleavy said.

Bryan faces a dilemma. Unlike the white sections of the city, the Black neighborhoods do not have municipal water. In 1922, “If you were Black living in this area and you wanted to get water you (would) send your kid outside with a bucket to go to the hand pump and get a bucket of water.”

The lack of water pressure and the rapidly spreading flames were not the only problem the chief faced. There was also a critical shortage of trained personnel.

“New Bern High School was on their way to the state championship. Over 300 people loaded the train and others drove to Raleigh that morning,” New Bern historian Carol Becton noted during a lecture she delivered earlier this month at Tryon Palace.

Numerous accounts estimate the wind at 30-40 mph with stronger gusts. Around the periphery of the Black neighborhoods, the fire companies had the water pressure they needed to keep the fire from spreading to the white homes, but their fire trucks had neither the capacity in their tanks nor the water pressure to battle the blaze. Bryan had his two companies, but neither was at full strength, with quite a few firemen in Raleigh for the big football game.

And there was one more factor, perhaps the most significant of all.

“These houses are almost all wood construction. Almost all have cedar shake shingle roofs, the whole building was just a fire waiting to happen,” Dunleavy said.

The chief saw the fire burning out of control, realized the wooden homes were tinder and made a drastic decision. The only course of action, he determined, was to create a fire break.

“So, he decides he’s going to blow up all these houses on Queen Street (on the south side of flames) to remove the fuel from the air,” Dunleavy said. “Of course, that won’t really remove the fuel. What it will do is lower the fuel so the sparks will be not so easily blow onto the roofs.”

The firemen waste no time in placing either dynamite or gunpowder under homes, though newspaper accounts differ on which explosive it was. The firemen were moving so quickly they may have endangered lives.

The Coast Guard Cutter Pamlico’s homeport was New Bern and as the fire spread, crewmen from the ship came to help.

In his book “New Bern History 101,” Edward Barnes Ellis Jr. tells of Coast Guard officer William Montague who entered a house to help a woman out as the firemen were getting ready to blow it up.

“With the woman in his arms, Montague saw three men placing explosive charges. He shouted to tell them he was in the building (but) to no avail. The blast blew Montague and the woman through a wall and into the yard,” he wrote.

Montague was unconscious for several hours, but other than that he and the woman suffered only minor injuries.

The fire, according to the New Bernian, had originated in the home of Henry Bryan, a Black itinerant barber on Kilmarnock Street, in the section of the city occupied mainly by Black residents.

Whether the Bryan house was the first to catch fire may be difficult to determine. It was certainly one of the first, and Hand, the historian, had an opportunity to interview Dr. Samuel Bryan who was 4 at the time in 1922.

“He was a child in that house on Kilmarnock Street and remembered sitting there. Everybody runs out and he’s still sitting at the table eating his breakfast, which is Thanksgiving leftovers, and they had come back in and drag him out,” Hand said.

Bryan, a dentist, died in 2014.

The firebreak does little if anything to stop the spread of the flames, and the chief realizes he has neither the resources nor personnel to fight the fire.

“He starts calling neighboring towns to ask for assistance,” Dunleavy said. “Kinston 35 miles west says yes, they’ll send a fire company and a fire truck down, but they have to travel over 35 miles across the (dirt and gravel) roads to get here. So it’s not going to be quick. Little Washington responds and says yes, they’ll send the fire truck in there. But they have to wait and get a flatbed railroad car.”

Washington firefighters do not arrive until 3 p.m., and Kinston makes it to the fire an hour later.

In the Black neighborhoods, people are grabbing what they can from their homes and fleeing for their lives. Many of them retreat to the Cedar Grove Cemetery. With its stone walls and open green space, the cemetery nearest the southeast side of the area that burned became the overnight refuge for hundreds if not thousands of residents.

They often arrived with flames hard on their heels. In “The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922,” a compilation of oral histories gathered in 1992 by the Memories of New Bern Committee, Joe Gaskill McDaniel recalls running for his life with a friend.

“Frank and I were standing in a patch of collards growing in a vacant lot across the street. Wind caught the flames on the roof and carried them across the street. We fled from their path and you could hear the collards crackling as the fire consumed (them),” he said.

It was not until late afternoon or early evening that the fire was finally brought under control.

What greeted New Bern residents the next day was a scene of unimaginable destruction. Block upon block of charred wood, some smoldering, with the brick chimneys still standing to mark where homes had stood.

Yet there was only one reported fatality, Harriet Reeves, purportedly 105 years old and born into slavery. Exactly what happened is unclear. Some reports cite her weakened condition and an inability to escape. Others say she was escorted from her home, but went back to get personal belongings and was overcome by smoke.

The misery from the fire did not end Dec. 1, 1992. One quarter of the population of the city was now homeless, in many cases with only the clothes on their backs.

Help begins to arrive almost immediately.

“In the days following, Fort Bragg sent eight freight cars of tents, cots and mattresses, and other equipment for the homeless, with other organizations contributing clothing, money, and food to assist. A temporary ‘Tent City’ was established in Cedar Grove and at the Greenwood Cemetery for the homeless …” Nancy Figiel wrote earlier this year for Yes! Weekly.

Each family was issued two tents; one for sleeping and the other as a common area for cooking and gathering.

In “The Great Fire of New Bern of 1922” oral history, Mary Barden points to another tragedy.

“Losses were estimated at two and a half million dollars and about a third of this was covered by insurance,” she said, a figure that is consistent with newspaper accounts of the time.

Retired schoolteacher Dorcas Carter recalls in the oral histories what the aftermath was like.

“The town has changed, because three thousand people were left homeless, and out of this they became quite disheartened,” she said. “No jobs, property condemned …”

It was the condemnation of the properties by the city that for many Black residents created a bitter legacy. Rather than allow all the homes to be rebuilt, New Bern used the opportunity to create city parks, widen streets and create government buildings.

“They did not allow the blacks to rebuild on their home site … This was upsetting … not returning to your birthplace,” Carter said, and described in detail what would happen when someone would try to rebuild.

“I’m recalling now a nearby neighbor who was a Mr. Richard Sawyer … attempted to rebuild. His homesite was on the condemned section … Each time he would get his frames up the city would make him tear it down. Finally he built up to the second story ready for a roof … He was ordered to tear down,” she recalled.

Becton in her lecture described how confusing it would have been for the residents of the area, showing a notice that read: “All owners of property located in the area that has been condemned by the by the Board of Alderman of the city of New Bern or parks, cemeteries and playgrounds and extensions and widening of streets would please file their claims with the City Clerk of the city of New Bern at the city hall at once in order that claims may be paid, adjusted and settled by the board of appraisals”

For many of the homeowners in those neighborhoods at that time, Becton explained, the notice was like a foreign language.

“Keep in mind, this is segregation, Jim Crow, and a lot of people may not be able to read well or at all or understand a lot of the terminology and were not even able perhaps to execute some of the requirements,” she said.

The loss of homes and property were not the only troubles confronting the Black community of the city.

“When the Rowland Lumber Company closed, many people were left unemployed. As a result many moved North,” Mary Chapman was recorded as saying in the “Great Fire” oral history.

“The demographics of the city before the fire was 60-65% Black with 35-40% of white population after the closing of tent city — all those Black people leave,” said Dunleavy. “There’s no choice. They need to get jobs.”

U.S. Census estimates show a shift to 55.6% white, 33.1% Black.

Becton, in her lecture, focused on more than the horror of the fire, also calling attention to a community hospital for the Black residents and a library that became a part of the community. Pointing to a mural that had been painted on the side of a building on Queen Street that depicted a Phoenix flying above a burned-out city, she described it as representing how the community recovered.

It was, as she recounted it, a “Phoenix rising out of the ashes. And so that’s exactly what happened for those victims of the great fire.”

National Aviation Day, held annually Aug. 19, always seems to be a pretty big deal at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills.

It is, after all, where Wilbur and Orville Wright first proved that heavier-than-air flight was possible.

The date celebrating flight was not chosen randomly. Orville Wright was born Aug. 19, 1874. Three years later, his sister Katherine was born on the same day. In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt declared as National Aviation Day Orville’s – and Katherine’s – birthday.

This year, to commemorate National Aviation Day and the innovation of the Wright brothers, Dr. Bob Balaram, former chief engineer for the Mars Ingenuity project, spoke Friday during a ceremony at the Wright Brothers Memorial about the challenges Ingenuity faced in becoming the first heavier-than-air aircraft to fly on another planet.

NASA now lists Balaram as emeritus, a role he defined as “handing off the reins to some of the younger members of the team.”

Six months ago, Balaram was the project’s chief engineer, and it was under his guidance that Ingenuity came to life, proving that flight was possible on the surface of Mars.

“This talk is really trying to draw some parallels between what the Wright brothers did here on Earth to fly for the first time … and what the Ingenuity team did on Mars to get that first helicopter on Mars,” he said.

