The term “skyscraper” often evokes a Northern metropolis full of towering masses of steel, thousands of panes of glass, and the occasional King Kong sighting.

In reality, a skyscraper is just a multistory building with a frame made of steel instead of a load-bearing mass of wood, brick or stone. With such a broad definition, the skyscraper is part of the social and economic fabric of nearly every city and sizable town in the country. Elizabeth City is among these cities. While its population has never exceeded 19,000 residents, the city does boast one skyscraper that is more than 100 feet tall. That building is the Virginia Dare Hotel, downtown on McMorrine Street.

The Virginia Dare Hotel was part of a regionwide emergence of Southern skyscrapers in the 1910s and 1920s. Southern companies wanted to take advantage of new technology and construction techniques to build higher than ever before. These structures were nowhere near the size of the behemoths in Chicago and New York, where buildings topped 300 feet by the 1890s and reached 700 feet by 1913. Southern skyscrapers were more modest, with lower heights and light ornamentation, often boasting a few sculptures or terra cotta details.

It is remarkable to consider the size of towns that could handle a steel-frame skyscraper. Elizabeth City in 1930 had about 10,000 residents, while the town of Sanford built a five- and six-story steel-frame building at a time when it had less than 5,000 residents.

One of the most common occupants of Southern skyscrapers was hotels. The skyscraper hotel, perfected in New York with the Plaza and the Park Savoy, catered mainly to business travelers and white-collar city workers. Elizabeth City in the 1920s was certainly a potential home for a hotel skyscraper. It was the largest city for 50 miles and an important trading post on the Albemarle Sound, the nearby Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal, and the Norfolk Southern Railway. The city in 1924 had dozens of insurance companies, four investment firms, three mortgage companies, and two laundries, one of which was labeled “Chinese” and likely run by one of the 64 Chinese-born individuals in all of North Carolina at the time. These many modern businesses, along with the nearby Outer Banks, drew a wide variety of travelers who could appreciate the modern amenities a skyscraper hotel could offer.

Completed in 1927, the Virginia Dare Hotel provided many of the modern amenities that these travelers expected. With a construction group organized by the local Kiwanis, the 100-room hotel cost about $500,000 to build. The nine-story hotel offered private baths, a telephone in each room, posh furnishings, and an attached garage with steam heat. It sat atop a shopping arcade that housed cotton brokers, gift shops, and a hat store in its early years.

The heyday of the Virginia Dare Hotel was relatively brief. Skyscraper hotels floundered in the 1950s as railway travel waned. Travelers wanted inexpensive, family-friendly accommodations where they could park their cars. They wanted to stay at new, modern, and inexpensive motels. Even though many downtown hotels like the Virginia Dare had parking decks, they were built for an earlier age’s cars. Many big hotels were not located on major highways, and when they were, their sumptuous decorations did not appeal to families on car trips.

By the 1960s, moreover, these buildings were becoming old and old-fashioned, with repair and renovation budgets unable to keep up. Many of the famed skyscraper hotels throughout the nation fell on hard times in the years after World War II, with the Park Savoy in New York being torn down in 1965 to make way for a nondescript office building.

The Virginia Dare was no different. It closed in 1971 and lay vacant for several years in the 1970s, according to the News and Observer’s Feb. 8, 1971, edition. The closing of the Virginia Dare symbolized a long period of decline for Elizabeth City. Many of its large shipping, lumber, and railroad-related businesses closed in the years after 1950, although the last large vestige of industrial Elizabeth City, its textile mill, stayed open until the 2000s. The city lost population in the 1970s for the first time in over a century.

Unlike numerous other skyscraper hotels, the Virginia Dare Hotel has received new life in recent decades. It has been part of a long trend of historic hotels being reimagined as affordable housing under various federal Housing and Urban Development programs. These programs provide rental assistance, tax credits, and other funds to help renovate historic structures and convert them into safe, affordable apartments for thousands of low-income families throughout North Carolina. HUD programs have also preserved other notable skyscrapers throughout the state, from the famed Sir Walter Hotel in Raleigh to the Kinston Hotel and Goldsboro’s Waynesborough Hotel.

The process of renovating the Virginia Dare occurred in fits and starts during the next few decades after 1971. While it opened for affordable housing soon after the closure of the hotel, the process of keeping the decades-old building safe and habitable for a large elderly population was a challenge.

Debra Stallings worked as a maintenance technician for one of the most recent managers of the Virginia Dare. She noted that the building was a unique challenge for any affordable housing company in rural North Carolina, a region without many tall buildings. 

Stallings recalled that the view from the top floors was “beautiful,” and that “it felt like water as far as the eye could see.” But in exchange for such views, the management company had to deal with a myriad of problems including old plumbing, clogged trash chutes, and ancient elevators. Stallings had to help tear down the old water tower perched atop the building and hire a crane operator in order to make repairs to the building’s HVAC system. She remembered once when the elevator broke and needed a replacement part from Virginia. She, other staff members, and tenants had to take turns hand-cranking a service elevator so residents of higher floors could get out of their apartments. 

Today, the Virginia Dare still stands proudly above the Elizabeth City skyline. Its shopping arcade contains a barber shop and one of the town’s most popular bakeries. The apartment complex is owned by Tredway, a national affordable housing company with properties in states from New Jersey to Nevada.

The firm entered a new 20-year commitment to the Virginia Dare back in 2023, so that for the foreseeable future, the venerable former hotel will continue to serve the local community, providing a needed resource at its home on the Albemarle Sound.

Coastal Review will not publish Friday, July 3, in observation of the Fourth of July holiday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Elizabeth City State University will present in April a special concert honoring two jazz greats.

The John Coltrane/Miles Davis Centennial Celebration is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 14 at the Floyd L. Robinson Auditorium inside the Mickey L. Burnim Fine Arts Center. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Scheduled to perform are the university’s Jazz Ensemble with guest artists Dr. Steven Cunningham, Cedric Easton, Dennis Figgs, Christian Howes, Stephanie Sanders, Shannah Boone and Jeremy Ward, and a special performance by the Arts of the Albemarle River City Strings.

“Join ECSU for a night when history, artistry, and community come together to celebrate the enduring legacy of jazz and the icons who defined it,” organizers said.

The program is part of Elizabeth City State’s Community Connections performance and lecture series, and is sponsored and supported through a combination of student fees and a private donation from Phyllis Bosomworth, a former member of the university’s Board of Trustees.  

While there is no charge to attend, those interested are encouraged to register in advance through www.ecsu.edu/community-connections. For additional information, contact ecsucommunityconnections@ecsu.edu.  

Millions of dollars have been marked for coastal freight rail upgrades and improvements to include tracks, trestles, culverts and port infrastructure.

The projects are part of a total $16.3 million to go toward freight rail infrastructure improvements to a dozen short-line railroads and at the state Port of Morehead City, North Carolina Department of Transportation Rail Division officials announced Thursday.

