Officials at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point announced this week that training is to be conducted along with special boat operations in the air station’s bordering waterways beginning Saturday.

Training will continue through June 18, and special boat teams will conduct operations in and around the waterways that may go as late at midnight on various days during the period.

The air station’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal units will conduct explosive ordnance training at the MCAS Cherry Point range at varying times throughout the month. Residents who live on and around the installation can expect to hear the
occasional loud explosion.

For more information contact MCAS Cherry Point Communication Strategy and Operations at 252-466-4241 or cherrypoint@usmc.mil.

NEWPORT — State Rep. Celeste C. Cairns, R-Carteret and Craven, members of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners, county staff, area town officials and project partners broke ground Friday for a new public boat launch in the growing western part of Carteret County.

The ceremonial groundbreaking for the Western Carteret County Boat Launch Facility at 4411 N.C. Highway 24, Newport, has been in the making for a long time, said Commissioner Mark Mansfield, the county board’s vice chairman, at the event. “As you can see, the western part of the county has been deficient in access to the water for quite some time, and this will hopefully enable us, with all the growth that’s going into the western end of the county, provide access to the waterways, which actually helps with the tax base and the property values in this area”

Former Commissioner Robin Comer, who was in office years ago when the project was conceived, was also on hand for the ceremony. He said the launch site is on one of the last available parcels that would facilitate the kind of facility needed in this part of the county where residential development has been rapid.

“This project became so popular — and when I say popular everywhere — everywhere we went to try to round up money for this thing, everybody was on board,” said Comer during his remarks.

Comer said the state provided money, as did the federal government using funding from a Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point program to buffer its nearby auxiliary airfield from residential encroachment. “And everybody wound up, everybody we asked, wound up putting money, time and effort in this thing.”

He said that Emerald Isle businessman Ronnie Watson represented the site’s then-landowner, Steven Stroud.

“If anybody knows Steve, he’s a tough businessman, so a lot of appreciation goes there to (Watson),” said Comer.

Cairns, in her remarks, credited her predecessor, former Rep. Pat McElraft, who served eight consecutive terms ending Jan. 1, 2023, for providing the initial momentum that made the project possible.

“I’m here to celebrate this occasion, that it has finally come to fruition with all the hard work that your county commissioners and my predecessor and others have put into it,” Cairns said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for folks on the western end of the county to be able to get access to the water. A wonderful collaboration with the Coastal Federation conservation folks. It’s just beautiful all the way around this great project. And I’m just honored, as I can be, to be a part of it today.”

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is developing an abutting parcel for its new Center for Coastal Protection and Restoration being built on Bogue Sound. Construction on that project began in late 2024 and is anticipated to wrap up later this year. The center will share access with the county facility through a common driveway.

County Commissioner David Quinn, who represents the Newport area, expressed how meaningful the boating access is to residents here.

“If you’ve lived in Carteret County, you know that the water isn’t just scenery, it’s part of our daily life. It’s how we relax, it’s how we work, it’s how we make memories with our families,” Quinn said. “Bogue Sound has always been central to who we are, and having safe, dependable access to it matters. That’s exactly what this facility is going to provide for folks who live here year-round and for visitors who come to enjoy the coast. This gives people a safe, convenient place to get on the water. It also helps take pressure off of other boat ramps that have been overcrowded for years.”

Quinn said that with six launch ramps and a transient floating dock, boaters will be able to get in and out more efficiently with less waiting and less congestion, especially during peak season.

“That makes a real difference for families, makes a real difference for fishermen, makes a real difference for anyone that’s trying to enjoy a day out on Bogue Sound without frustration,” he said. “But in Carteret County, access alone isn’t enough. We also understand, if we don’t take care of the waters, then the waters will not take care of us. This project was built with that in mind.”

He explained that the 159-space trailer and vehicle parking lot will help keep vehicles out of sensitive areas. A channel connecting to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway was designed to minimize the environmental impact while still proving easy for navigators.

“One of the most important features is the living shoreline,” Quinn noted. “Instead of concrete walls, we’re using natural systems that protect marshes, reduce erosion and preserve submerged vegetation that helps improve water quality and it keeps it healthy for a long time for fishing, for boating and, more importantly, for future generations. This site isn’t just about boats, the nature trails connecting Bogue Sound to the Croatan National Forest will give people another way to experience our outdoors, whether that’s a quiet walk, learning about the marsh, or just slowing down and enjoying where we live.”

He said the partnership with the Coastal Federation was important.

“It shows what can happen when public access and environmental stewardship work together instead of against each other. That kind of cooperation reflects Carteret County values: It’s practical, responsible and rooted in long-term thinking,” Quinn said.

Quinn said that in addition to the expected economic benefits of the facility, the project strengthens our connection to the water and to each other.

“It’s a place where kids learn to fish, neighbors cross paths, families spend time together, making memories together, the same way generations did before us,” said Quinn. “Found here in this body of water is the mind-clearing quiet of nature, and the small sounds of its islands are stark and healing, the squeaky flap of a cormorant’s wings overhead, the sizzle of salt foam over broken shells in a backwashing wave, the clicking of sandfiddler claws as they scuffle in the mud, and the splash of a jumping mullet breaking that flat water.