Ingenuity is a four-blade helicopter with two sets of blades, upper and lower, that counter-rotate. Balaram brought with him a replica of the helicopter that was built using spare parts from the original.

At first glance, Ingenuity may not look all that remarkable — different, perhaps, but not too different in appearance from any number of drones. Yet what was on display is unlike any drone ever built.

It weighs only 4 pounds. Each of the helicopter blades weigh an ounce. Every component part of Ingenuity is designed to limit weight yet perform in an environment with temperatures that range between minus 130 to 60 degrees Farenheit.

The aircraft must be lightweight, Balaram explained, because the volume of Mars’ atmosphere is only 1% of Earth’s.

To demonstrate, Balaram held his arms out to about 3 feet.

“If I hold my arms out this way, I get about 2 pounds of air,” he said. “On Mars, that same volume is about an ounce or less.”

That difference parallels challenges the Wright brothers experienced.

The Ingenuity team built a 1/3-scale replica for test purposes. They had a chamber where the air pressure could be reduced to that of Mars’ atmosphere. As the rotors reached the 2,000 revolutions per minute needed for Mars flight, the model Ingenuity became uncontrollable, slammed into the walls of the chamber and broke.

Balaram showed a video of the event Friday during his talk.

“It turns out that helicopters on Earth — when they fly, their wings do flap up and down as they go around. And that flapping tends to induce an instability in the control, but on Earth the air is so thick that instability is not very much,” Dr. Balaram said.

On Mars, without the denser air, the dampening effect is lost.

The Wright brothers, Balaram noted, realized early on during their time at Kitty Hawk that they were not getting the lift expected from the calculations of their time.

“What they realized was most aerodynamic information that they had gotten was wrong. So they actually built their own wind tunnel … And they actually found out the correct aerodynamic tables,” he said.

The Ingenuity team faced a similar problem: There was theory about flight on Mars, but nothing practical because no one had ever flown in a 1% atmosphere. Nor, as it turned out, was there a proper wind tunnel to test designs.

“So we needed to build our own wind tunnel to understand what the dynamics of this Mars atmosphere would be,” he said.

The wind tunnel the Ingenuity team created was far more sophisticated than anything the Wrights could have envisioned, but like them, the only way to get the data that was needed was to build a wind tunnel.

There were other parallels.

Balaram pointed to the engine that Charlie Taylor built for the Wright brothers.

“It was an aluminum engine, a very new material to build an engine. In fact, precedent setting. And Charlie Taylor built the engine in six short weeks, and it produced real horsepower,” he said.

Because of the weight requirements of Ingenuity, extraordinary measures had to be taken to create the electric motor that would power the Mars helicopter’s rotors. Copper wire is the best material for generating the power from the battery, but what was needed was especially fine, square copper wire that would lay flat, weigh less and take up less space.

However, it all had to be done by hand. Everything in the construction of Ingenuity had to be done in a sterile setting to prevent contamination on Mars, and there wasn’t really anyone who had ever built something to wind wire with the tolerances needed.

The task of hand wiring Ingenuity fell to Matt Keenum of AeroVironment, one of the subcontractors on the project. Keenum was on hand for the presentation and Balaram recognized him as he explained what was involved.

“Matt had to spend about 100 hours under a microscope putting all the wiring in place for that motor,” he said.

The result was what Balaram described as “one of the most efficient motors you can possibly imagine for this very compact size.”

The first flight for the Wright brothers was a moment of triumph. Yet before the Wright Flyer lifted into the air, there was uncertainty and a real concern for the physical safety of whoever was in the aircraft.

The physical danger did not exist for the Ingenuity flight team, but there were moments of fear, perhaps none as great as simply getting to the surface of the planet.

“We hit the top of the Mars atmosphere and we have to decelerate from more than 5 miles a second down to zero in seven minutes. This is the scary part of any atmospheric landing, descending into the atmosphere,” Balaram said. “In the landing business, this is known as the seven minutes of terror landing on Mars.”

Ingenuity, attached to the bottom of the Mars Rover Perseverance, deployed and flew for the first time on April 19, 2021. Originally, mission planners had hoped Ingenuity would fly for a month and be a technology demonstration. As it turned out, though, Ingenuity has proved itself to be far more useful than originally envisioned.

Even though much of Ingenuity is high-tech, cutting-edge design, many of its components are off the shelf. Balaram pointed to its camera as an example.

“We have a color camera mounted to the side, very much like the cellphone camera,” he said.

“We fly ahead. We do a recon of various things that they may be interested in to find safe routes for the (Perseverance) rover. So that has turned out to be an extension of our technology demonstration, Balaram said. “Right now, it’s been almost a year and a half now that we’ve been flying together with the Perseverance Rover.”

There is now a small piece of the Wright Flyer on Mars. Wanting to pay tribute to the Wright brothers, a small piece of the muslin fabric of that first Wright Flyer has been attached to Ingenuity.

United States Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City is celebrating its 82nd birthday Monday, just weeks after the Coast Guard’s 232-year anniversary Aug. 4.

Now the Coast Guard’s largest aviation facility and biggest employer in the area, the base on the south side of Elizabeth City covers some 800 acres, a far cry from the original 249 acres when it first began operations Aug. 15, 1940.

When the station was commissioned, there were only four officers, 52 enlisted men and 10 aircraft including three Hall PH-2 seaplanes, four Fairchild J2K landplanes, and three Grumman JF-2 amphibians, according to Coast Guard Aviation History, a project of the Coast Guard Aviation Association.

Today, there is a combined workforce of around 2,000 Coast Guard personnel and civilian employees, making it the largest employer in northeastern North Carolina, according to the state archives.

The station’s core mission is search and rescue, but it also has aerial patrols as diverse as iceberg tracking in the Atlantic to monitoring shipping from the Atlantic Coast to the Azores.

Until recently, the base handled the training of the service’s rescue swimmers. After 30 years here, the training has temporarily moved to Petaluma, California. The renovated facility should reopen in 2025, according to the Coast Guard website.

Although Elizabeth City is one of the largest and busiest Coast Guard bases in the nation, there seems to be very little documentation of its earliest days.

From its beginning, Elizabeth City was an air base. It is not clear why Elizabeth City was chosen for what would become one of the most important Coast Guard and Naval facilities on the East Coast during World War II.

It is likely that the late Lindsay Warren played an important role. Warren was a Democrat who represented the 1st District encompassing northeastern North Carolina, from 1925 to 1940. He was briefly the speaker of the House before becoming the nation’s comptroller general in 1940.

Aycock Brown, in his “Covering the Waterfront” column that he wrote for the Beaufort News in the 1930s and 1940s, took note of 1939 headlines to speculate on what could be happening at Elizabeth City, suggesting Warren played an important part in bringing the base to the area.

One of the headlines originated in Elizabeth City, the other was from Washington, D.C.

“The Elizabeth City story stated that work began there Tuesday on the $128,000 WPA project which will when completed, be a modern and up-to-date Coast Guard Air Base, obtained through the efforts of Congressman Lindsay Warren,” Brown wrote.

“The Washington story under the caption: ‘Warren Has Hopes For Ocean Air Base’ quoted the congressman as saying he was looking into the possibility of Elizabeth City, N.C., becoming an airbase for trans-Atlantic plane service.”

Brown’s $128,000 from Works Progress Administration was dwarfed by the $2 million, or $42.3 million today, that the government actually spent on the facility. Also called Work Projects Administration, the WPA was created in 1935 for the unemployed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Neither the base nor the city ever became a center for trans-Atlantic plane service, but what it did become was an important facility for confronting the U-boats that brought World War II to the doorstep of the nation.

While Warren may have played a role in steering the Coast Guard to Elizabeth City, there were other factors also at play.

Even though the United States was ill-prepared for open warfare when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, government officials were aware that the world was becoming an increasingly dangerous place and were taking steps to protect vital interests.

Chesapeake Bay and the Hampton Roads area of Virginia was one of the largest ports on the East Coast, and had the open water needed for the seaplanes the Coast Guard was using.

The Virginia ports, though, were open to the sea, and Elizabeth City’s inland location was important to planners.

A document provided by Dr. William H. Thiesen, Atlantic area historian for the Coast Guard, offers a clue to what planners were thinking.

The document seems to be a study of how the Coast Guard’s air bases in general were used during World War II, although there is no date on it. The study’s author is unknown, and the pages are marked “confidential.”

“While the station was primarily intended as a major overhaul base for the eastern seaboard, the location of the base nevertheless was selected with a view of its strategic importance in regard to possible enemy action in time of war,” the study’s author wrote. “The new site was ideal, the most advantageous location between New York and Miami. In a sheltered area, north of Albemarle Sound and some fifty or sixty miles from Cape Hatteras, the station was built on the sloping banks of the Pasquotank River.”

Initially most of the flights were mapping exercises and law enforcement, especially enforcement of the Neutrality Acts. The Neutrality Acts were designed to keep the United States out of the warfare that was so much a part of the decade. Although modified and eventually rendered irrelevant, the acts prohibited U.S. flagged ships from carrying weapons of war to belligerent nations.