The Morehead City port will see $177,500 for a rail scale installation and $844,860 for rail replacement and upgrades on the property.

The Wilmington Terminal Railroad will receive $627,000 for rail and switch improvements along its mainline corridor.

“These projects deliver significant benefits to North Carolina’s freight rail network,” said Rail Division Director Jason Orthner. “By working closely with our railroad partners, we are strengthening reliability and resiliency, supporting businesses across the state, and reinforcing the rail infrastructure that drives North Carolina’s economy.”

Other funded coastal projects include $1.23 million to the Carolina Coastal Railway for rail and bridge improvements along its Belhaven and Norfolk Southern Railway lines in Beaufort, Greene, Washington, and Wilson counties, and $712,801 for the Chesapeake & Albemarle Railroad’s bridge and track improvements along its mainline corridor and Edenton sidetracks in Camden, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Chowan counties.

NCDOT officials said the division’s $16.3 million contribution is funded through the Freight Rail and Rail Crossing Safety Improvement program, which the state legislature established in 2014 to support “the health, safety and performance of the state’s rail infrastructure while establishing partnerships to meet the growing demand for rail service.”

In total, the projects will upgrade more than 95 miles of track and eight railroad bridges and culverts in North Carolina to support an anticipated increase in freight rail traffic statewide.

The Rail Division said its grants are matched by investments from participating railroad companies and the North Carolina Ports Authority. The partnerships are putting $41.5 million into projects that improve North Carolina’s freight rail network.

Other awarded projects and NCDOT’s contribution to each include the following:

• Aberdeen Carolina and Western Railway — $4,845,392 in funding for rail replacement and improvements along its Piedmont Division in Cabarrus and Mecklenburg counties.
• Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad — $771,397 for track upgrades and continuity of service on its mainline in Hoke County.
• Alexander Railroad Co. — $381,797 for track and corridor upgrades near the Alexander Industrial Park in Alexander County.
• Alexander Railroad Co. — $495,026 for track and grade-crossing upgrades on the mainline rail corridor in Iredell County.
• Atlantic & Western Railway — $690,440 for corridor improvements and rail track upgrades on the Jonesboro branch in Lee County.
• Great Smoky Mountains Railroad — $1.68 million for track improvements and bridge repairs along its mainline corridor in Jackson, Swain, Macon and Cherokee counties.
• North Carolina and Virginia Railroad — $979,813 for rail replacement and improvements along its mainline corridor in Northampton County.
• Raleigh & Fayetteville Railroad — $999,586 for rail corridor improvements to the Norfolk Southern and VF lines in Wake and Harnett counties.
• Winston-Salem Southbound Railroad — $1.11 million for rail improvements along its W line in Davidson County.
• Yadkin Valley Railroad — $754,700 for track upgrades and rail corridor improvements along its K and CF lines in Yadkin, Surry and Stokes counties.

MOREHEAD CITY – Keep telling your story.

That was the message to those who attended the first meeting of the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition held Tuesday afternoon in the Crystal Coast Civic Center.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard, who initiated the coalition to be a voice for the commercial fishing industry, welcomed elected officials and staff from Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Hertford, Hyde, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, and 10 coastal legislators or their representative.

“We’ve got a lot of folks here today concerned about this coalition, and this effort,” Woodard said, adding that many of the more than 100 in the audience were in Raleigh to protest House Bill 442.

But the head of the state’s recreational fishing association called the group’s goals “disappointing.”

‘No due process’

First introduced in March to open up the recreational season for flounder and red snapper, the Senate amended the bill in mid-June to include a trawling ban in the state’s inland waters and within a half-mile of the shoreline.

The proposed ban was met with both outcry and support, but when the Senate kicked the amended bill back to the House, representatives chose not to advance the bill. Since June 25, the bill has been parked in a House committee.

Woodard set the coalition in motion July 3 with a letter to the 18 other coastal counties that border bodies of water from which licensed commercial fishermen are required to report their catch, representing 20% of the state’s counties, he explained.

“That should send a clear voice to our legislators, that we got 20% of the entire counties in the state of North Carolina, and hopefully we will grow up more for people that believe in eating the fresh local seafood from clean, clear waters in our state, rather than foreign food that comes into our country. I don’t know about you, but I want to eat fresh, seafood,” he said.

When Woodard began the meeting Tuesday, he told the crowd that he was “appalled to see that (proposed trawling ban) went to the House,” and wrote a letter June 30 to Senate Leader Phil Berger.

Woodard read the second paragraph of that letter aloud: “Our democratic system, established by our forefathers, was designed to ensure that every voice in leadership could be heard-whether in support or opposition. At its core, our Constitution is built on mutual respect and, most importantly, due process.”

Woodard said, “everyone in this room sitting here today certainly knows there was no due process,” and then explained how he pitched the idea to form the coalition to a fellow commissioner.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ I’ve been a chairman in Dare County for the last 10 years. I’ve been on the board the last 12 years,” Woodard said. “Every single year, we have to fight the regulatory agencies. We have to fight the leadership.”

It was time “to come together, not just counties, not just fishermen, but stakeholders all over the south and this entire state. We need to educate those legislators that aren’t living on the coast.”

Once given the board’s blessing, Woodard sent the letter proposing the North Carolina Coastal Counties Fisheries Coalition.

“The goal of this coalition is to bring together county leaders from coastal regions to address these critical issues with a unified voice. By coordinating our efforts, we can better advocate for the long-term health and sustainability of our fisheries, our local economies and our fishermen’s way of life,” Woodard said.

About the coalition

Members agreed that the coalition would be a public body and have its next meeting at 1 p.m. Sept. 16 in the civic center, ahead of when the legislature is expected to convene.

After that, the coalition will meet quarterly in Carteret County because of its central location.

Woodard emphasized he wanted the coalition to be “as transparent as humanly possible,” adding he wanted the “public to be here.”

The coalition adopted a mission statement to support commercial fishermen and fishing communities, protect their livelihoods, preserve coastal heritage, “and safeguard the economic vitality of our working waterfronts. Together, we work to ensure the continued harvest of high-quality North Carolina seafood—feeding families, strengthening communities, and ensuring North Carolina Catch remains a priority for consumers to enjoy throughout our state and beyond.”

During the discussion, Pamlico County Commissioner Candy Bohmert said that the coalition should focus on promoting — rather than stating it’s out to save — the commercial fishing industry.

“We don’t need to save these people. They save themselves. We need to empower them,” Bohmert said. “We really need to kind of change that language. We’re promoting them. We’re promoting our commercial history. We’re promoting all of that because they’re important.”

Bobby Outten, Dare County’s manager and attorney, is to serve as staff to the board.

Outten explained that the intention with the coalition is to act as a governmental body.

“The fisheries groups have for years been working hard to deal with fisheries issues, and what we found is the legislators aren’t listening, and it’s a hard road, and it’s a tough time,” Outten said.

The idea is to get the governmental entities of the affected counties together and “then be the voice for the political side of this,” Outten said.