“My granddaddy was a commercial fisherman on these waters. My daddy was born here. I was raised on Bogue Sound. It isn’t just a place that I love, it’s who I am. I want to see my sons and future generations of Carteret County citizens to enjoy, to protect and to appreciate this beautiful place we call home.”

Communities near Marine Corps bases in Jacksonville and Havelock, as well as the auxiliary landing field in Bogue on N.C. Highway 24, should expect through February increased military vehicle traffic and noise associated with a monthlong training exercise starting Friday.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will begin Friday training, which will include various land-based, ground troop activities, and aircraft and night operations, as part of a larger certification exercise at Bogue Field, the U.S. Marine Corps announced Thursday.

Bogue Field is an outlying property of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point based in Havelock. Training will also be carried out at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River, both in Jacksonville.

For a list of scheduled noise-generating events at Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, please visit https://www.lejeune.marines.mil/News/Noise-Advisories.

For activity at Bogue Field, direct inquiries to Cherry Point’s Communication Strategy and Operations at 252-466-4241 or cherrypoint@usmc.mil.

Motorists planning to travel along N.C. 101 near the primary entrance for Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point should expect delays and detours the remainder of the month.

In total, lane closures are expected to last about two weeks on the 20-plus mile roadway that connects Beaufort and Havelock, bypassing Morehead City, North Carolina Department of Transportation officials said Monday.

Plans are to close both lanes of N.C. 101 between Roosevelt and Cunningham boulevards for milling and resurfacing work starting Tuesday. The road is expected to reopen 5 p.m. Thursday.

Beginning Friday, travelers can expect intermittent lane closures on N.C. 101 between Cunningham and McCotter boulevards while additional milling and resurfacing work is underway. One lane will remain open to through traffic.

There will be signed detour route along McCotter Boulevard.

Use caution when traveling near the area and seek alternate routes to avoid delays, officials said.

For real-time travel information, visit DriveNC.gov or follow NCDOT on social media.

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.

Officials with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point said Friday that residents near the air station and its outlying airfields can expect multiple military training operations throughout May.

Ground training will be conducted at Marine Outlying Field Atlantic, May 12-16 and will include improvised explosive device simulator that produce sounds mimicking explosives detonations, officials said.

While the operations will go as late as midnight, the repetitions of IED sounds are only planned to occur between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., daily.

Neighbors can also expect an increase in military vehicular and aviation activity in and around the outlying field during these periods.

Special boat operations will be conducted in the waterways in and around MCAS Cherry Point, proper, coupled with surface and direct live-fire training at bombing targets BT-9 and BT-11, Brandt Island and Piney Island, respectively, through May 15.

These operations will also go as late as midnight.

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal units may be conducting explosive ordnance training at the MCAS Cherry Point range at varying times throughout the month. Residents who live on and around the installation can expect to hear the occasional loud explosion.

The military has been a boon to North Carolina’s economy. It has brought in millions in government spending, thousands of jobs, and generations of families eager to live and retire where they used to serve.

Newspapers, historians, and the media often focus on large cities, base locations such as Fayetteville and Jacksonville, when discussing the impact of these military installations. But smaller towns also play an important role. This is the story of two coastal towns and how their histories have been shaped during the past 80 years by the Marine Corps bases nearby.

For more than 200 years, Snead’s Ferry, the vessel for which the Onslow County community was named, plied the waters of the New River between Ferry Point and Pollocks Point. It served as a vital connection on the King’s Highway, a colonial postal route near present-day U.S. 17 that was essential to communication in remote parts of eastern North Carolina. The ferry continued long after the end of colonial rule, the widespread building of bridges and new turnpikes, and the emergence of railroads in the 1840s. Snead’s Ferry finally ceased operations in 1939 following the construction of a nearby bridge.

Today, Snead’s Ferry likely could not legally run the same route. The Ferry Point side is still part of the historic community, surrounded by fishing companies and old homes. But the other side of New River features a small wildlife viewing area surrounded by Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base with more than 40,000 stationed Marines and restricted public access

Camp Lejeune, founded in 1941, has severely limited outside traffic on the base since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Just 1,500 feet on the other side of the Sneads Ferry bridge on N.C. 210 is a gate that would stop any prospective traveler. Except for the wildlife area, there would be nowhere for the ferry to land that was accessible to the public.

Sneads Ferry, the community that grew up along the New River ferry, is just one of several coastal towns that have been shaped by military expansion in the past 70 years. Nearby towns such as Sneads Ferry and Newport in Carteret County are now destinations for thousands of military families and employees. Before the bases were built, these towns were small, located on naturally advantageous river bends and points of land. They operated small-scale businesses and were mostly bypassed by the large-scale agricultural and industrial developments of the past century. 