It was enforcement of the Neutrality Act of 1939 that Roosevelt used to expand and modernize the Coast Guard, informing Congress in an executive order “that a national emergency exists in connection with …proper observance, safeguarding, and enforcing of the neutrality of the United States…”

He went on to authorize the Coast Guard to add 2,000 more men and to order the “… facilities of the Coast Guard be increased, repaired, modernized, enlarged, and equipped to the extent determined by the Secretary of the Treasury …”

With the declaration of war, the Coast Guard was directed to operate as part of the Navy, and one of the primary functions of the base was the interdiction of German submarines. It was a function Coast Guard aircraft were ill-suited to perform.

“Initially there were very few resources available to combat the German submarines. The Coast Guard aircraft, not designed for combat, were equipped with locally fabricated depth charge racks and pressed into service,” notes United States Coast Guard Aviation History website.

It was extraordinarily frustrating for the pilots, according to the confidential study.

“Daily, merchant vessels were being sunk, while pilots stood by helplessly, unable to do more than turn in an outraged report,” the study continues, “It was not until December, 1943, that adequate fighting planes were procured. By that time the submarine danger was almost over.”

Yet the air crews saved lives, though the rescues were dangerous. Aviation History combines all air station activity indicating that more than 1,000 were rescued and with 95 landings.

“Three OS2U Kingfishers on a routine patrol spotted men in the water 30 miles east of Cape Hatteras. Depth charges were dropped in an area where it would not injure the men. All three aircraft landed and picked up all the survivors who rested on the wings until a boat arrived from the Elizabeth City air station to pick them up,” is one of the stories on the website.

By the end of the war, the base had returned to much of its original mission of rescue. Aggressive patrolling by U.S. military aircraft and communication with naval ships made the East Coast too dangerous for the submarines.

After the war, Elizabeth City, now greatly expanded, became a training and repair hub for the Coast Guard, as well as an air patrol base, functions that have continued until today.

HATTERAS — As thousands of visitors joyfully play in the surf of Outer Banks’ beaches, a new exhibit at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum reminds us that a vicious German U-boat campaign in the early months of World War II had once raged offshore the barrier islands, setting the sea ablaze and filling the air with explosions.

While the Battle of the Atlantic from 1939 to 1945 was the war’s longest military campaign, it came closest to Cape Hatteras, where submarines would lurk in the sea off the shallow sandbars of Diamond Shoals to strike with devastating success at passing vessels.

“I envision the Battle of the Atlantic exhibit to eventually be the signature exhibit for the museum,” Joseph Schwarzer, director of North Carolina Maritime Museums, said in an interview June 29 during opening day of the exhibit that memorializes the U-boat campaign from a local perspective with many artifacts salvaged from Outer Banks waters. “Most people have no idea that this ever happened.”

Opened in 2002 on the south end of Hatteras Island, the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is focused on four centuries of Outer Banks’ maritime and shipwreck history.

What makes the museum’s new Operation Drumbeat exhibit such a unique venue for telling the story of “Torpedo Junction” — as wartime ship captains dubbed Cape Hatteras — is that the museum’s location encompasses the area that experienced the war at its front door.

Cape Hatteras was targeted by U-boats because its shipping lane was close to the deep water of the continental shelf where the subs could hide. Forced to hug the coast to avoid wrecking on a shoal, the vessels were sitting ducks to lurking German U-boats. The area suffered the most casualties from U-boat attacks of any along the East Coast.

“Flaming tankers burned so brightly off the Outer Banks that on shore, it was said, one could read a newspaper by the glow at night, while the grim flotsam of war — oil, wreckage, and corpses — was strewn across local beaches,” the National Park Service wrote on its online site about Torpedo Junction, which was along what is now part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. 

Many artifacts in the Graveyard of the Atlantic exhibit come from the German U-85, the remains of which still rest in the ocean off Nags Head, about 60 miles north of Hatteras.

In the first half of 1942, during “Operation Drumbeat,” or Paukenschlag in German, the codename for Germany’s initial World War II assault against the U.S., 90 ships were sunk off the North Carolina coast — mostly off the Outer Banks — killing 1,600, including about 1,200 merchant mariners, according to the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary online information about the Battle of the Atlantic.

Much of the bloodbath in the early months went unanswered by the U.S., which underestimated the skill and scope of the German U-boat operation. The losses were so severe, Gen. George Marshall had said, that they threatened the entire U.S. war effort. 

The tide started turning on April 14, 1942, when the Navy destroyer U.S.S Roper, with guidance from a new radar system spotted the U-85 on the sea’s surface, just 16 miles southeast of Nags Head. Between a combination of machine gun fire and depth charges, the Roper sunk the German sub, with the bodies of 29 crew later recovered.

Short for the German word “unterseeboot,” U-boats were used more as warships that mostly stayed on the surface and attacked with deck guns. When they were underwater, it typically would be for short periods to avoid detection.

The demise of the U-85 was the first successful surface attack by the U.S. Navy of a German U-boat since the war had begun in December 1941.    

To the good fortune of the museum, Schwarzer said, local diver Jim Bunch of Dare County, along with Roger Hunting and his brother Rich Hunting, as well as Billy Daniels, have loaned numerous artifacts they salvaged during their many dives on the U-85.

“No one has ever seen this before,” Schwarzer told the roughly 75 opening-day attendees, giving a shoutout to the divers. “They really came through for us.”

The exhibit also includes a rare Enigma code machine that the divers had previously donated.

In a later interview, Bunch, who is 81, said he had made close to 1,000 dives on the U-85 over a period of 30 years. Accompanied by the Huntings and other diving buddies, Bunch said that they had recovered everyday items such as dishes, but also manuals and armaments. The meticulous work to retrieve the submarine’s contents was detailed in Bunch’s 2003 book “Germany’s U-85, A Shadow In The Sea” about the dives and the history of the vessel.

Although the Navy sent divers to the U-85 wreck shortly after it sunk — and many other divers after it was rediscovered in the 1960s by a Virginia Beach fisherman — Bunch and his friends were able to recover important items, including 88 mm deck gun rounds and an MP-40 machine gun. But to Bunch, the Enigma machine on display at the museum was probably the biggest prize.

“There were very few of those left in existence,” he said. “That one they have there was in a state of disrepair. Most folks who’d see something like that would think it was a piece of junk.

“We were just lucky we happened to come across it,” he added. “With the permission of the German government, we gave it to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. It’s probably the most significant piece of history to come from that wreck.”

Developed in Germany during the 1920s, the Enigma machine was an encryption device that was used by all branches of the German military in World War II to share battle plans and top secret information. But even before the start of the war, Polish cryptologists had cracked the cipher and continued to work to perfect decoding it with the French, English and later American intelligence. While constantly keeping up with changes in Enigma codes, the Allies were able to secretly read German communications, a critical contribution to defeat of the Nazis.

The exhibit also includes examples of male and female World War II-era Coast Guard uniforms, lifejackets, goggles and a toolbox, all from the U-85, as well as historic photographs and numerous armaments, depth charges and artillery. A large ensign flag emblazoned with the Nazi swastika, hanging on one wall of the exhibit, is a chilling symbol of the chaos wrought by the U-boats off our shores. 

There are also several models of U-boats on display. By far, the most detailed was created by Michael Mills, a craftsman from Brunswick, Maryland. Mills, whom Schwarzer welcomed during the ceremony after Mills asked to be part of the exhibit, gave a slide presentation about his exacting work that went into constructing miniature depictions of every detail on the U-552.

Three days after the U-boat attacked the oil tanker Byron B. Benson in April 1942 off the northern Outer Banks, the vessel sank about 15 miles east of Duck.

“He’s not a modelmaker,” Schwarzer said admiringly of Mills, “he’s an artist.”

Bunch said that besides the U-505, captured intact by the Navy in 1944 and today displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, he is not aware of another Battle of the Atlantic exhibit in the U.S. as compelling as the one at the Graveyard of the Atlantic.   

“I like it,” said Bunch, a longtime member of the board of the nonprofit Friends of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.  “I thought it was good. I don’t know what could be done to make it better.”    

Bunch said there is also an interesting collection of U-boat artifacts at Olympus Dive Shop in Morehead City that were collected by diver and shop owner George Purifoy, who died in 2008 at 63. George’s son Robert Purifoy now operates the business.

The artifacts from the U-352, which was sunk in 1942 off Morehead City, are still on display, filling five shelves in a small case, said Dottie Benjamin, Olympus’ sales charter manager. Of the 100 or so items, she said, there’s china, shaving brushes and razors, boots, coins, buttons, a gas mask and a gun holster.

In addition to the U-85 and the U-352, there are the remains of two other U-boats, eight Allied naval vessels and 78 merchant vessels sunk off the North Carolina coast, according to the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

For Roger Hunting, also of Dare County and Virginia, who dove on the U-85 for about nine years, preserving the boat’s artifacts has turned into his life’s focus. As shown in Bunch’s book, Hunting carefully restored a second Enigma machine he recovered from the U-85 — one of 32 of the four-rotor machines known to exist —  as well as an ornate toolbox and all its tools.