Fisheries groups will still be the resource to disseminate the information, but the coalition will be “the voice of the political counties.”

From the legislators

There were nearly a dozen coastal legislators at the meeting, including Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck. Hanig has been a vocal opponent of the trawling ban since it was first proposed at a Senate committee meeting June 17.

“We’ve never had the opportunity to tell our story. Well, guess what God brought us? He brought us H442, and you know what that did? That wasn’t the shot heard around the world. That was the backfire heard around the world. Let me tell you why. Now we have the ability to be on the offense, and we have to keep that ability to be on the offense,” Hanig said.

That bill “is allowing us to tell our story,” he said, adding that it led to the coalition and got 700 people to Raleigh in about three days.

The turnout in Raleigh brought together various aspects of the industry, such as commercial fishermen, packing houses, “everybody. You know why? Because what’s the first thing they went after? The shrimp, right? They’re going after everything,” Hanig said. “Because that’s what they’re after, folks, they make no qualms about it. They’re after our industry.”

In response to an audience member asking who “they” are, Hanig said “Pick someone. The CCA, the Wildlife Federation, certain legislators, you know, their efforts. They’re after this industry. They make no bones about it. They’ve been telling the wrong story, the false story, for too long, and we haven’t stopped that.” The CCA is the Coastal Conservation Association North Carolina.

“I implore you, tell your story. Do not be afraid to tell your story,” Hanig said. “Let them know where you’re coming from, because those stories matter.”

Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, told the crowd that people in Raleigh think there’s no fish, no crabs, no shrimp, that “our fishery is completely depleted, because that’s what the Marine Fisheries Commission is telling them.”

He added that this message is what he feels pitted recreational against commercial fishing, and “they think that the shrimp trawl has killed all the fish.”

Smith suggested two resolutions: Ask the “General Assembly to completely redo the Marine Fisheries Commission,” and “tell the Wildlife Resources Commission, ‘hey, stay in your lane.’ You count the trout in the mountains, but don’t use state resources” to try to close the commercial fishing industry down.

Sen. Bob Brinson, R-Beaufort, said the best way to educate folks in Raleigh is by “getting them on your boats, getting them in your oyster beds, getting them in your fish houses, and showing them what it is you do and how you do it.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Carteret, explained that when the Senate voted on House Bill 442 June 19, four voted against, but 40-plus voted in favor, which he didn’t expect.

He later found out that the votes for the amendment were for the “environmental side because they claim that shrimp trawling was destroying the environment in our sound. That it was going to destroy all kinds of fishing. Well, that’s one of the talking points that the CCA has used for the last 20 years,” he said.

Sanderson said that he was also upset about how the bill was amended in the Senate, “because the process stunk to high heaven.”

He explained that he was co-chair in the Agriculture Committee when the amendment “first came about, and that is the last thing that you ever do to a committee chairman,” he said. “If you’ve got something that’s going to be contentious, if you’ve got something that’s going to cause a lot of outcry or pushback,” you should go to them before the meeting. But Sanderson said that’s not what happened in this case.

“Let’s stay strong. Keep helping us. Keep telling your story, spreading this message across and around this state, so that the next time this happens, there’ll be an outcry from all over this state,” he said.

Response from CCA-NC

Coastal Conservation Association-North Carolina Executive Director David Sneed told Coastal Review in an email that “it is disappointing to read the goal of this new coalition is apparently to create a vehicle only for ‘battling issues that affect the state’s commercial fishing industry’ (fewer than 2,000 people who profit from a public trust resource) rather than acting in the public interest for the 11 million citizens of North Carolina who own our public trust resources and would benefit enormously from a healthy, sustainable coastal fishery.”

The coalition would be better served by recognizing the foundational, bedrock principles established by the public trust doctrine and the state’s constitution. “That North Carolina’s coastal fisheries resources belong to all 11 million citizens of this State and must be managed, preserved, and protected for the overall benefit of those citizens and future generations.  In addition, the coalition’s approach only divides and disenfranchises the not-for-profit fishing public that lives in and visits our coastal counties,” Sneed continued.

“There are more than 91,000 Coastal Recreational Fishing Licenses sold across the state’s 19 coastal counties each year, and it is reliably estimated that more than 300,000 people spend nearly $1.5 billion annually across the three Congressional Districts that encompass these 19 coastal counties—people who not only live in our coastal counties but also people from inland counties who visit our coast and spend money supporting our coastal fishing communities,” he said. “Our hope would be that any efforts by this coalition will be focused on building a true coalition in the public interest—one that will support the sound management of our coastal fisheries resources to achieve the long-term sustainability that all North Carolinians deserve and are entitled to under the law.”

“An Evening of Jazz: Celebrating Max Roach,” set for 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17, in Elizabeth City honors the jazz drummer and Pasquotank County native a week after what would have been his 100th birthday.

Being held in the Museum of the Albemarle‘s Gaither Auditorium, Douglas Jackson, professor of music at Elizabeth City State University, is set to speak about the life and accomplishments of Roach.

Also during the celebration, there will be a performance by Elizabeth City native Thomas Taylor and his mentor David Albert, who played a significant role in his music education, and accompanying musicians.

“Roach was a master percussionist whose rhythmic innovations defined bebop jazz,” according to the museum.

Roach was born Jan. 10, 1924, in Newland, a township that borders the Great Dismal Swamp, and died Aug. 16, 2007, in New York, New York. During his career, he performed with music greats Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz and others.

The National Endowment for the Arts calls Roach “one of the two leading drummers of the bebop era (along with Kenny Clarke) and was one of the leading musicians, composers, and bandleaders in jazz since the 1940s.”

The program is supported by Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle, North Carolina Museum of History Associates, The Elizabeth City Foundation, and Southern Bank of Elizabeth City.

North Carolina environmental organizations are celebrating a recent decision in a coastal North Carolina man’s challenge to remaining federal wetland protections under the Clean Water Act.

The case is ongoing.

Robert White of Pasquotank County, who operates various businesses in area, brought the case in March, challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings and seeking “to restore his own right to make use of his own land.” White seeks to operate a sand mine adjacent to Big Flatty Creek and near the Pasquotank River.

The Southern Environmental Law Center intervened in the case on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. Those nonprofit groups say White seeks to virtually eliminate federal protection of wetlands, after the U.S. Supreme Court nearly gutted existing protections last year in its Sackett v. EPA decision.

In January 2023, the EPA brought a civil enforcement action against White after he allegedly discharged pollutants into jurisdictional waters without a permit when he built and filled bulkheads in open water and wetlands, both marsh and forested, at his parcels on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. This enforcement action is ongoing. Last fall, White asked the court to stay an enforcement action pending against him. When that failed, White turned from defense to offense, as Boyle noted in his ruling.

White in April asked the court to preliminary enjoin federal agencies from enforcing Clean Water Act regulations as they pertain to him and his properties.