But the needs of military bases changed the nature of their locations. Chosen for their cheap land and access to water, these installations ended up radically transforming not just their host towns but the overall region in which they were located. This new situation presents challenges and opportunities that create a new way of living for many in coastal North Carolina.

Sneads Ferry dates back nearly three centuries to the earliest years of the North Carolina Colony. In 1725, Edmund Ennett began running a ferry across the New River. It was known as the Lower Ferry because it was down river from Wantland’s Ferry, near present-day Jacksonville.

A later ferry at the same spot was operated by Robert W. Snead, who moved to the area in 1760. By the mid-18th century, the ferry was an established part of postal communication in the colonies. 

Like many places in eastern North Carolina, Sneads Ferry was overlooked by the historical forces that built up much of the state. It was not attractive to railroad lines or a productive location for industry. The railroad did not reach the vicinity of Sneads Ferry until the 1880s.

Robust growth in Wilmington and New Bern did little to change the fortunes of New River communities. In his history of Onslow County, Alan D. Watson makes only the occasional reference to Sneads Ferry, the main examples being its historic relevance to the post road and its status as the home of John Everett, an African American who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Sneads Ferry remains unincorporated to this day.

This quiet history was surpassed only slightly by development in Newport, about a 60-mile drive from Sneads Ferry and about 10 miles from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

Settled in the 18th century, Newport remained a mostly isolated spot on the Newport River. During the Union occupation, it was the site of a Civil War battle in which a Union barracks and a railroad bridge were destroyed. The town incorporated in 1866, but from 1870 to 1940, Newport’s population never exceeded 500. The town remained small until the middle of the 20th century.

In 1941, the futures of these two towns were dramatically changed. It was during that year that the Marine Corps began work on what would become Camp Lejeune on the New River. The Marine Corps acquired a sizable tract of land in what was once the community of Marines and began constructing barracks and warehouses. Men and women from Sneads Ferry, lured by the prospect of well-paying jobs during the Great Depression, flocked across the river to pitch in. By 1942, thousands of Marines were living in and being trained just a few hundred feet north of the community. 

That same year, in Havelock, construction began at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. The air station became home to thousands of Marines as well as various squadrons and aircraft repair facilities. Those repair facilities saw active use during the Vietnam War and drove the 488% population spike in Havelock during the 1970s.

Neither Newport nor Sneads Ferry is host of a military base. Neither has witnessed the expansion seen in Jacksonville or Havelock. But of the two, Newport is closer to embracing its status as a military town.

In Newport, town leaders early on saw advantages in putting out the welcome mat by way of a land swap for national forestland to create a large residential neighborhood primarily for military retirees from the air station.

Plans for Newport’s Cherry Point Veterans Mutual Housing Association development were drawn up in 1951, and the first houses were completed before the new streets were paved. The new part of town, also referred to as West Newport, included more than 70 homesites near the still-standing Forest Service fire tower.

Newport today is mainly composed of two areas, the older downtown along old U.S. 70, or Chatham Street, and the more recently developed areas on either side of the U.S. 70 bypass. This divide is clear when looking at historical growth patterns versus the growth that characterizes development connected to Cherry Point. The town has grown from fewer than 500 residents in 1940 to nearly 5,000 residents today. This growth does not take into account the expansion along the U.S. 70 bypass, where the ZIP code that includes the town has ballooned to approximately 10,000 housing units. As Mayor Dennis Barber told Coastal Review, the downtown was small prior to the base’s construction.

“Newport had everything they needed,” Barber said, referring to the community’s resistance to change for much of its history. This resistance led to an outflow of population, as mainly younger residents left the town in search of new opportunities and did not return.

Sneads Ferry, on the other hand, has grappled with its connection to the massive base across the river. Like Newport, the community is in many ways split in two. There is the historic town area near the site of the former ferry, also known as Fulcher’s Landing and home to the Riverview Cafe. This area is the site of the annual Shrimp Festival. It is still tied to the seafood industry. A 2009 Our State feature on Sneads Ferry described the town as one defined by “shrimping, family, and the pleasures of life in flip-flops,” not as a military retirement community.

Beyond the waterfront, Sneads Ferry is growing. Businesses stretch back several miles up and down nearby N.C. 210. These are not historic seafood restaurants and local shops but are modern retail chains, much different from the coastal community at Fulcher’s Landing. 

Newport, meanwhile, continues to embrace its reputation as a small town that attracts current and former military personnel. Mayor Barber said he’d like to see Newport remain a military destination. Barber is a former Coast Guardsman and has been connected to the town for decades, loving both its military connection and its being the kind of small town where “people still wave at each other.”

Meanwhile, Sneads Ferry continues to develop its waterfront. When asked about Sneads Ferry’s future, Lisa Whitman-Grice, director of the Onslow County Historical Museum, credited Camp Lejeune with making the county part of a global community. But she added that despite the trappings of military-related growth, “Sneads Ferry really wants to keep its historical connections.”

Library assistant Amanda Summers agreed. A local with connections to the seafood industry, she noted that “the town is growing and everyone can feel it,” but she rejected the idea that there was any conflict associated with military growth.