“I cleaned everything myself,” Hunting said in a recent interview. That involved treating every piece individually, which could include sandblasting.

“It took years to get all this stuff restored,” he said.

Hunting, 70, carefully documented, researched and photographed every item, many of which have been loaned to the shipwreck museum. From his research — “and that was before the Internet,” he noted — he knows where each item had belonged on the boat, and its purpose.

Pointing to a photograph of a long implement, Hunting explained that it was a voice pipe, or speaking tube.

“That came out of the conning tower,” he said. “The captain was in the conning tower when they were attacking a ship. He would call down the numbers to somebody who would calculate the depth.” 

Of the 38 total artifacts from the U-85 loaned to the museum, the collection includes wrenches, a chisel, a cigarette lighter, a smoking pipe, rubber boots, board game pieces, jars of ointment with the contents intact, gas masks, a torpedo trigger, spare gun parts,  microphone and headphones for the radio operator, coffee cups with swastikas and dates on the bottom, and a wooden name tag that was screwed into a locker.

All the items were salvaged before sunken warships gained federal protection in the early 2000s, Hunting said. Adding, the German government agreed in about 2003 to relinquish all control of the Enigma.

Whatever the future may hold for further donations, Hunting said that selling the artifacts isn’t in the cards. “Never,” he declared.

And Hunting didn’t entirely dismiss the possibility that additional U-boat artifacts might materialize from other U-boat divers looking for tax deductions for generous donations to the museum. But, for now, “maybe” might be the operative word.

“Divers are funny guys — they’re very possessive,” Hunting said. “We know lots of people who have very nice artifacts. But they’re not letting them go.”

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

Tyrrell County in North Carolina’s Albemarle region was formed in the earliest years of Colonial settlement, but Tyrrell does not have the historical reputation of other early counties.

It has the smallest population in North Carolina and is known more for its animals and creeks than its historic sites. Despite its reputation as a large swamp mostly devoid of people, Tyrrell has a fascinating history that has kept settlers and visitors coming for the past three centuries.

Following the establishment of Albemarle County in the 1660s, settlers began to move west and south in search of fresh lands for corn and tobacco production. Many of these settlers ended up on the southern side of the Albemarle Sound. At first, these areas were part of the original North Carolina counties: Chowan, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Currituck. But in the 1720s, the population grew to a point where settlers required representation in a more accessible court. 

These men and women were granted a new county in 1729, one that extended from the Roanoke River to the Atlantic Ocean north of Bath County, according to “The formation of the North Carolina counties, 1663-1943” by David Leroy Corbitt. The county was named after Sir John Tyrrell, a lord proprietor who had died that year. Over the next 150 years, Tyrrell County’s territory was reduced substantially. Its western third became Washington County in 1799, while the eastern third became Dare County in 1870.

Tyrrell County was one of the poorest and most sparsely populated in all of North Carolina. The vast majority of the county was swampland. Swamps had to be drained with ditches and canals to produce any sizable farmland.

A few planters tried their hand at this arduous project. Most notable among them were Ebenezer and Charles Pettigrew, who tried to develop the area between Lake Phelps and the Alligator River with some success. These efforts led to a limited network of plantations that grew primarily corn and wheat. Prominent residents helped establish Columbia, which is the lone incorporated town in Tyrrell County and situated on the Scuppernong River in the northern section of the county.

The Scuppernong River also became famous at this time for its connections to the scuppernong grape. Scuppernong grapes are a bronze variety of the more widespread muscadine grape. This grape grows throughout North Carolina, but it was first written about in connection to the river in the early 19th century. Since that time, scuppernongs have become a well-known variety of grape and have been used in juices and wines. The scuppernong grape was named the state fruit of North Carolina in 2001.

The work of draining and eventually tending the fields of Tyrrell County was done mostly by enslaved African Americans. They made up a third of the population in 1860, according to the Hergesheimer Map. A considerable number of free African Americans also lived in the county’s swamps. These forbidding areas, unsuitable for agriculture and lightly populated, sustained colonies of runaway slaves and other African Americans, similar to the larger groups living in the Great Dismal Swamp.

The Civil War mostly overlooked Tyrrell County. Its main contribution was J. Johnston Pettigrew, a respected Confederate brigadier general and member of Tyrrell’s Pettigrew family. Pettigrew participated in the Peninsula campaign and was a leader of Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. He died from wounds sustained after Gettysburg, his loss acknowledged by Robert E. Lee as a severe blow to the Confederate Army. There is today a building on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus named after Pettigrew.

Following the Civil War, development in the county remained slow. Tyrrell’s population decreased between 1860 and 1920.

A notable project during that era was the construction of the current county courthouse in Columbia. This courthouse, completed in 1903, is in the Romanesque Revival style and made of brick with arched windows and gabled dormers, according to its National Register of Historic Places nomination.

According to Alan D. Watson, writer of “Tyrrell County — A Brief History,” the county was worried about the potential of fire and banned most events from the courthouse, including “entertainment, ice cream supper, or anything of the kind.”

One of Tyrrell’s most famous residents, Edward Warren, did much of his work during this period. Born in Tyrrell in 1828 and afterward raised in Edenton, Warren became a celebrated doctor and medical leader in North Carolina, eventually becoming the state surgeon general. He left after the Civil War and went to Egypt, where he served for several years as an Egyptian governor’s personal doctor. Warren then spent the rest of his life practicing medicine in France, where he died in 1893.

In his memoir, “A Doctor’s Life in Three Continents,” Warren recalls how he gained the knowledge of his life in “the swamps of Carolina, the battle-fields of Virginia, the sands of Egypt, and the quartiers of Paris.”

In the mid-20th century, Tyrrell County began to benefit from its natural beauty and its proximity to other attractions. U.S. Highway 64, which connected the Triangle to the Outer Banks, came through Tyrrell in the 1920s and 1930s. This highway brought thousands of visitors each year through the county and eventually through the town of Columbia. The route, along with N.C. Highway 94 connecting Tyrrell to Hyde County, served as Tyrrell’s “windows to the outside world” according to Watson. 

Tyrrell mostly failed in its attempts to become a center for industry. It was too rural and remote from other population centers. In addition, the attempts at industry that did occur, along with large-scale agriculture, polluted the pristine natural areas throughout the county.

Residents fought back, and as a result, the county eventually became the site of new state parks and wildlife refuges. Pettigrew State Park, founded in 1939, and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, founded in 1990, began attracting visitors with miles of hiking trails, accessible rivers, and hunting opportunities.

Today, Tyrrell is mostly known for its natural beauty and its sparse population. Columbia offers a few amenities, such as restaurants and a sizable antique store, but most of Tyrrell County is dedicated to outdoor exploration and wildlife. There are nearly as many bears in the county as there are people. Visitors can explore miles of hiking and kayaking trails and engage in a wide variety of outdoor activities. Its natural wonders have defined settlement in Tyrrell County for centuries and will likely remain the basis of its economy for years to come.

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

Most of the earliest English settlers in North Carolina lived on the northern side of the Albemarle Sound. Their settlements built the foundation of North Carolina and evolved into the Colony’s first towns and political centers.

At this same time, the English were settling slightly to the west of the Albemarle Sound near the Chowan River. One of the first areas in which they built homes and plantations later became Bertie County. This county, which turns 300 years old this year, has been a center of political leadership, agricultural wealth and local tourism ever since the earliest times in Colonial North Carolina.

English settlement of the Cashie River and areas west of the Chowan River began in the mid-17th century. Some of the earliest immigrants such as Nathaniel Batts and Samuel Stephens lived near the confluence of Salmon Creek and Chowan River. Settlers following their lead moved either south from Virginia or west from the Albemarle region. They established corn and then tobacco plantations. These efforts were relatively successful, as farmers could take advantage of the rich alluvial land of the Cashie, Roanoke and Chowan rivers.

Plantations also used these rivers for transportation and connections with Colonial government on the eastern side of the Chowan. In addition to agriculture, the county produced staves and other wood products from its abundant timber resources.

The area that became Bertie County also played a strategic role in the Colony’s early treatment of Native Americans. While the earliest settlers bought land from local Native Americans and coexisted with them, outright theft and exclusion soon became the English policy. Tensions caused by this policy led to the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713. After the English victory, the Tuscarora, who had signed treaties with the Colony, were granted a reservation in present-day southern Bertie County known as Indian Woods.

In his history of Bertie County, Alan Watson notes that by 1801, “finding little sympathy among the white populace and having their land taken in (a) callous fashion, the aged, dwindling remnant of the Tuscarora (at Indian Woods) soon proved ready to move northward.” The Tuscarora sold the last rights to their land in 1831.