Related: Wildlife groups seek to intervene in Pasquotank man’s case

But Judge Terrence W. Boyle on June 17 issued a scathing decision for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina denying White’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

“White has failed to show that he is likely to succeed on the merits of either of his claims,” Boyle ruled.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing White in the case . “The Supreme Court was clear in Sackett that federal jurisdiction over wetlands requires both a continuous surface connection and indistinguishability from jurisdictional waters. The CWA regulates navigable waters, not land, so indistinguishability is a critical part of the Sackett test. The Amended Rule’s lip service to continuous surface connection is not enough under Sackett.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation represents challengers to environmental laws free of charge and “defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse,” according to its website.

White had alleged that the “adjacent” wetlands provision in the new federal rule is inconsistent with the Sackett test for jurisdiction over wetlands. He asked the court to find the new rule unlawful and set it aside as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion.” White contended for those same reasons that the new regulations exceeded the agencies’ statutory authority and must be set aside.

Boyle ruled that White failed to show that he was likely to suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction, “that the balance of the equities tip in his favor; and that an injunction would be in the public interest. Boyle called that failure “fatal to his motion.”

Boyle ruled that “White’s challenge to the waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that resulted from the Sackett decision, “smacks up against the Rule’s fidelity to ‘waters of the United States’ and Sackett’s test to determine when an adjacent wetland meets that definition.”

White faltered, Boyle ruled, by isolating a phrase in the Sackett decision “from its logical connection to the remainder of the opinion.” Boyle referenced the words of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., applying his “familiar admonition to a different context: White is thinking words not things. The thing that makes a wetland practically indistinguishable from an adjacent ‘water of the United States’ is the presence of a continuous surface connection. Thus, the Amended Rule faithfully conforms to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ as interpreted by Sackett.”

Michael and Chantell Sackett, the people behind the case name, had purchased property in Idaho and began backfilling their lot so they could build a house. The EPA informed the Sacketts that their property included wetlands and they needed a permit because they were discharging pollutants into “waters of the United States.” The Sacketts sued, and after nearly 15 years their case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they prevailed.

In its 5-4 decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that “waters of the United States,” pertains to only wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

Advocates said the revised rule leaves water quality in North Carolina unprotected and increases the chance of flooding.

The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters said in May that White’s case “could finish killing off federal rules protecting wetlands.”

The Museum of the Albemarle will soon have a new exhibit on what The Beach Boys call, “the greatest sport around.”

The new installation, “Where the Waves Break: Surfing in Northeastern North Carolina” will open at the museum in Elizabeth City July 13, with complementary programming planned for 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day.

Surfing, with its roots in Hawaii and Tahiti, has been around for centuries. On the state’s southern coastline, early forms of surfing activity were first documented in 1909, and, in 1920, the sport was introduced to the northern coast, according to the museum.

“What began as a sacred activity for Indigenous islanders has become a mix of cultures all its own. For more than a hundred years, many surfers have ridden these waves. For some, surfing is a profession; for others, it is a hobby, a therapeutic activity, a community to join, or a mechanism to raise awareness for causes,” the release states.

The exhibit features surfboards, trophies, competition jerseys, a wetsuit, lifejacket, surf jacket, and surf wax, as well as images and surfboards on loan from area surf shops.

“The Museum of the Albemarle thanks the surfers, surf shops, photographers, board making companies, and other organizations and individuals who contributed research, artifacts, quotes, and images for the exhibition,” organizers said.

Visitors can meet author, filmmaker and Elizabeth City native Laurel Senick from 12:30 until 3 p.m. July 13. Senick will be available to sign her book “Foam.” Attendees can view the 30-minute film she directed called “Any Given Morning.”

Port Discover, which touts itself as “Northeastern North Carolina’s Center for Hands-On Science,” in Elizabeth City, plans a program on shells and their different characteristics. That’s set for 11 a.m. July 13.

The following week, the museum will host Summer Fun Day: A Day at the Beach, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 16. During Summer Fun Day, visitors can hear from staff of Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education in Currituck County, “Save Our Sand Dunes” author Hannah West, YMCA staff are to talk about water safety, and Lighthouse Keeper Madison Phillips of the 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse is to provide educational programming. 

The museum is collaborating with Elizabeth City Downtown Inc., RCE Theaters and GSN Global Surf Network Tuesday, July 30, to offer live music and a film.

Luck 757 of Portsmouth, Virginia, will begin at 6 p.m. The Portsmouth, Virginia, band performs songs by Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Bobby Darin, Sam Cooke, Dion, The Drifters, Smokey Robinson, The Surfaris and others.

Following the band at 8:30 p.m. will be a showing of “The Endless Summer,” the classic surf documentary directed by Bruce Brown. Now marking its 60th anniversary, highlights the adventures of two young American surfers, Robert August and Mike Hynson. They follow this everlasting summer to Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, and California.

In the event of inclement weather, the event will be held on the portico of the Museum of the Albemarle.

ELIZABETH CITY — The Museum of the Albemarle is to welcome two new traveling exhibits next month, with one celebrating pioneering African American surgeons and the other a brief history of voting in the United States.

“Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons” is to open June 3 and “Who Can Vote: Brief History of Voting Rights in the United States” is to open the following day in the museum at 501 S. Water St.

The National Library of Medicine produced the six-banner exhibition closing July 13 and companion website that recognizes the long tradition African Americans healers and physicians and celebrates the contributions of African American academic surgeons to medicine and medical education.

“Who can Vote” traveling exhibit from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History “examines voting rights with an emphasis on the role of the US Constitution and the interplay between the states and federal government in determining who is allowed to vote,” organizers said. “This exhibition explores the complex history of the right to vote that forms the core of our nation’s democracy.”

The exhibit timeline begins with the founding era through the election of 2000 and covers topics such as voting as a constitutional right, women’s suffrage, Reconstruction and Jim Crow era voting rights, the Civil Rights Movement, and the enfranchisement of Indigenous peoples.

“Key takeaways of the exhibit include voting requirements are primarily determined by states, the right to vote is fundamental to representative democracy, voting rights have expanded significantly since the Constitution was ratified in 1788, and throughout American history, people have fought to gain and keep the right to vote,” according to the museum.

More programs

Planned programs and events also include the following:

• Summer Fun Day: A Day on the Farm. Scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, here will be activities such as farming through virtual headsets by Northeast Ag Expo Agri-Pride, learning about seeds, quilting by members of the Colonial Quilt Lover’s Guild, planting by Pasquotank County Extension, farm animals, and hands-on activities. Registration is required for groups of 10 or more. Call the museum at 252-335-1453.
• “History for Lunch: In Search of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colonists.” The program beginning at noon June 5 will be with Nicholas Luccketti, principal archaeologist at James River Institute for Archaeology. Offered both in person and virtually, register online in advance to receive the Zoom link. Since 1895, historians and archaeologists have been searching for the fort and village sites of Raleigh’s 1585 and 1587 colonies on Roanoke Island and, more recently, where the 1587 “lost colonists” may have reestablished their settlement up the Albemarle Sound. Luccketti participated in excavations at Roanoke Island and served as the co-director of the First Colony Foundation investigations that discovered Site X and Site Y. He review the previous archaeological work at Roanoke Island and the findings of excavations at Site X and Site Y.
• Juneteenth Celebration Take It, Make It at-home project. Packet pickup is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 15. The packet includes activities, learning resources, and information about regional sites that explore the history of slavery and emancipation in the Albemarle.