Sneads Ferry and Newport continue to be defined by their relationships to the Marine Corps. Both towns welcome more military-related newcomers and the infrastructure challenges associated with rapid growth on the North Carolina coast. These challenges include land use, sewer, and water infrastructure. Newport, for instance, is about to build another water treatment plant, and town officials have touted the town’s exceptional water infrastructure for a municipality of its size.

Despite numerous obstacles and the threat to small-town life, proximity to a military base means money and activity for these towns, both of which many of its residents welcome.

As Dee Lewis, genealogist and volunteer at the History Museum of Carteret County, said when asked about Newport’s future as a military retirement center, “The weather is nice, the people are friendly, and you can golf all year round. Of course people would want to retire there.”

An effort is in the works to bring back the eastern oyster to a section of the Neuse River.

The eastern oyster, or Crassostrea virginica, thrived 80 years ago along the Neuse River near what is now Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Since then, the local Eastern oyster population has gradually faded, according to environmental specialists at the military instillation.

Through a partnership between Cherry Point Environmental Affairs Department, or EAD, and Duke University, Duke is leading a study to determine the feasibility of reintroducing the once native oyster species back into this section of the Neuse River, Cherry Point announced Sunday on social media.

Dozens of settlement plates were placed along various sections of the shoreline. According Cherry Point EAD Natural Resources Manager Jessica Guilianelli, the plates are used to test if the environment along the Neuse River would foster the growth and survival of juvenile eastern oysters. The plates contain juvenile oysters. If the oysters grow, and attract other oysters to the area, this could be a positive indicator.

The partnership came about through Duke University’s Duke Restore program, a new initiative to build partnerships within the academic community as well as with government and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. The project has multiple teams researching different themes like living shorelines and blue carbon. The project incorporates scientific design and mentorship as well as hands-on training for scientists.

Cherry Point’s partnership with Duke University is part of a much larger, ongoing project on the installation.

Cherry Point EAD records show the Neuse River shoreline has suffered significant erosion, receding more than 20 feet in some locations since 1994.

Additionally, more than 5,000 linear feet of shoreline along the Neuse River was severely damaged during Hurricane Florence in 2018. Since then, Cherry Point EAD has been working to secure funding to repair the damage and make extensive improvements to the shoreline’s design.

EAD is planning to construct a living shoreline, a combination of an offshore sill and native vegetation that maximizes shoreline protection and generates ecological benefits such as carbon storage and essential habitats for vertebrates, such as fish, and invertebrates such as shellfish, the announcement states.

The new shoreline layout will incorporate designs that will allow the shoreline to accumulate sediment material as opposed to continual erosion.

Guilianelli said that the project paves the way for a shoreline that protects the infrastructure, is environmentally conscious, and sets the installation up for success for decades to come.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — It was a beautiful spring afternoon in 1962, April 14, to be exact — nearly 55 years ago today.

The weather forecast for the weekend was “not very favorable. Rain and thunderstorms are expected,” according to an article printed Friday, April 13, 1962, in the Carteret County News-Times.

However, photos from the collection “Visit to the Atlantic Fleet: President Kennedy views Marine Corps exercises at Bogue Field and Onslow Beach, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, 2:11PM,” showed that the forecast was clear for the arrival of President John F. Kennedy. There was not a cloud in the crisp blue sky above Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, where the News-Times reported that a 10-minute departure ceremony was wrapping up the president’s two-day official visit to see the U.S Atlantic Fleet perform sea and air power demonstrations.

These photographs can be found on The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website and were taken when Kennedy, along with an entourage of ambassadors, high-ranking military, national press and elected officials, visited the military bases in the Norfolk area and eastern North Carolina between April 13-14, 1962, to observe the fleet.

Now known as the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, the fleet is comprised of Navy and Marines officers responsible for operations in and around the Atlantic Ocean.

In the commemorative booklet distributed in honor of Kennedy’s visit to the Atlantic Fleet, its commander, Navy Adm. Robert L. Dennison wrote that during the visit, President Kennedy and distinguished guests would observe a two-day exercise “designed to demonstrate the readiness, versatility and power of the Navy-Marine team in the Atlantic.”

“Our sailors and Marines are constantly training in the various techniques which might be needed across the broad spectrum of modern military operations either in limited or general war,” he said.

Also noted in the booklet is the impressive guest list that included several dozen ambassadors from all over the world, including: Peru; Japan; Australia; Libya; Chile; Thailand; Ghana; Republic of Togo; Republic of Senegal; Venezuela; Republic of Congo; Republic of Guinea; New Zealand; Korea; Liberia; Costa Rica; Republic of Gabon; the Philippines; and United Arab Republic. Also visiting were military officers, U.S. senators and representatives, White House staff and media.