Following the Tuscarora War, the region west of the Chowan River quickly gained enough English residents to petition for a new county. In 1722, that petition was granted. A new county was formed, with its eastern boundary being the Chowan River and its western boundary being the “limits of the government,” according to Daniel Leroy Corbitt. Bertie County was named after two Lords Proprietor of North Carolina, James and Henry Bertie.

The centerpiece of town settlement in Bertie County was Windsor, formed at the head of navigation of the Cashie River. Windsor, named for the royal castle in England and incorporated in 1768, was one of the last towns in North Carolina sanctioned by the British monarchy. It joined other Colonial towns established in the 1760s including Salem, Winton and Charlotte. Windsor became the county seat of Bertie County in 1774. The present courthouse off King Street was built in 1889.

Bertie County was an economically successful antebellum county. It became the site of several plantations and plantation homes that have survived to the present day. The most notable was Hope Plantation, built in 1803 by future North Carolina governor David Stone. There was also Rosefield, built in the mid-18th century — present building first constructed circa 1786 — and at one point the home of William Blount, one of North Carolina’s three signers of the Constitution.

Blount later, as a senator from Tennessee, was found to have committed treason by plotting to hand French territory in the South over to Britain. “When will we cease to have Judases?” Abigail Adams wrote in a letter to her sister when she learned of Blount’s plans. Blount later became the first and only senator to be expelled from Congress outside of the Civil War years.

Bertie County was mostly spared during the Civil War. It did not suffer a destructive fire like Winton or a significant battle like Plymouth. But following the war, the county’s economy was devastated like the rest of the state. Planters had to shift away from previous staples and toward newer crops such as peanuts and later soybeans. Bertie County eventually became the leading peanut-producing county in the state.

The political system shifted as well. In the years after Reconstruction, the county was in the 2^nd Congressional District and was represented by two African Americans, Henry Cheatham and George White, during the 1880s and 1890s. Bertie remains one of 20 majority-minority counties in the state.

The 20th century saw Bertie County continue the slow, mostly rural growth that characterized much of eastern North Carolina. Bertie County did not turn toward industry at the same scale as Plymouth or Elizabeth City. However, the county’s agriculture and location near U.S. 64 meant that it did not remain as isolated as Gates County to the north. Instead, Bertie’s towns mostly stayed small and continued with the same stores and patterns that had always characterized town life.

Despite the county’s slow growth, there were several influential people who hailed from Bertie County during the 20th century. These included Negro Leagues pitcher Willie Wynn, actor Jeorge Bennett Watson and University of North Carolina leader George T. Winston. There was also Joanna Houston Ransom, an influential university administrator who once helped lead the association of African American fraternities and sororities known as the Pan-Hellenic Council.

As for important businesses, one of North Carolina’s most well-known barbecue restaurants, Bunn’s Barbecue, opened in Windsor in 1938. Bunn’s received recognition in 2013 as one of LocalEats’s best barbecue restaurants in America. The Bertie County Peanuts company, Powell & Stokes, is also famous. In 2013, according to the Winston-Salem Journal, “the company shipped nearly 200,000 pounds of packaged peanuts as far away as Japan.”

The agricultural focus of previous decades has shifted somewhat in recent years, particularly in Windsor. The town of Windsor and its businesses have attempted to turn the small town into a tourist destination. They have done so by taking advantage of the natural environment of the town and its unique attributes. The town has publicized Livermon Park and its connected miniature zoo. It has also built tree houses on the Cashie River that appeal to campers and kayakers.

Bertie County today is in an interesting middle ground between eastern North Carolina regions. It is close enough to U.S. 64 and Elizabeth City to benefit from some beach and town development. But it is far enough away to retain much of its agricultural heritage and small-town charm.

The construction of Interstate 87 has the potential to increase Bertie County’s connections to Norfolk and the Albemarle region. But for now, it appears that the community will continue as a farm county with a niche tourism business for the foreseeable future.

CAPE HATTERAS — This year is the 50th anniversary of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Sanctuary Systems, an occasion that by definition makes the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary extra special because it was the very first one.

The problem is that most Americans may be thinking: “What’s a marine sanctuary system?” And even if the public is aware that they exist, do they understand their purpose?

“Not nearly enough,” John Armor, director of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, said in a recent interview. “We have a lot of work to do on that.”

Next week, the public can see for themselves the value a sanctuary offers. From Sunday, May 15, through Wednesday, May 25, people will have a golden opportunity to watch groundbreaking science livestreamed during a new expedition at the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary.

According to a NOAA press release, a team of scientists and divers working off NOAA Ship Nancy Foster as a research platform will employ state-of-the-art technologies, including underwater drones, to explore the Monitor Civil War ironclad and other shipwrecks in the surrounding area as part of a study on their value as fish reefs.

Described by NOAA on its website as a “network of underwater parks,” the sanctuary system totals more than 620,000 square miles and includes 15 national marine sanctuaries on Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts, American Samoa and the Great Lakes, as well as the Papahānaumokuākea and Rose Atoll marine national monuments.

The National Marine Sanctuary System turns 50 on Oct. 23.

“I think the 50th anniversary is really an opportunity for us to sort of expand the tent and bring a lot more awareness to and frankly appreciation for them and love of the National Marine Sanctuaries system more broadly,” Armor said.

Armor, who has been at the helm since 2016, said that current efforts are focused on connecting local communities more to the sanctuary’s work. Sanctuaries also need to be more accessible, including engagement with tribal and indigenous communities, he said. And its workforce needs to be more diverse.

When the sanctuary system was created in 1972 with passage of The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act, it was one of a series of landmark coastal protection bills enacted around that time, which also included the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Clean Water Act and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act Amendments, according to NOAA’s online history of the system.

But it took three years for the first sanctuary to come to fruition, and it was fortuitous timing that the Monitor was discovered about 20 miles off Cape Hatteras by Duke University researchers the year after the system was created.

A centerpiece

From the moment the USS Monitor steamed into Hampton Roads in early 1862, the Union Navy’s first ironclad dazzled as a wartime engineering phenomenon. Its nearly four-hour battle less than two months later in a Norfolk harbor with the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia ultimately came to a draw but sealed its heroic legacy.

Even after the famed battleship and its 16 officers and crew went down that same year during a vicious New Year’s Eve gale, the Monitor remained a centerpiece of scientific and cultural interest.

Situated in the notorious “Graveyard of the Atlantic” — feared by mariners for its shifting, shallow shoals — the sunken vessel sits on the ocean floor 230 feet deep in a column of water a nautical mile in diameter. The site was designated as the nation’s first marine sanctuary Jan. 30, 1975.

Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from the Monitor, most of which are housed at The Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. In 2001, NOAA, the U.S. Navy and The Mariners Museum, among others, partnered in five expeditions to retrieve numerous artifacts, including its steam engine and a section of the hull. The next year, the Monitor’s revolving turret was brought up from the ocean floor in a 42-day expedition. 

When the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, part of the North Carolina Maritime Museum system, completes its exhibit installation in the coming months, it anticipates including artifacts from the Monitor.

The original impetus for the Hatteras museum was spurred by the discovery of the Monitor wreck, but planning and funding difficulties delayed the project until long after the artifacts had gone to Virginia.

In 2008, the Monitor Sanctuary proposed expanding its parameters to include some sunken war wrecks in the vicinity, including World War II U-boats. But after a series of public meetings in which local divers and fishers expressed concerns about increased restrictions, the proposed plan was tabled.

NOAA, meanwhile, says that Navy regulations provide protections for the sunken vessels.

But Armor said that the expansion plan could be restarted, with more public input. Currently, NOAA is working to establish new sanctuaries off Hawaii and the south-central coast of California.

Once those planning processes are finalized, which could happen within 18 months or so, then the proposed expansion of the Monitor Sanctuary could potentially be reconsidered, he said.

Open process

Armor said he understands community suspicion or skepticism about restrictions, but he assured that each sanctuary has its own specific plan, with its own set of regulations and permitted activities that are developed by, with and for the community.

“That’s the thing that we love about the sanctuary process, is it is so open and collaborative,” he said. “We really go a long ways to making sure that we’re engaging all sectors of potentially affected communities in the decision and really benefit from guidance and perspective that communities have to offer. So, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to any of these topics that would come from the national office.”

Enforcement, also, is done on a site-by-site basis by the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement, which works closely with the Coast Guard and state wildlife agencies.

While activities such as diving and fishing are permitted in most areas of marine sanctuaries, Armor said, they also provide refuge to fish and other sea life, foster resilience and allow for almost real-time scientific monitoring to protect habitat and water quality.

And marine sanctuaries help in addressing an issue, he said, “that can be too big for people to even wrap their minds around.”

“I think the impacts of climate change and how they’re being felt in communities across the country has really highlighted the value that National Marine Sanctuaries can bring to the problem,” he said. “And so, sanctuaries and other protected areas on land and in the ocean help us focus our attention and help us focus our messaging on what we can do as average citizens to help address these challenges.”

Armor said that NOAA is planning a series of events leading up to the October anniversary celebration, which are detailed on a newly updated website.