The museum that serves Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hertford, Hyde, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell, and Washington counties is the northeast regional history museum of the state Division of State History Museums within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and closed Sundays and state holidays.

CHAPEL HILL — Environmental organizations are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a North Carolina commercial seafood business operator that they contend seeks to virtually eliminate remaining federal wetlands protections that were dramatically scaled back last year.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said Wednesday it had filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina a motion to intervene and memorandum in the case, which it says could strip provisions that protect waterways that support fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation and undermine their related economies. The law center is representing the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The case was brought in March by Robert White of Pasquotank County. White is challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings “to restore his own right to make use of his own land,” according to his attorneys, and to ensure both agencies comply with — and courts apply — the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dramatically narrowed Clean Water Act protections.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which specializes in property rights cases, is representing White, who plans to operate a sand mine on river-adjacent land he owns. Pacific Legal said the Supreme Court’s decision requires that wetlands must be indistinguishable from navigable waters to be regulated. “Land such as Robert’s, which does not bear this connection to the two waterways — cannot be subject to federal regulation under the Clean Water Act.”

The nonprofit law firm known for property rights advocacy contends that the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion in Sackett v. EPA held that the Clean Water Act extends to only wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are “waters of the United States.” Pacific Legal lawyers had successfully represented Chantell and Mike Sackett in their dispute with the EPA.

“Last term in Sackett the Supreme Court made clear that the Clean Water Act forbids the type of wetlands regulation at issue in Mr. White’s case,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Charles Yates said in a statement in response to Coastal Review’s query. “That the Clean Water Act only authorizes the regulation of wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from covered waters, is beyond dispute. Yet rather than adhering to Sackett’s rule, the Agencies have doubled down and are transparently seeking to evade the judgment of the highest court in the land. All Mr. White seeks is a declaration that, per Sackett, the Agencies may no longer regulate his property. The interveners in this case are unsatisfied with the statute Congress actually passed and the Supreme Court’s ruling insisting that it means what it says; the proper audience for their complaints is the legislative branch.”

Pacific Legal said that White owns “low-lying,” flood-prone land on Big Flatty Creek and the Pasquotank River. Seeking to make improvements to minimize flooding and for business endeavors including agriculture and sand mining, White became engaged in permitting disputes with the EPA and the Corps regarding the “navigable waters” provision in the Clean Water Act.

He faces “crushing civil enforcement action,” according to Pacific Legal.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said the relief the plaintiff seeks would effectively write most wetlands out of the Clean Water Act.

“A ruling adopting this extreme view could have devastating effects on waters in North Carolina and throughout the nation,” said Mark Sabath, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Wetlands are vital to help protect drinking water supplies, wildlife and fisheries, and our communities from flooding. If the wetlands along our coastal waters like the Albemarle Sound are developed and destroyed, communities will be wrecked by job loss, wildlife loss, and flooding.”

The National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation say that the ruling stands to have large economic repercussions. They say healthy fish and wildlife depend on clean water, and that valuable waterways threatened by the lawsuit support fishing, hunting, and outdoor recreation, as well as the jobs these activities sustain. They contend that the clean water that hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts expect is a pillar in a $788 billion outdoor recreation industry.

“We care about the water quality and wetlands of North Carolina for both people and wildlife,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. “We cannot protect fisheries if the wetlands and streams flowing into estuaries are polluted or destroyed. We cannot ensure that critical wildlife habitat is preserved for fishing, hunting, birdwatching, and outdoor recreation if wetland protections are weakened.”

The groups say nearly all of the commercial catch and over half of the recreational harvest in the Southeast are fish and shellfish that depend on wetlands, and wetlands provide important flood protection for communities.

“What the plaintiff in this case is seeking could make it more difficult to protect wetlands and other waters that are critical to fish, waterfowl, shellfish, and other wildlife, and allow widespread destruction and degradation of those critically important waters along with pollution and flooding downstream,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “Strong Clean Water Act protections safeguard critical wetlands and other waters that sustain our nation’s wildlife and people.” 

White is currently facing a separate federal enforcement action for building and filling a bulkhead on wetlands without a permit on his property on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. His attorney did not respond to questions pertaining to that case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Max Roach Centennial Celebration and Jazz Festival is scheduled for April 11-13 in Elizabeth City.

Hosted by Elizabeth City State University’s Department of Music and Visual Arts, the festival will include jazz history workshops, master classes, K-12 workshops and live performances on the college’s campus and in Elizabeth City. All programming is open to the public at no charge.

Roach, who died in 2007, was an African American drummer, composer and band leader praised for his instrumentation and jazz prowess.

Elizabeth City State Music Professor Douglas Jackson sees the event as an opportunity to explore the roots of jazz music.

“Max Roach was born in Newland, N.C. in Pasquotank County. Elizabeth City State University shares this same geographical reference,” Jackson said in an earlier release from the college. “The recognition of Max Roach is also a recognition of the contributions made by jazz musicians born in North Carolina, including Billy Taylor, John Coltrane, Nina Simone and Thelonious Monk.”

Jackson is leading the effort along with local partners including the Museum of the Albemarle, which is hosting the festival opening night reception with special guest, Elizabeth City native, A. B. Spellman, Thursday, April 11.

Related: Bebop drummer Max Roach kept coastal NC connections

Spellman, who won in 2024 Grammy Award in the category Best Classical Compendium for the project “Passion for Bach and Coltrane,” has written essays and poetry for Rhythm magazine and taught at Morehouse College, Emory University, Rutgers, and Harvard University.  In 1975, Spellman became director of Arts in Education Study Projects for the National Endowment for the Arts, and retired in 2005. 

Guests can meet Spellman in the lobby starting at 6 p.m. before the program begins at 6:45 p.m. in the auditorium with Veronica Downing of ECSU/ WRVS Jazzy 89.9 Radio Show, Honey Vibes Weekend Radio Show and the JazzHead Podcast. Light refreshments will follow.

“We are thrilled to present this festival to the community,” Jackson said. “It is through the arts that we discover what a rich history we have throughout the state and the scope of jazz music.”   

The Max Roach Centennial Celebration and Jazz Festival 2024 is sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The traveling exhibit, “We Built This: Profiles of Black Architects and Builders in North Carolina” will be on display March 6 through May 28 at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City.

Presented by Preservation North Carolina, the exhibit that spans more than three centuries highlights the stories of those who constructed and designed many of North Carolina’s historic sites.