You glean a brief bit of history about naval warfare from the commemorative booklet, but more importantly, that the exercises were to demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of the Navy-Marine team in the Atlantic. Demonstrations included creating a sonic boom; loft bombing, an aerial attack at low altitude with a sudden climb just as the bombs are released, also demonstrated in formation;  bullpup air-to-ground missile capability; napalm bombing; rockets; sidewinder missiles; air fueling; glide bombing, or a less extreme variation of dive bombing; formation flying; and a mass flyby.

The bulk of the schedule the afternoon of April 13 and the morning of April 14 was filled with visits to military installations in the Hampton Roads area. The party had the opportunity to visit aircraft carriers, the USS Forrestal, USS Enterprise and the command ship, USS Northampton, and review the fleet of vessels while at U.S. Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia.

According to the News-Times, after his journey on the USS Enterprise from Norfolk on April 14, 1962, to Onslow Beach, Kennedy met there His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to view an amphibious landing staged by the Marine Corps with 10,000 to 12,000 Marines. The Shah was responsible for a movement in Iran in the 1960s and ’70s with the goal of turning it into a global power. The Friday edition of the News-Times that week noted the Shah had arrived on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

According to the News-Times report, the two leaders and their entourage then flew north by helicopter to Bogue Field off Highway 24 and on the north shore of Bogue Sound in western Carteret County. Bogue Field, a 573-acre auxiliary airfield built with three 4,000-foot runways in 1942, was used mainly for dive-bomb squadron training during World War II, with nearby islands in the sound serving as targets. Bogue Field was decommissioned after the war and made an outlying field for nearby Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

The president and his entourage were here to observe a demonstration of the Marine Corps’ first Short Airfield for Tactical Support, or SATS, a prefabricated system installed at Bogue Field in 1958 that included a catapult and arresting system for jet take-offs and landings on a short runway, much like systems used at sea on aircraft carriers.

There’s only one active runway now at Bogue Field, but carrier landing practice is still a big part of operations here. To that end, the outline of an amphibious assault ship’s deck is painted on the asphalt. Short take-offs and landings are also a focus for the AV-8B Harrier “jump jet” pilots that practice at Bogue Field.

Back on April 17, 1962, the News-Times reported that an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 people had waited for a glimpse of Kennedy as he arrived at Cherry Point. It was a tumultuous year for the presidency.

When elected in November 1960, Cold War tensions between the United States and Soviet Union had been brewing for 15 years, since the end of World War II. Tensions escalated a year earlier, in April 1961, when Kennedy oversaw the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, an attempted coup that instead further solidified both the Fidel Castro’s power and Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union. The debacle also led to a secret deal between Castro and the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that had yet to unfold as Kennedy toured the Carolina coast.

A few months later, in October 1962, the Atlantic Fleet and Adm. Dennison would again be in Kennedy’s sights.

U.S. intelligence officials learned that Khrushchev had been deploying ballistic missiles to Cuba over the summer of 1962. The Atlantic Fleet was called to action in the ensuing Cuban Missile Crisis, when many say the U.S. and the Soviet Union reached the brink of global nuclear war.

Naval forces under the U.S. Atlantic Command, headed by Adm. Dennison, and allies intercepted Soviet submarines and merchant ships en route to Cuba, establishing a “quarantine” – rather than the more warlike “blockade” of the island. Khrushchev nonetheless considered the action an “act of aggression,” but agreements were eventually reached.

According to the Naval History and Heritage command, being faced with the full brunt of the U.S. and allied naval and military forces, Khrushchev was forced to “peacefully disengage his nation from this most serious of Cold War confrontations.”

Amid the Cold War tensions in the early 1960s, eastern North Carolina remained fairly removed. The area, which was primarily dotted with fishing villages for centuries, was, however, changing into what we know today. Bogue Banks was developing into a vacation destination, and the once-thriving commercial fishing industry based on the working waterfronts in Morehead City, Beaufort and Down East was slowly being edged out for recreational fishing. Now you’ll find the docks home to high-end sportfishing boats rather than the work boats that used to tie up for the night.

By all indications of the headlines of the News-Times during his visit, the Crystal Coast truly was a quiet place. On page 1A of the Friday, April 13, 1962, edition, sharing the headlines with “President to View War Games, Visit Bogue Field,” were the following headlines: “$3,500 in Silver Dollars Will Go To Guard Unit,” regarding a donation to the National Guard in Morehead City; “Woman Injured In Car Accident,”  in which the driver was “shaken up” considerably; and “Norris Hill Caught It, But Didn’t Know What It Was,” about a missing Egyptian goose that belonged to a Beaufort resident.

The Tuesday, April 17, 1962, edition of the News-Times featured a stand-alone photo of Kennedy walking toward the viewing stands at Bogue Field, flanked by military officials. That photo was political in nature, as Kennedy sought to affirm in a midterm elections year his campaign pledge of continued American leadership and military might, along with the newspaper’s anchor stories that day: “61 Sign Up for May 26 Primary” and “Candidate Faces Fraud Charges on Tax Returns.” The paper also had its share of more mundane local news, including “Beach to Get Street Markers,” detailing when Atlantic Beach would be getting street signs.