It’s all part of getting the word out to the public, so they can celebrate what most didn’t even know they had. 

“And again, using the 50th anniversary not to look backwards and pat ourselves on the back for all the great things we’ve done,” he said, “but to challenge ourselves and to look forward to how we can do better down the road.”

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

The earliest permanent settlement of North Carolina by Europeans occurred north of the Albemarle Sound. But increased migration and the desire for land soon pushed those settlers outside of this limited area.

The men and women who moved south of the Sound found a swampy, inhospitable region. Their perseverance helped create Washington County, at one time a prosperous county that gave the state several of its most famous leaders.

The story of Washington County is one of isolation, success and an eventual renewal on the banks of the Roanoke River.

Following the earliest settlement of the Albemarle region in the late 17th century, English immigrants to North Carolina craved more arable land for tobacco cultivation. While some went west, others moved south across the Albemarle Sound.

Early North Carolinians also secured land grants on several of the area’s major rivers. One of these was the Roanoke River, which starts in Virginia and enters North Carolina near present-day Roanoke Rapids. The community that later became Plymouth, located on a bend of the Roanoke River, was first settled in 1727, according to the North Carolina Gazetteer. Other communities like Roper and Mackeys grew up around the county’s creeks and on the sound. 

The area south of the Albemarle Sound remained sparsely populated for several decades. Over time, an increase in population led to the need for more counties. In 1729, the section of North Carolina north of former Bath County and south of Albemarle Sound became Tyrrell County. In 1799, Tyrrell County’s westernmost section became Washington County, named for George Washington.

According to “The formation of the North Carolina counties, 1663-1943” by David Leroy Corbitt, the eastern boundary was a line “beginning at Bull-point … to the centre of the Indian swamp, where the road crosses … [extending] to the west end of lake Phelps… to [the] Hyde county line.” An 1801 annex gave Washington County all of what was then known as Indian Swamp.

In the antebellum period, Washington County was defined by some of the largest plantations in North Carolina. The Roanoke River and Albemarle Sound were ample sources of transportation. Tobacco and corn were planted in the rich soil of river-adjacent districts. The county also had communications with the northern side of Albemarle Sound by way of Mackey’s Ferry. The ferry operated for more than 200 years and was a key link between the older communities north of the Albemarle and the growing regions to the south and west. 

The most prized plantation in the county was Somerset Place, which was founded by a group led by Josiah Collins on Lake Phelps in the 1780s. According to the plantation’s National Register of Historic Places nomination, Collins was a political leader in the state who acquired a massive amount of land, built mills, and introduced agricultural methods new to North Carolina such as rice cultivation. A nearby plantation owner, James Johnston Pettigrew, became a famed Confederate general that was killed at Gettysburg.

As in the rest of the state, slave labor was prevalent. Over 40% of the county’s population was enslaved, according to the Hergesheimer map of 1860. Somerset Place has become noteworthy not only as a center for antebellum wealth but also a site of memory for the hundreds of enslaved African Americans who lived there in the 19th century.

In the 1980s, historian Dorothy Spruill Redford traced the lives of many of these families and helped organized a reunion of around 1,500 descendants of slaves and their owners. The reunion garnered national attention and a number of prominent visitors, including the North Carolina governor and “Roots” author Alex Haley, according to the New York Times.

In his introduction to Redford’s “Somerset Homecoming,” Haley wrote that when he learned of the project, “I was thrilled — thrilled not just at what was happening there that day, but for the connections that such a gathering of families spoke of — for the thread that ran back through the generations and will most surely run ahead into the future.” Redford’s work transformed the interpretation of slavery at Somerset Place and other plantations throughout the South.

During the Civil War, Plymouth played an important role in an often-ignored campaign late in the conflict. In 1864, the Confederacy attempted to take back eastern North Carolina from the Union. Confederate Gen. Robert F. Hoke, along with the ironclad ram Albemarle, launched an exceptional raid that defeated Union leaders Henry W. Wessells and Charles W. Flusser and led to Confederate control of Plymouth.

The victory was short-lived, for Hoke was recalled back to Virginia a few months later and the Union reoccupied the town for the remainder of the war. Research has shown that the Confederates were also responsible for war crimes against African Americans after recapturing the area.

Following the war, Washington County embarked on an economic project like those of surrounding counties in eastern North Carolina. Much of the county remained agricultural. Tenant farming replaced the plantation system, and some farmers moved from tobacco and corn to peanut and truck farming. But in some areas, industry began to take a hold.

This industry centered on Plymouth, where the population doubled between 1900 and 1910. Plymouth became a center for the manufacture of wooden handles, lumber, and paper. Industrial prosperity led to the construction of the neoclassical Washington County Courthouse in 1919.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous notables called Washington County home. These included stage director Augustin Daly, author and activist Don Brown, and NFL linebacker Charles Bowser.

Comedian J.B. Smoove, known for his work on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” was born in Plymouth and often visited his maternal relatives there.

These famous residents did not lead to prosperity in the county, however. Following the decline of industry, Washington County became one of the poorest in the state. Unemployment remained high and the town of Plymouth emptied out, losing population every decade from 1970 to the present.

Today, Washington County is showing signs of renewal. Farms still dominate the landscape, and agriculture remains the primary economic engine. But the county is also starting to attract tourism. Somerset Place and Pettigrew State Park attract thousands of visitors each year. Plymouth has been the site of new development, especially on its waterfront. There are new restaurants and several museums in the town, along with several historic restoration projects.

The county’s towns also benefit from Outer Banks traffic because of their location on U.S. 64. But because of its distance from the beach or major towns such as Elizabeth City or Greenville, Washington County will likely remain a testament to North Carolina’s agricultural, small-community past.

Experience the ongoing conservation of what remains of pirate Blackbeard’s flagship, Queen Anne’s Revenge during an open house this month.

Discovered in the mid-1990s off the coast of Beaufort by a private research firm, the ship, formerly the French slaving vessel La Concorde, ran aground in 1718.

Organizers described “The Science of Archaeology and Conservation,” as interactive, family-friendly and educational. It is set for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 23 at the Queen Anne’s Revenge Conservation Lab at East Carolina University, 1157 VOA Site C Road, Greenville.

Visitors can see how conservators and archaeologists use chemistry, physics and technology to recover and conserve artifacts.

The open house is to be hosted in garage and warehouse spaces with doors open to allow for a more open-air environment. Call the lab with questions at 252-744-6721.

The event is part of the North Carolina Science Festival, the country’s first statewide celebration of science now in its 11th year. There are more than 200 in-person and virtual events, several of which are on the coast, planned for the festival.

On Nov. 21, 1996, a search team from a private research firm Intersal Inc., operating under a permit from the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources found a cluster of cannon and anchors on the seabed near Beaufort Inlet, according to the state.

Historical documents describing the ship’s loss, size of the wreck and other details helped confirm the site’s identity as Blackbeard’s lost ship. More than 400,000 artifacts have been raised from the site, including cannon shot, parts of the ship’s hull, tools, and glass trade beads.

Coastal Review is featuring the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who writes about the history, culture and politics of the North Carolina coast. Cecelski shares on his website essays and lectures he has written about the state’s coast as well as brings readers along on his search for the lost stories of our coastal past in the museums, libraries and archives he visits in the U.S. and across the globe. 

To my friends at The Ridge

An anthropologist named Frank Speck took this photograph of an American Indian woman and child on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, in 1915. He referred to them as “Machapunga Indians” (though I will not), a tribe whose homeland had historically been the area around the Pungo River and Lake Mattamuskeet.

I found the photograph a few days after Christmas when I visited the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

I later learned that the original copy of the photograph is at the American Philosophical Society, the Philadelphia “learned society” that was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.

Speck was a professor at Penn, just outside of Philly. He specialized in the culture and languages of the Algonquin and Iroquoian-speaking peoples of the Eastern U.S. and Canada.

At the time he visited Roanoke Island, he was probably best known for his work with Fidelia Fielding in Connecticut. She was a Mohegan Indian elder also known as Dij’ts Bud dnaca (“Flying Bird”).

Fidelia Fielding was the last fluent speaker of the Mohegan Pequot language. One of the many extraordinary things about her was that she kept diaries in the written version of Mohegan Pequot.

Entrusted to Speck after her death in 1908, those diaries later proved indispensable to preserving the written version of Mohegan Pequot and to making possible a revival of the language.

Fidelia Fielding’s diaries have since been repatriated to the Mohegan Tribe. They are now in the Mohegan Library and Archives on the Mohegan Tribe’s reservation in Uncasville, Connecticut.

In 1915 Speck toured Roanoke Island and the Outer Banks in search of American Indian people who might still speak the Carolina dialect of the Algonquin language.

In an article in American Anthropologist the next year, he proclaimed his findings “meager.” To me, at least, he does not seem to have understood much of what he saw or heard, but he was right about the language: Carolina Algonquin, as linguists call it, was extinct.