The exhibit includes more than two dozen personal profiles and historic context on key topics including slavery and Reconstruction, the founding of historically Black colleges and universities and Black churches, Jim Crow and segregation, and the rise of Black politicians and professionals.

Featured among the profiles are the first Black architect licensed in the state, Gaston Alonzo Edwards; Stewart Ellison, an enslaved carpenter hired out in Raleigh; and William B. Gould, an enslaved plasterer in Wilmington.

Edwards, 1875-1943, worked at Shaw University, where he planned and superintended construction of key buildings such as the 1910 Leonard Medical School Hospital, now Tyler Hall, using students to help in the construction.

Ellison, 1834-1899, helped build the North Carolina Hospital for the Insane, now Dorothea Dix Hospital. He became one of the state’s longest-serving Black legislators of the 19th century, representing Wake County in five legislative sessions. He was also the first Black citizen to serve on what is now the Raleigh City Council.

Gould, 1837-1923, made his mark on the elaborate plasterwork at the Bellamy Mansion. His initials, WBG, were found on the back of decorative plaster pieces during the 1993 restoration of the mansion.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City. Visit the website at www.museumofthealbemarle.com.

It may be hard to overstate the influence, creativity and genius of Max Roach.

The famous coastal North Carolina native’s instrument was the drums, but calling him a drummer is roughly akin to comparing the Atlantic Ocean to a pond.

The subject of a PBS documentary that premiered in October 2023, Max Roach was born in 1924 in Newland Township, about 12 or 13 miles north of Elizabeth City. It might be a stretch, though, to claim Roach as a product of North Carolina. His family moved to New York when he was just 4.

If he didn’t grow up in North Carolina, it does appear as though he maintained his connection to the area.

“He wasn’t raised here. He wasn’t educated here. But he has cousins that are still here, and my understanding is that he would come back every once in a while, and they’d have a big family party out in Newland,” said Douglas Jackson, professor of music at Elizabeth City State University.

Jackson was keynote speaker at the centennial celebration of Roach’s birthday Jan. 10 at the Museum of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City. Jackson, who plays trumpet, was aware of Roach, but as he went deeper into researching him, his appreciation grew.

“I started listening to more of his recordings and what people were writing and saying about … the influence on how he maintained tempo, his cymbal technique, where he’s he’s feathering the cymbal, and it’s so fast and it’s always so consistent,” Jackson said. “People were referring to him as a lyrical drummer. He used all of the different pieces of the drum set to complement the musicians, but he never got in the way.”

Roach died in 2007 at his home in Manhattan, but during his lifetime, he received a number of accolades. These include a MacArthur Genius Grant in 1988, Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1989 and the International Percussive Art Society’s Hall of Fame and the DownBeat Hall of Fame. In 2009 he was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

Roach was a musical prodigy. In an interview recorded in 1984 at Howard University, he described growing up in Brooklyn and his earliest musical experiences.

“When I was about 8 years old, I joined the marching band in Concord Baptist Church,” he said. “My first instrument in that band was a bugle. And I had a problem with that and later switched to the marching drum.”

Roach had an aunt who taught him to play piano and read music, but his love was always the drums, and by the time he graduated from high school in 1942, he was already in demand when a drummer was needed in New York City.

At age 17 he sat in with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, perhaps one of the most accomplished jazz orchestras of its day. Ellington’s regular drummer, Sonny Greer, was sick and a substitute was needed.

But, as he told NPR’s Terry Gross, host of “Fresh Air,” in a 1987 interview, Greer played by ear and by watching what was happening around him.

“I couldn’t play by ear at that time. I was about 17,” Roach said. “So Mr. Ellington, before the curtain came up, he looked at me and saw the fright of fear in my face and said keep one eye on me and one eye on the acts on the stage. And I made it through.”

That night, in spite of the fear, was also a defining moment for Roach.

“I made up my mind I wanted to be in this area of music because Duke had (it) all, the theater and the drama and the pageantry was just surrounding him when he presented a show. And that’s when I really decided that was what I wanted to do,” he told Gross.

The big-band era was coming to an end, however. There were a number of factors that led to that, but a World War II tax in particular may have been the death knell as Roach recounted in his Howard University interview.

“The Second World War, we had an extra 20% cabaret taxes,” he explained, pointing to already existing federal, state and city taxes. “On top of that (a club owner) had to pay a 20% government tax called entertainment tax. If he had a singer, if he had public dancing or dancing on a stage or a comedian, this really heralded the demise of big bands during that time.”

What did not face the cabaret tax, however, were small improvisational groups. It was a time when some of the finest jazz musicians in the world were gravitating to New York, and Roach was in the middle of it.

“Right after high school, of course, I went into New York and started working with people like Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) and (saxophonists) Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins,” he recalled in his Howard University interview.

The improvisational sound of the small groups had challenges, Roach told Terry Gross.

“When you played in a small band, more was required of you because there were less people. It was like playing in a string quartet is vis-a-vis symphony orchestras,” he said. “You heard more drums, you heard more piano, you heard more this then that and the other to fill it out.”

He was 18 and 19 when he first began playing with Gillespie and Hawkins and sometimes Parker. From those sessions a new form of jazz music emerged that continues to influence how jazz is performed.

“What we hear in clubs today is a manifestation that came out of the whole bebop period, when small bands took the place of big bands and people came into these smaller clubs, sat down and listened to instrumentalists perform,” he said in his Howard university interview.

One of the most distinctive features of bebop is how the cymbal is used to keep time instead of the kick drum — it was a technique the Roach pioneered. In his first recordings in the late 1940s and 50s, there is almost no bass drum at all, but in an article written for the Percussive Arts Society, Roach is quoted from an interview published in the 1998 book “The Drummer’s Time” in which he clarified why the bass drum wasn’t heard.

“We played the bass drum, but the engineers would cover it up because it would cause distortion due to the technology at the time. There were never any mics near our feet; they would have one mic above the drum set, and that was all,” he said.

Over his career Roach went far beyond the sounds of bebop.

“The creative mind is always turning and Max had a creative mind and he kept it turning,” Jackson said, and that creative mind led to some intriguing and compelling use of percussion instruments. His 1980 album, “M’Boom,” features only percussion instruments — no stringed instruments, brass or woodwinds. The sound is complex, haunting and at times surprisingly melodic.

Music does not exist in a vacuum, Roach commented in a number of interviews, and he specifically saw jazz as an expression of the Black experience in America, and that experience is very much a part of the fabric of life in this country.

“When I look around and listen to most anybody… they have been touched by, and I mean profoundly touched, by what came out of the Black community culturally. That’s what America is,” he told his Howard University interviewer. “It reflects the whole democratic aspect, improvisation. Collective improvisation is democratic.”

He was also a powerful advocate for civil rights and African American equality. In 1960 he released “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” featuring his wife Abby Lincoln as vocalist and Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax, with lyrics by Oscar Brown. In 2022 the album was selected into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

Writing about the album for the Library of Congress, writer Christa Gammage noted the album was not widely praised when it debuted.