While Kennedy’s little-known visit to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and eastern North Carolina didn’t garner much attention on the local or national scale, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet proved to be an important part of history and a vital part of the effort in keeping nuclear arms at bay during the Cold War.

Learn More

• Look at the photograph collection from President Kennedy’s visit
• View pages from the commemorative booklet of the visit

The N.C. Coastal Land Trust has purchased 302 acres of forested land along Mill Creek in Carteret County near Newport.

The trust will manage the property, which includes longleaf pine forest, pocosin and brackish marsh wetlands, all of which are home to a variety of wildlife. The property is adjacent to the Croatan National Forest and features 2,400 feet of creek frontage. Mill Creek is a tributary of Newport River and designated as state shellfish waters.

In addition to its conservation value, the property provides a buffer for the military flight path that leads to the main runways at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Development here, or installation of tall structures such as towers or wind turbines, would be incompatible with military air traffic, officials say. The Mill Creek project is the 20^th Coastal Land Trust property acquired to help buffer Marine Corps installations at the coast since 2006.

Janice Allen, trust deputy director, said the projects add up to more than 8,000 acres of land that buffer the Marine Corps’ bombing range, main base and outlying landing fields from incompatible development that could affect training.

The trust bought the property from Doug and Carolyn Brady of Beaufort. Weyerhaeuser sold the trust mineral rights to the tract.

Learn More

• Coastal Land Trust

SOUTH RIVER — The group traipsed along a trail through the wet woods on the Lukens Island peninsula of Down East Carteret County on a cold spring morning. Three stop suddenly, as one spots a tiny, delicate flower blooming in a beam of sunlight.

“It’s a blue fringe iris,” the fellow from Marine Corps said happily, as he bent over to get a better look.

Two others in the group – a semi-retired developer from Morehead City and an attorney from New Bern – also bent down to admire nature’s hardy handiwork. All got increasingly excited as they saw more of the flowers farther along the trail that runs from the Lukens Lodge toward the headwaters of Brown’s Creek.

They also talked, almost reverently, of the deer and bear and wild turkey and great blue herons that wander through or fly over the land. They noted that there has been at least one bald eagle nest on the property, and said, with a hint of pride, that state wildlife officials had told them turkey wouldn’t live there. There are now about 150.

Mack Baker, the guy from Morehead, and John Ward, the attorney from New Bern, and their 12 partners, recently signed over the development rights to their 678-acre tract in a deal with the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, the Marine Corps, the Navy and North Carolina.Lukens Lodge, of which the fellow from Morehead and the guy from New Bern are part owners, is a truly isolated haven for hunters. But thanks to a decision by the two men and their partners, it also will be, in perpetuity, conserved in its natural state.

Carmen Lombardo, the first to spot the iris, was the point man for the project as the natural resources manager at the Corps’ air station in nearby Cherry Point. Janice Allen, the deputy director of the land trust, rounded out the group.

All are pleased because everybody wins. The land trust gets to preserve habitat and help protect water quality in the area, and the military ensures that no tall structures will ever impede flights and no residences will be built near the adjacent Piney Island Bombing Range, a key East Coast training ground. The landowners will get to keep hunting and fishing. And, of course, the irises get to keep blooming and the creatures, including alligators, which on this day went unseen like the bears and the turkeys (save a feather or two), get to keep wandering.

“We’re very proud to have completed another acquisition of development rights at Lukens Island,” Allen said. “We have completed 15 such “dual” military/conservation projects since 2006, protecting more than 7,500 acres of valuable wildlife habitat and preserving water quality while helping our local military bases.”

The property features pine and hardwood forests, sloping down to marshes along the banks of Brown’s Creek, a relatively pristine tidal stream. Lukens, actually a peninsula but so isolated it feels like an island, stretched from South River on the west to Turnagain Bay on the east. The Navy’s Piney Island Bombing Range is just across the bay. The protected land is also adjacent to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s 1,300-acre game lands that is open to the public, and it’s not far to the west of the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge.

As a result, Allen said, “the project contributes to a growing network of protected riparian areas along the Neuse River and multiple tributaries within the lower Neuse River Estuary.”

Money for the protection of this property came from a grant from the N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund and the U.S. Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative.

“It’s good for everyone involved,” Ward said. “We’re very happy to have been able to do this.”

The western tip of Lukens Island looks out to South River in northern Carteret County. Photo: Brad Rich

“It lets us keep this land as it is now,” Baker added. “We won’t have to sell any of it.”

Although development has slowed dramatically in Carteret County during the Great Recession and its lingering aftermath, there have long been developers interested in the Lukens area, which, though uninhabited now, once was home to a thriving village and isn’t far, by water from the village of South River.

Some members of the partnership that owns the lodge and the land, Baker and Ward said, have at times favored selling some of the property to help pay for maintenance of the lodge and the 37 miles or roads and trails.

“If not for this (agreement), we’d probably have had to sell or develop at least some of this property,” Ward said. “It’s expensive to maintain.”