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Though Frank Speck’s article in American Anthropologist did not impress me, I was enthralled by the copies of his photographs that I found at the National Museum of the American Indian.

There are a total of five: the photograph I have shown you already, two more of the same woman and child (taken at the same time, and in roughly the same pose) and two others.

The two others are portraits of a much older Indian/African American woman who was apparently from the same family as the woman and child: a mother, grandmother or great-grandmother, perhaps.

In the American Anthropologist, Speck identified all three figures as part African American and part “Machapunga Indian.” In fact, he called his article “Remnants of the Machapunga Indians in North Carolina.”

That seems a little strange because the two women and the child identified as American Indian, but did not use the word “Machapunga” to describe their tribal background. In fact, it’s not clear that any of the coastal tribes ever referred to themselves as the “Machapunga.”

In the early 1700s, English colonists did use the word “Machapunga” to describe the Algonquin-speaking Indians that resided in the vicinity of the Pungo River and Lake Mattamuskeet.

The Pungo River and Lake Mattamuskeet are both located southwest of Roanoke Island—the river perhaps 50 miles southwest, the lake 30 miles southwest.

The English used the word “Machapunga” in the early 1700s, but earlier accounts refer to the Algonquin-speaking Indians on that part of the North Carolina coast as the “Secotan.”

Later accounts, on the other hand, often employ more local terms, such as “Pungo River Indians” or “Mattamuskeet Indians.”

The only translation of the word “Machapunga” from the Algonquin to English that I have seen indicates that it means “bad dust” or “much dirt.” If that is correct, that does not sound like what a people would call themselves.

For those reasons, I think it is possible that “Machapunga” was what geographers call an exonym—a name, often but not always pejorative, that outsiders use to describe a place or a people, but one that the people in that place do not use.

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Frank Speck did not identify the younger Indian woman or the young girl in his Roanoke Island photographs by name. However, he did identify (a bit incorrectly, it turns out) the older woman in his photographs as “Mrs. M. H. Pugh.”

“Mrs. M. H. Pugh” was Annie Mariah (Simmons) Pugh, and her late husband’s name was not M. H. Pugh, but Smith Pugh. (M. H. Pugh was one of their sons.)

With a little genealogical research, I discovered that Annie Mariah Simmons (later Pugh) was born on the Pungo River, not far from the present-day towns of Belhaven and Pantego.

In his article in American Anthropologist, Speck confirms my findings. He says that she “was born and raised in the Pungo River district” and referred to herself as a “Pungo River Indian.”

The place of her birth was an important one in the history of Native America. One of the first encounters between American Indians and the English occurred on the Pungo River in the 1500s.

In the summer 1585, an English reconnaissance party explored the region around the Pungo River. While there, they visited a village called Aguascogoc twice.

On the first visit, the English traded with the people of Aguascogoc. But on the second visit, the English burned the village to the ground and torched its croplands.

To my knowledge, Aguascogoc was the first Indian village that the English destroyed anywhere in North America.

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When Frank Speck visited Annie Pugh on Roanoke Island in 1915, he estimated “her age to be about eighty years.” That seems to have been correct. According to census records, she was born in 1838 so she was 77 years old at that time.

At the age of 17, she married Smith Pugh, a Hatteras Island Indian who made his living at times by going to sea, but mainly by fishing and probably doing a little farming, too.

Like many of the old Outer Banks families, he had a multiracial background, as did Annie. (By “multiracial, I mean some combination of European, African and/or Native American ancestry.)

Both identified however as Indian (though not necessarily only Indian): she, as I mentioned, as a “Pungo River Indian,” and Smith as a member of the Hatteras Island tribe.

Smith and Annie Pugh moved closer to his home on Hatteras Island sometime after the Civil War and had a family of 13 children, though only eight seem to have survived to adulthood.

The identification of their and their children’s races in the federal censuses that were done every 10 years reflects the family’s multiracial identity and the way that America looked at race in that day.

Between the Civil War and 1900, federal censuses listed the race of the Pughs and their children at times as “mulatto,” at times as “white” and at times as “black.”

The censuses never listed any of them as “Indian,” “American Indian” or “Native American,” however.

Those were not really options at that time. Prior to 1900, the federal census counted few native people anywhere in the United States.

That exclusion had deep historical roots: as hard as it is to imagine, the United States Constitution specifically prohibited Native Americans from becoming U.S. citizens. That did not change until 1924, when the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act.

If a census taker identified an individual as part-Indian, part-white or part-Black (or part any other race) and decided to count them, they typically listed that person as being a race other than American Indian.

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The Pughs were a fishing family. They lived mainly on the Outer Banks, and Smith Pugh and his and Annie’s three sons were all fishermen. It was a poor man’s existence: the children had little, if any, time for schooling and the boys often began working on the water by the time that they were 11 or 12.

The 1880 federal census, for instance, already lists their 12-year-old son Melton as a fisherman.

Fishing was a hard life, but had its advantages, too. If you were descended from the coastal Algonquins, one of those advantages may have been having a sense of connection to one’s ancestors. After all, American Indians had been fishing on those waters for thousands of years.

That same 1880 census lists Annie Pugh as “keeping house.” In a fisherman’s family of at least eight children, “keeping house” was of course no small job. Annie probably rose earlier and stayed up later than anyone else in the household and was surely a stranger to idle hands.

Annie’s husband, Smith Pugh, died sometime around 1900. Frank Speck, our anthropologist from Penn, met Annie Pugh 15 years later, the year before she died. She passed in Nags Head, on Bodie Island, in 1916.

The identities of the woman and child in the other photographs remain a mystery. Mostly likely the adult woman was Annie Pugh’s daughter, granddaughter, or great-granddaughter. The girl, I assume, was the unidentified woman’s daughter.

Whoever the mother and daughter in that photograph were, I love their poise and fearlessness and how they are looking at the stranger who is taking their photograph.

There is something about their unabashed gazes that I just find incredibly compelling. They both seem to know exactly who they are, and they both seem to be looking straight into Speck’s soul.

Maybe it is my imagination, but the mother, at least, seems a bit skeptical of what she sees there, though perhaps she was just skeptical of why he was there at all.

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Annie Pugh’s ties to the Pungo River Indians reminded me of a story that I heard some time ago. That was in 2004, when I was in Wenona, a rural community a little north of the Pungo River and just west of what is now the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

I was in Wenona to do an oral history interview with an 88-year-old white woman named Rachel Stotesbury.

Mrs. Stotesbury had lived in Wenona since she married a local farmer in the 1930s. (You can find the story I wrote about her here.)

During my visit, Mrs. Stotesbury told me that her father-in-law remembered when a band of Indians still lived in the headwaters of the Pungo River.

According to Mrs. Stotesbury’s father-in-law, the Indian settlement was located at a place called Davis Landing, which at that time was in a remote, roadless tract of swamp forest in the headwaters of the Pungo River, perhaps 20 miles upstream of Annie Pugh’s childhood home.

In those days, the headwaters of the Pungo River still lay in the heart of what was called the Dismal Swamp (or sometimes, the “East Dismal Swamp,” to distinguish it from the Great Dismal Swamp on the other side of the Albemarle Sound).

Even at the end of the 19^th century, the East Dismal Swamp (as I’ll call it) still covered hundreds of square miles: it was a seemingly endless sea of ancient cypress forests, juniper stands and pocosin wilderness.

Pocosin is an Algonquin word for a distinctive type of raised peat bog that is only found in southeast Virginia and on the coastal plains of North and South Carolina.

But in the late 1800s, timber companies began moving into the East Dismal in a big way. They dug massive canals, drained the swamps and cut down every last acre of the old-growth forests.

They also built the region’s first railroads. Along the new rails, they hauled the swamp’s massive logs to lumber mills in company towns built on the edge of the swamplands. The Roper Lumber Company built the largest mills, one in the town of Roper, the other in the town of Belhaven.

After the forest was gone, the timber companies sold the land to be used for farming. And as the East Dismal vanished, so did the native peoples, at least the ones at Davis Landing.

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Frank Speck’s photographs at the National Museum of the American Indian also reminded me of a place dear to my heart.

Ten or 15 miles east of the Pungo River, my family and I often visit a friend who is descended from the Algonquin Indians that have lived so long on that part of the North Carolina coast. She lives in a community on the edge of Lake Mattamuskeet where many of her neighbors are also the descendants of those tribes.

My family and I like to go there particularly this time of year, when the great flocks of snow geese and tundra swans have come down from the far north and made the lake their winter home.

The community’s roots go back to the Tuscarora War of 1711-1715, when the Algonquin tribes that lived in the vicinity of the Pungo River and Lake Mattamuskeet joined forces with the Tuscarora and several other Algonquin tribes to wage war against the English colonists.

When they fell in defeat, some of the survivors retreated into the East Dismal Swamp and into the swamplands along the Alligator River.

They refused to surrender, and one colonial leader complained that they were “expert watermen” and could not easily be tracked.