“The album received mixed reviews; some critics claimed the album displayed a ‘bitter mood’ and felt it was ‘new-frontier club stuff and most likely a little too far out in uncut timber for most tastes,’” Gammage wrote.

Asked by Gross in the NPR interview if the album was a result of the growing Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Roach drew attention to the music Black artists had already been performing.

“I go back to Bessie Smith with “Black Mountain Blues” and then to Duke Ellington with his “Black, Brown And Beige.” It’s always been there,” he said.

He went on to tell Gross that the inspiration for his activism was what the future would hold for his children.

“You’re always thinking about … their future as well,” he said. “If they’re going to come up and be responsible human beings, they have to have education and the things like everyone else has. And the society has to accommodate that.”

Though the downtown is now a collection of mostly 20th century buildings, Elizabeth City, the center of Pasquotank County government and trade, has roots going back to the earliest years of the Colony.

The area around Elizabeth City, originally home to the Chowan and Weapemeoc, was one of the first settled by the English in North Carolina.

Its recorded past can be traced back to one of the founding acts of the Colony in 1665, when a group met at Halls Creek and established North Carolina’s original legislative assembly.

This group acted prior to the 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, the founding government document of the Carolinas that is now attributed to philosopher John Locke.

Though many of the Colony’s 1665 laws changed drastically in the decades that followed, today’s state government can be linked to this meeting on a knoll just 6 miles from today’s downtown Elizabeth City.

In 1910, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a marker at what they believed to be the site.

The area that would become Elizabeth City remained small and rural throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Nixonton, one of the first towns in North Carolina located on the Little River, was a commercial meeting place nearby.

Pasquotank County, founded in 1668, had a courthouse located at different points in the county before settling at Nixonton in the late 18th century.

Elizabeth City’s importance to the region can be traced to 1795 when a hurricane hit Albemarle Sound and silted up Edenton’s access to the Albemarle. Edenton depended on the Albemarle, but Elizabeth City took advantage of the newly constructed Dismal Swamp Canal and became a center for local and coastal trade.

Elizabeth City began to thrive as the town’s population grew in the years after its 1793 incorporation.

This population included a number of free African Americans who moved to the area to escape harsher legal treatment in Virginia.

The city hosted a number of artisanal shops, cabinet makers, and other features of a growing Southern town, making the city an early target during the Civil War.

It was vulnerable to Ambrose Burnside’s force from Roanoke Island. Citizens set the town on fire prior to the Union Army’s advance and fled on foot, leaving it a “dead town … dead as a graveyard,” as a Union Army officer described it.

Elizabeth City’s burning in 1862 contributed to its current cityscape.

Instead of having large surviving stretches of antebellum buildings like nearby Edenton or Hertford, Elizabeth City’s historical architecture is dominated by its late 19th century rebuilding.

The city is home to a considerable collection of Victorian dwellings. They line Main Street and can be found on Church and Road streets as well.

Author Catherine Bishir, curator of Architectural Records Special Collections at North Carolina State University Libraries, describes West Main Street as containing “a remarkably solid, varied, and intact grouping of closely placed late 19th- and early 20th-c. homes,” where at one point “a rhythmic row of multigabled Queen Anne dwellings nearly abuts the sidewalk.”

This rebuilding was powered by the city’s continued position as a center of trade and industry.

By 1896, Elizabeth City was home to 14 mills, three newspapers, 10 boarding houses and hotels, and a textile factory.

These businesses, along with the growth of peanut farming, helped push the city to become a center of economic and industrial prosperity in the region.

In the 20th century, Elizabeth City became a social and cultural center as well as an economic one.

Home to the Albemarle’s only historically Black university, Elizabeth City State University was founded in 1891 as a teacher’s college for Black men and women.

Elizabeth City State has since become an influential educational institution, training thousands of teachers and graduating distinguished alumni.

One of its earliest presidents, Harold Trigg, became the first Black member of the state Board of Education in 1949. In 1960, Elizabeth City also became the home of the College of the Albemarle, one of the state’s oldest community colleges. 

Like many other eastern towns, Elizabeth City was not immune to the economic forces of deindustrialization in the late 20th century. Its population stagnated between 1960 and 2000. Many of the town’s mills closed, and its downtown emptied.

Lori Meads, education coordinator at the Museum of the Albemarle, has lived in Elizabeth City her entire life. She remembers frequent visits in her childhood to the multiple department stores downtown, all of which have closed.

Despite these challenges, Elizabeth City’s embrace of education and tourism earlier in the 20th century have helped keep it vibrant and successful into the 21st. There is some debate over the future of this vibrancy, however, specifically whether or not Elizabeth City will become a suburb of the sprawling Hampton Roads region.

Residents can certainly see the allure of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and other major nearby cities.

“Of course, people go up to Hampton Roads,” Meads said. “They have Top Golf.”

But, Meads emphasized, Elizabeth City has done enough work to offer amenities, businesses, and attractions within the city limits to keep people in town and prevent it from becoming just another bedroom community.

Taken on its own, the city has a number of attractive features to both old and potential new residents. It is a college town, with its two institutions of higher learning with a combined population of around 7,000 students, and many of its old buildings are being renovated and filled with coffee shops and boutiques.

There are museums, breweries and events like the Potato Festival, which takes over the city every May.

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.

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

In an area defined by small towns and miles of contiguous farmland, Pasquotank County is by far the most developed county in the Albemarle Region.

Its county seat, Elizabeth City, is home to restaurants, shopping and the kinds of big-box stores that are ubiquitous in cities like Greenville or Rocky Mount. But Elizabeth City was not always the center of the region or even the center of Pasquotank County. It took many decades, civil unrest and a citywide rebuilding to make Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County the regional anchor that they are today. 

Pasquotank County was an original county of the Albemarle region. According to historian David Leroy Corbitt, the county began as Pasquotank Precinct of Albemarle County in 1668. Its original boundaries were the Virginia border to the north, Albemarle Sound to the south, the North River to the east, and Little River to the west. The northeast section of Pasquotank County became Camden County in 1777. Early settlers, including Nathaniel Batts and George Durant, purchased land from Native Americans and started moving in within a decade of the precinct’s formation. Pasquotank became its own county in 1739. The first town was not Elizabeth City but Nixonton, which was established in 1758 on the Little River.

Pasquotank County was in many ways the political center of the Colony. The first assembly in the Colony was known as the Grand Assembly and met in Pasquotank County in 1665. This and other early meetings set up the Colonial government, which centered around the governor and his council along with an assembly of elected representatives.

The first governor of North Carolina, William Drummond, served the Colony from Pasquotank. According to author and Pasquotank native Bland Simpson, Drummond was a decent governor whose power was undermined by Virginia’s William Berkeley. After his term in office, Drummond moved to Virginia, became a follower of Nathaniel Bacon against Berkeley, and was executed when Bacon’s Rebellion failed in 1677.