They also plant clover and other types of vegetation for the critters.  They don’t do it to shoot them. Nor really. Baker and Ward said hunters shot nine deer on the property last year. That’s far below allowed number and not even optimal for population management, according to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

“We don’t really do much hunting anymore down here anymore,” said Baker.

Most of the lodge members, who live in various parts of North Carolina and a few other states, are all-around outdoorsmen, he said. They come mainly to relax in the natural environment and look at its wonders. Some come only once or twice a year.

Ward was at one time on the board of directors of the land trust. He and Baker emphasized that hunters and fishermen care deeply about wildlife and habitat. “Ducks Unlimited was founded to preserve ducks,” Ward said.

The agreement also allows some continued “timber management” by the owners, which provides additional income. Since the land stays in private hands, it also stays on the Carteret County tax rolls.

The blue fringe iris excited visitors to Lukens Island on a cold early spring morning. Photo: Brad Rich

Allen said the land trust is particularly excited because the acquisition helps ensure the water quality in Brown’s Creek, which unlike most streams in the area has not been closed, even provisionally, for shellfish harvesting. Most of the streams in the area have been affected by agricultural development and its attendant ditching and draining, but Brown’s Creek remains almost pristine.

Allen said the land trust is “serious” about the property it manages for conservation and regularly monitors activities to make sure all provisions in the easement are being followed.

Open Grounds Farm, the sprawling 44,000 mega-farm on the north side of the Carteret peninsula, provides road access to Lukens.  On the drive through the farm, Lombardo occasionally marveled at the sights of deer, heron and huge flocks of starlings and in and above the farm fields.

“If I could make a single statement about this effort, I’d say that it perfectly serves multiple interests,” he said. “Each of the partners has its own objectives, but they overlap and mesh and make cooperation good for all.

For Cherry Point and the Marine Corps, he said, it’s crucial to keep flight paths clear around their main base in Havelock, along with their Auxiliary Outlying Landing Field at Bogue and the Piney Island Bombing Range.

Agreements like these, he said, protect national security and also enhance the environment around the bases, which is important to both people and public relations.

Allen said the whole partnership between the land trust and the military, odd as it might seem to some, dates back a long way, beginning with discussions with officials at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune about the Onslow County Bike Trail in 2001.

People got to know each other, established good personal relationships and mutual trust and respect, and found that they had common goals. Wildlife folks have learned some new things; for example, it turns out, Allen said, that even bombing on Piney Island can create habitat. Over time, bomb craters can turn into pretty good habitat for waterfowl.

The partners in the Lukens Island deal are, from left: Mack Baker, Carmen Lombardo, John Ward and Janice Allen. Photo: Brad Rich

While areas as remote as Lukens – the best way to get there is by boat – might not seem likely to be developed, she said, the same thing might reasonably have been thought years ago about areas like Bald Head Island, off the state’s southern coast and the northern Outer Banks beaches of Corolla in Currituck County, a once-remote corn of North Carolina.

Every bit the land trust and other organizations, such as the N.C. Coastal Federation, can protect, helps the environment and protects water quality in the coastal region, she said.

Since 1992, the organization, headed by Executive Director Camilla Herlevich, has helped save more than 49,000 acres of land in coastal North Carolina.

And shortly after concluding the Lukens deal, the land trust announced another conservation coup, this one at Brown’s Island, also in Down East Carteret. Herlevich said the organization had acquired more than 74 acres of Brown’s, which is just off the more familiar Harkers Island.

At more than 600 acres, Brown’s is one of the largest undeveloped coastal islands in the state still in private ownership. With this addition, the Coastal Land Trust and its partners have now protected more than 232 acres there.

“Saving Brown’s Island from development has been a top priority of those who care about our coast for many, many years—because of its size and the rich abundance of nature to be found there, including live oak and longleaf forest, forested wetlands, estuarine marsh, and coastline,” Herlevich said. “Brown’s Island is a haven for beautiful shorebirds, waterfowl, and other wildlife.

The land trust obtained a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and what Herlevich called a very generous private donation from Fred and Alice Stanback of Salisbury, a couple she called the state’s leading conservation philanthropists.

The organization doesn’t always just hold the land; sometimes it tries to do something to enhance it. For example, on that cold morning at Lukens, Allen talked excitedly about the potential for restoring some longleaf pine habitat, and Lombardo speculated about the possibility – over a long period of time – of the return of red-cockaded woodpeckers to the area.

The Lukens Cemetary helps keep alive memories of the small village that disappeared in the 1940s. Photo: Oriental Daily Photo

Historically, this woodpecker’s range extended in the southeastern United States from Florida to New Jersey and Maryland, as far west as eastern Texas and Oklahoma and inland to Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. Today it is estimated that there are about 5,000 groups of red-cockaded woodpeckers, or 12,500 birds, from Florida to Virginia and west to southeast Oklahoma and eastern Texas, representing about 1 percent of the woodpecker’s original population. They have become extinct in New Jersey, Maryland, and Missouri.