In 1727 English leaders carved out a reservation for them on lands running from Lake Mattamuskeet and the present-day town of Engelhard south to Wysocking Bay.

Other Tuscarora War refugees apparently joined them on the reservation lands at Lake Mattamuskeet —a few Coree at first, and later a small number of Indians from Hatteras Island and Roanoke Island.

The Mattamuskeet Indian Reservation did not last long, however. The last of the reservation’s lands was sold to non-natives in 1761.

Nevertheless, many of the reservation’s families clung to Lake Mattamuskeet and the waters of the Pamlico Sound. Many remain there to this day. And as I come to appreciate more every time I visit, they are part of a strong, loving and giving community with roots in that land that go back thousands of years.

The nearly 165-foot-tall Bodie Island Lighthouse opens for climbing this year Wednesday, April 27, Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials announced Thursday.

The climbing season continues Wednesday-Saturday until early fall. Tickets go on sale at 7 a.m. and may only be purchased on the same day of your intended climb. Tickets are only available for purchase at www.recreation.gov/ticket/252034/ticket/10087143.

Officials noted that tickets sell out quickly and recommended creating an account at www.recreation.gov  prior to the date you intend to purchase tickets to save time.

The Bodie Island Lighthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was first lit Oct. 1, 1872, and still possesses its original first order Fresnel lens and features a flashing pattern of 2.5 seconds on, 2.5 seconds off, 2.5 seconds on and 22.5 seconds off.

A special event to celebrate the Bodie Island Lighthouse’s 150^th anniversary is being planned by Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Outer Banks Forever and the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society. Event details will be announced in the coming months.

Officials said a limited climbing season at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is undergoing restoration, may be possible this summer but potential dates had not been finalized. If a break between phases of the restoration project work allows for climbing, officials said they would announce dates within the next couple of months.

• Learn more about climbing lighthouses at https://www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/lighthouseclimbs.htm.
• Learn more about the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse restoration project at https://www.nps.gov/caha/learn/news/cape-hatteras-lighthouse-restoration-project.htm.

In July 1587, the English ship Lyon put ashore on Roanoke Island with 118 men, women and children.

The attempt to establish an English colony in the New World was the culmination of Sir Walter Raleigh’s investment in exploiting lands he had been granted by Queen Elizabeth I.

Hoping to be met by the 15 men Capt. Ralph Lane had left to hold the island for the colonists’ arrival, they instead found only the sun-bleached bones of one of the soldiers.

Nonetheless, they remained and began the work of repairing the fort and building a town. After a month, though, it was apparent that without more supplies and additional colonists, Raleigh’s investment in the New World would not succeed, and Governor John White returned to England, hoping to secure the supplies and people needed to strengthen England’s toehold in the New World. But a proxy war that was being waged with Spain became open warfare and the Spanish Armada intervened. White was not able to return to Roanoke until 1590.

When he arrived, there were no colonists, the only clue to their fate was the word “CROATAN” carved in a tree. It may have been an indication that the colonists had relocated to Hatteras Island, but the loss of the rescue expedition’s captain, a hurricane and a near-mutinous crew sent the relief ships back to England before they could explore Hatteras Island.

What is now called the “Lost Colony,” might have the appearance of a desperate, almost unplanned attempt by England to colonize the Americas, but it was instead the product of a carefully planned investigation of an uncharted, unknown new land.

At the center of that investigative work was Thomas Harriot, a scientist and mathematician whose “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia,” was the most complete description of that first attempt by the English to understand the New World.

The recent “OBX History Weekend: Searchers of the New Horizons” was a three-day, in-depth look at some of the most significant events and people who shaped the history of the area. Produced by the First Colony Foundation, Elizabeth R and Co. and the National Park Service, an entire day was devoted to exploring the life and times of Thomas Harriot.

What emerged from the lectures was a portrait of a remarkable man — a mathematician who was dabbling in algebraic equations at a time they were little known in Europe.

He was a linguist whose work presaged a 19th century syllabary alphabet, an astronomer, and chemist. Although in 16th century England, Harriot’s work combining various materials was called alchemy.

Yet for all his intellectual accomplishments, Harriot’s only published works were his depictions of the English experience in the New World, which may be why he is not better known today.

Dr. Robyn Arianrhod, speaking during the symposium from her native Australia, is the author of, “Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science,” a book that explores Harriot the scientist.

She introduced him to the audience, outlining why so little is known about Harriot.

“He is nothing if not enigmatic. Without really knowing where he was born, or who his parents were, although we do know they were working people, not gentry,” she said. “To add to the mystery, we only know about him because some 8,000 pages of his research notes were found hidden away in an old castle 150 years after he died.”

He was a man who was, in many ways, ahead of his time. A hundred years before Newton, Arianrhod said, Harriot was experimenting with prisms and the diffusion of light. He was also the first mathematician, she noted, to work entirely in mathematical formula.

Astronomy fascinated him and when telescopes became available at the beginning of the 17th century, Harriot was one of the first to understand the scientific potential of the new instrument.

“Harriot was the first to leave a surviving record of a telescopic astronomical observation,” Arianrhod said. “It was a rough outline … sketch of the crescent moon. But it was the very beginning of the new era of telescopic astronomy,

The sketch dated July 26, 1609, was “… Apparently a few months before Galileo began doing the same thing,” she added.

But it is his descriptions of the New World that Harriot is best known. His “A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia” was originally published in Latin in 1588. In 1590, publisher Theodor de Bry translated the Harriot’s work into four languages and included copperplate reproductions of John White’s depictions of the New World, making it an early international bestseller.

He was in the New World because of his relationship with Raleigh, and it was probably his mathematical skills that brought him to Raleigh’s attention.

Raleigh had been granted the right to colonize the New World in 1584. An experienced sailor, he knew that a journey of 3,500 to 4,000 miles across the ocean would require new ways of thinking about navigation.

“Raleigh wanted his captains and navigators to be the best trained in the world,” Arianrhod said.

At that time, ocean navigation used the sun and stars to determine position, and Harriot, with his interest in astronomy and math, was the ideal person to create a more precise way to navigate.

But Harriot was much more than an armchair scientist. When Raleigh sent his first expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585, Harriot was a part of it and what he observed has become a remarkable eyewitness account.

How he saw the people of the Roanoke area and how he described them was influenced, said Dr. Robert Fox, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Oxford, by his days as a university student. It was a time of dynamic intellectual challenge and Harriot, who attended the Oxford from 1580-83, was in the middle of it.

“These new students were receptive to the tide of Renaissance humanism that was beginning to circulate in Oxford,” Fox said during the event. “And I think that tide of humanism had its long-term consequences for Harriot.”

Fox noted the way Harriot writes about the Algonquin people of the area as evidence of his education in humanism. His description of Native Americans departs significantly from the view of the time that they were simple savages.

“What he saw was a settled society, codified social structure, a simple legal system, hierarchy of gods headed by a single god. There was even some notion of an afterlife. And for Harriet, Algonquin religion has all the character, I think, of a pristine faith, perhaps the face of a prelapsarian world,” he said. “It was a world — I’m thinking back again to his Oxford experiences — free from the confessional tensions that he had known and witnessed in Elizabethan England.”

Perhaps more than anyone else on the 1585 expedition, Harriot had the best understanding of the culture and politics of native peoples.

A first reconnaissance mission led by Capt. Philip Amadas and Master Arthur Barlowe returned to England in 1584 with two Native Americans named Manteo and Wanchese.

They were housed at Raleigh’s London residence, Durham House, and while there Manteo worked with Harriot to learn each other’s language. From that, Harriot devised a syllabary — a sound-based alphabet — more than 200 years before the same technique was successfully developed by Sequoyah of the Cherokee Nation in the late 1810s. 

“Manteo and Harriot collaborated to produce one of the most remarkable achievements in 16th century science. Harriot called it a new way of recording language by sound, rather than by meaning. Harriot called it, ‘an universal alphabet containing six and 30 letters whereby maybe expressed the lively image of man’s voice in what language soever …'” said Dr. Karen Kupperman, Silver Professor of History Emerita at New York University, during her History Weekend presentation.

Harriot understood that the society he was seeing was not some pure form of humanity that existed before the Biblical fall of mankind, that even if there were not the religious tensions of Catholic and Protestant religions of England, there was still conflict. While he was there, a war was being waged between the villages and Roanoke Island that comprised King Wingina’s kingdom, and he wrote about that.

“Their maner of warres amongst themselues is either by sudden surprising one an other most commonly about the dawning of the day, or moone light; or els by ambushes, or some suttle devises …” he wrote.

But as he looked at their cultures realistically, he also applied that standard in describing the actions of the English, and his mention of the violence against Native Americans may have presaged the failure of the Lost Colony, when the tribal nations of the region turned against them because of death of King Wingina at the hands of the English.

“And although some of our companie towardes the ende of the yeare, shewed themselues too fierce, in slaying some of the people, in some towns vpõ (upon) causes that on our part, might easily enough haue been borne withal …” he wrote.