Shortly after Drummond left office, the people of Pasquotank rose up to evict another questionable governor. Culpeper’s Rebellion occurred when Gov. Thomas Miller arrested popular local citizen George Durant for opposing a new law meant to enforce customs duties. In his history of the rebellion, Hugh F. Rankin noted that its spark was a set of remonstrances written by John Culpeper in which he accused Miller of numerous crimes in the name of the “Pasquatanckians.” A local mob broke Durant out of jail and filled the jail instead with the governor and several of his deputies. North Carolina went several years without an accepted governor before the Lords Proprietor, then owners of the Colony, sent one to the Colonists’ liking.

During the time of Culpeper’s Rebellion, Colonial life was simple. Most settlers were farmers or traders. They grew corn, wheat and tobacco. Some were Quakers converted during the earlier visit by George Fox and William Edmundson, but most were Anglicans who did not regularly attend church services. The wealthiest citizens mingled often with the poorest and lived in modest brick houses. As Hugh F. Rankin wrote of the 17th century Albemarle region, “The business of hacking a home out of the wilderness was far too difficult to permit the delicacies of elegant living.” The most exciting regular occurrence was court, where citizens met to drink, socialize, and air their grievances large and small.

No buildings survive in Pasquotank County from this early period of the Colony. But one house, the Old Brick House in Elizabeth City, remains from the 1750s. It was built by Robert Murden, a local militia and assembly member. The house, rare for its twin brick chimneys and considerable size, has an elegantly designed interior and an elaborate carved mantel. H.G. Jones noted that because of their lavish interiors, the Old Brick House and Edenton’s Cupola House “were likely considered mansions in comparison to standard residences of the region.”

The late Colonial period was one of stagnation for much of Pasquotank County. As the 1700s progressed, the population center of the Colony shifted, first to Edenton and then to the Neuse and Cape Fear River regions. But Pasquotank gained renewed relevance in the 1790s with the founding of Elizabeth City at the narrows of the Pasquotank River. Likely named after either a local tavern keeper or a county in Virginia, Elizabeth City soon became a prosperous port. It was located a few miles from the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which was completed in 1805 and greatly facilitated water transportation between North Carolina and Virginia.

Elizabeth City finally surpassed Edenton by 1880 to become the largest town in the Albemarle region. Elizabeth City also had one of the largest free African American populations in the state. According to John Hope Franklin, Pasquotank County had more than 900 free African Americans in 1830, many of whom came across the Virginia border and lived in Elizabeth City.

The Civil War devastated Elizabeth City. Parts of the city were burned in 1862 and rebuilt over the next few decades. This rebuilding included the present-day Neoclassical courthouse, constructed on East Main Street in 1881 and 1882. The end of slavery enabled Pasquotank County to find new sources of economic prosperity. Agriculture continued to be prominent, but there was a renewed focus on industry. By the 1880s, there was a wide variety of businesses such as a cotton mill, grist mills, and a soda bottling establishment. Some of these buildings, in addition to an iron works dating from the 1890s, survive.

Elizabeth City also embraced higher education. Elizabeth City State University was founded in 1891 as the State Colored Normal School at Elizabeth City. It solely trained African American teachers at first but later expanded its scope. The university is now the only school in North Carolina that offers a four-year degree in aviation science. Alumni include athletes such as American Basketball Association star Mike Gale and NFL standout Everett McIver, a Dallas Cowboy who was once famously stabbed with a pair of scissors by Hall of Famer Michael Irvin. A more recent graduate, Omari Salisbury, became nationally known in 2020 for his role as videographer for social justice movements, for which he received a profile in the Seattle Times.

The College of the Albemarle, which opened in 1960 and is now located 3 miles north of Elizabeth City State University, is the other major institution of higher education in Pasquotank County. It currently serves as the primary community college for the Albemarle region and boasts one of the state’s largest health care programs, according to EdNC.

Today, Elizabeth City remains the economic center of Pasquotank County. The other communities in the county are comparatively small. Weeksville is unincorporated and long ago lost its claim to fame: a lighter-than-air airship hangar once operated by the Navy and private companies. Nixonton also remains as an unincorporated community, having lost its town status long ago according to the North Carolina Gazetteer. Most of the county still subsists on agriculture. Large fields of corn and soybeans stretch along U.S. 17. Even though Pasquotank is the 89th largest county in the state by area, it is seventh in the state in corn production according to official statistics.

But even Elizabeth City may not be the main determinant of Pasquotank County’s trajectory over the next few decades. The Hampton Roads region of Virginia continues to encroach into North Carolina. Elizabeth City is only 47 miles from Norfolk and is already part of the same metropolitan area as defined by the Census. It remains to be seen whether Elizabeth City will continue its centuries-long tradition of centrality to the Albemarle region or if it will be another outpost for the growing urban sprawl of southeast Virginia.

Public comment on a draft plan for the Pasquotank River basin will be accepted until May 31.

The Pasquotank River basin is part of the larger Albemarle-Chowan River basin, which includes southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources is requesting public review and input of the plan, which provides a comprehensive examination and explanation of the planning process for water quality and quantity issues in the Pasquotank River basin.

The plan is used to identify areas that need additional protection, restoration, or preservation to ensure waters of the state are meeting their designated use.

The North Carolina portion of the Pasquotank River basin is 3,367 square miles, made up of about 37% open water, 33% wetlands, 20% agriculture, 5% forest, and less than 5 percent total of developed lands, scrub, barren land and grassland. It contains the Albemarle, Currituck, Roanoke, Croatan and Pamlico sounds, as well as, the Pasquotank, Little, Perquimans, Alligator, Scuppernong and Yeopim rivers and numerous small watersheds.

There are 11 counties and 13 municipalities located in whole or in part in the basin. Duck, Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, Manteo, Nags Head, and Southern Shores are in Camden, Currituck and Dare counties. These municipalities have all seen about 10% increases in populations between 2010 and 2019.

As of 2018, certain waters are on the impaired waters list for copper, nickel, benthos, chlorophyll-a, pH, dissolved oxygen, dioxin, enterococcus, and shellfish-growing area status. This basin plan pays special attention to the nitrogen species of nitrate, ammonia and organic nitrogen, total phosphorus, chlorophyll-a, and algal bloom data over time throughout the Pasquotank River basin in an effort to communicate the changes in the instream nutrient concentrations.

The public comments can be emailed to forest.shepherd@ncdenr.gov or mailed to Forest Shepherd, Basin Planner, Division of Water Resources, Department of Environmental Quality, 1611 MSC, Raleigh, N.C. 27699.

Comments will be reviewed and considered for incorporation into the basin plan, which is scheduled to be presented to the Environmental Management Commission in September for final approval. The Division of Water Resources will work with local groups and organizations to implement approved recommendations.

Basin plans are required under General Statute 143-215.8B and are approved by the commission every 10 years, per a 2012 law.