Lombardo conceded that getting red-cockaded woodpeckers back to Lukens is “a long shot,” because the birds like really old forest,” and because the closest of the rare birds are pretty far away. But it’s conceivable, he said, and he and Allen think there are good opportunities for habitat enhancement in and around the conservation easement area.

Preserving Lukens is also important from a cultural standpoint, those involved noted. The area means a lot to many in Down East Carteret. In fact, each year, on a Sunday afternoon in May, a few dozen of them board a barge on the west shore of South River and go to the Lukens Cemetery.

The one-mile, 15-minute boat ride and the visit to the cemetery, which is near but not in the easement area, are part of the Annual Lukens Picnic, which has taken place for a quarter-century, a tradition that keeps alive memories of the small river town of Lukens, which disappeared in the 1940s.

Its isolation and periodic pounding by hurricanes and nor’easters led the families to leave. But many of their descendants – bearing familiar down east Carteret names like Tosto, Collins, Pittman, Hardy and Mason – still live nearby, in South River, Beaufort and Oriental, among other places. Some of their ancestors floated their homes to those new locations, others took them apart and rebuilt them in the new locales.

The cemetery is all that remains of once thriving town.

HAVELOCK — Environmental officials at a North Carolina military base are working to reduce stormwater runoff funneling into the state’s longest river.

Plans are underway at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Havelock to remove a concrete linear ditch that dumps untreated runoff directly from base housing into the Neuse River estuary.

“The ditch is about three or four feet deep,” she said. “With the stagnant water in there, there are safety concerns. From the environmental perspective, a natural channel is certainly more beneficial.”Concrete from the 700-foot ditch, which is partially piped, will be dug up and replaced by a manmade channel with wetlands. The project will rid residents in the base neighborhood of an eyesore and potential hazard, while alleviating direct runoff into the Neuse River, said Jessica Guilianelli, natural resources specialist with the air station’s Environmental Affairs Department.

The air station received Department of Defense funding last fall to design the project. Just how much the total project will cost is unknown at this point, Guilianelli said, but to help cover additional funding Cherry Point Environmental Affairs officials have turned to the N.C. Coastal Federation for help.

“What we’re trying to do for them, of course, first is to find funding,” said Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist with the federation’s main office in Ocean in Carteret County.

Early last year, money was available from the Community Conservation Assistance Program, run by the N.C. Division of Soil and Water Conservation, she said. With no project design, it was too early to apply for funding from that pot.

The federation is now turning to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for construction funding.

“We have a request for funding where we could apply for construction money for their project for an EPA 319 grant,” Weaver said.

Section 319 of the Nonpoint Source Management Program, part of a 1987 amendment to the Clean Water Act, provides grant money for states, territories and tribes to support everything from technical assistance, education and training to assess the success of polluted runoff projects.

Since 1990, millions in grants have been allocated to such projects. Last year, applicants received more than $175 million in grants.

The ditch collects stormwater runoff from some of the air station’s various neighborhoods and delivers it untreated into the Neuse River.“On the community side, I think it’s great for [the air station] to be able to demonstrate that even though they may be impacting the environment in some ways that they’re also willing to improve it,” Weaver said. “These neighborhoods and all of the impervious pavement out there, the way it’s draining, it’s a concern.”

Just how much runoff dumps into the Neuse from the channel is unclear, Guilianelli said. The concrete ditch and pipes were likely built during the 1950s around the same time as some of the earliest base housing , she said.

As the largest Marine Corps air station in the world, Cherry Point hosts more than five neighborhoods of townhomes, duplexes and single family homes to more than 1,500 Marines, sailors and their families.

Home to roaring EA-6B Prowlers – radar-jamming jets – AV-8B Harriers and C-130J Hercules cargo aircraft, the air station and its support locations span more than 29,000 acres in eastern North Carolina. Since its first runways were built in the early 1940s, Cherry Point’s boundaries have expanded to include Hancock and Slocum creeks.

It is in Slocum Creek that the air station’s Environmental Affairs Department is undertaking another project. Preliminary plans are in the works to remove an old bulkhead and nearby docking facility at the air station’s Pelican Point Marina.

Both the bulkhead and docking facility were heavily damaged in the wake of Hurricane Irene in late August, leaving sedimentation in the creek near the air station’s Pelican Point Marina.

“We found that replacing the bulkhead was just not going to be cost effective,” Guilianelli said.

Preliminary plans are to restore the natural shoreline, making it more easily accessible for kayak and canoe enthusiasts.

“We have not seen anything to review so we are in the very preliminary stages,” Guilianelli said of both the bulkhead and stormwater ditch projects.

She did not have a timeline for when either project is likely to be completed.

Weaver said the federation appreciates the air station’s efforts.

“I think it’s great,” she said. “I hope that this leads to more projects out there.”

U.S. Military installations have stepped up environmental conservation efforts in recent years. Several green initiatives have been recently implemented, including the use of alternative energy such as solar and wind.

Recycling programs that help conserve water, promote sustainability and reduce waste are also being implemented on bases throughout the country.