Building Bridges to the Tourist Trade

Kill Devil Hills's population did not really begin to grow until new bridges were constructed from the mainland across the sounds in the early 1930s. Kitty Hawk and Nags Head both had docks for steamer ships bringing passengers from Elizabeth City and Norfolk. Kill Devil Hills was seldom visited until cars could more easily reach the Outer Banks.

The federal government built a lifesaving station in Kill Devil Hills in 1879. At the time Wilbur and Orville Wright arrived from Ohio to test their famed flying machine at the turn of the 20th century, the few permanent residents living along the barren central beaches were mainly lifesavers, fishermen, and salvagers. Even on December 17, 1903, when the Wrights made their first historic flight on windswept flatland below Kill Devil Hill, only a handful of local people watched in awe as the airplane finally soared under its own power.

Schoolchildren and their parents going back and forth to First Flight Elementary, First Flight Middle School, and First Flight High School are treated to the sight of the Wright Brothers Memorial. Motorists spy it from the Bypass or Colington Road. A 2-mile bike path was constructed on the outskirts of the landmark, and now in-line skaters, bikers, and joggers exercise in range of the spell of history.

In the summer of 1952, U.S. Representative Lindsay C. Warren, D-N.C., was vacationing at the Croatan Inn on the Outer Banks. One night, historians say, Warren met Kill Devil Hills Coast Guard Capt. William Lewark on the hotel's sprawling deck. The men looked around them at the four dozen wooden "beach box" houses that had been built on the sand over the past 20 years. Warren warned of overexpansion. He told Lewark that his seaside village ought to be zoned. He told the captain to create a town. So Lewark drafted a petition, called on his neighbors, and convinced 90 of the area's 93 voters to support incorporation. On March 6, 1953, the General Assembly officially recognized Kill Devil Hills as the first town on Outer Banks beaches.

The new town almost died in infancy. On May 4, 1955, the day that Emily Long Mustian was scheduled to take office as the town's first elected mayor, the new town ceased to be a town. Fed up with taxes that had jumped to 30 cents from 10 cents per $100 of property value since incorporation, citizens passed a referendum repealing the town charter.

Kill Devil Hills won a reprieve on February 29, 1956, when the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the petition by which the referendum had been conducted was invalid and reversed the repeal vote.

Developers set out to sell prime properties in the newly incorporated town of Kill Devil Hills. Lots in Avalon, one of the Outer Banks's first subdivisions, were sold by developers who sat at card tables under beach umbrellas at the piers, hawking the plots for $250 each. Most of those early property purchasers had their permanent homes in Hampton Roads.

By the 1970s, business was booming in Kill Devil Hills-with summer cottage rentals, motel traffic, and year-round residents. The Outer Banks's first fast-food restaurant, McDonald's, opened in 1978. The next year, Pizza Hut set up shop on a nearby Bypass lot. The rest of what locals call French Fry Alley developed by the early 1980s. As developers began stacking condominiums on the beaches as fast as they could, county commissioners enacted a 35-foot building height moratorium to prevent spoiling the eye appeal of the barrier beaches.

In 1986 commissioners financed streetlights for the town's 5 miles of highway, giving their municipality a glow at night. The neighboring towns have yet to put up continuous streetlights. By the end of the 1980s, Kill Devil Hills town employees moved into a new complex on Veterans Drive, and the town got its first large-scale shopping center in 1989.

Only four years later when the town turned 40, about 98 percent of Kill Devil Hills's private property was already platted. Some residents began looking for ways to retain their small-town feeling while becoming increasingly citified. Others expressed amazement at the ways in which their community was developing: adding a new soccer field for children, creating adult recreation programs, and welcoming new retail shops each summer.

In 1633 Colington Island became the first land in Carolina to be deeded to an individual. Today this 2-mile-long, 2.5-milewide island, although developing rapidly, is one of the last of the Outer Banks communities to experience growth. In 2005 around 3,500 people made Colington their year-round home.

The east end of Colington Island lies a mile west of the Wright Brothers Memorial, linked by a bridge over Colington Creek, which separates the island from Kill Devil Hills and Dare County beaches. Colington's other borders are surrounded by open water. Kitty Hawk Bay is to the north and Buzzard Bay is to the south. The mouths of four sounds (Currituck, Albemarle, Croatan, and Roanoke) converge on the west side of this family community.

Colington, named after its first proprietor, Sir John Colleton, was originally tilled to grow grapes for a winery shortly after settlers in 1664 founded the first Outer Banks community. The grapes, along with crops of tobacco, fruits, and vegetables, failed after three successive hurricanes. But by the early 1800s, a thriving fishing community had grown on two halves of the island: Great Colenton and Little Colenton, cleaved in 1769 by the Dividing Creek. Fishing, crabbing, and hunting sustained islanders generation after generation. Eventually, years after the rest of the barrier islands, Colington natives got paved roads, telephones, and electric service.

Now, they have tourism as well. Just like the four- or five-generation families that live here, Colington Island has its own unique Outer Banks identity. High, uneven dunes meet dank, brackish swamplands. Thick groves of pine, dogwood, live oak, beech, and holly drip Spanish moss over expanses of sandy shoreline. Thin creeks widen to unexpected harbors and bays. In summer months, soft-shell crab holding pens illuminate strips of scrubby yard along the sounds at night, the naked light- bulbs glaring out of the darkness like a Reno casino. Advertisements for waterfront property in pricey new subdivisions are posted not far from where trailers and campgrounds line the twisting road. Mansions are barely evident perched on their sandy shelves overlooking Colington Road, the most heavily traveled secondary road in Dare County.

Colington Harbour, the island's first subdivision, was built in 1965. Since then, numerous other subdivisions have been constructed along canals, marshlands, and soundfronts and in woodlands throughout Colington Island. After a year of weighing benefits and risks, newcomers and natives hammered out a reasonable zoning plan. Several restaurants, a storage garage, and a go-kart track mingling with crab shedders and fish houses along the road illustrate the conflict and challenges this sheltered community faced over dramatic change. With new development approved every year, residents have accepted the inevitability of growth. The future face of Colington will be determined by the strength of the zoning plan and the people who molded it.

Home of the Outer Banks's first resort, the community of Nags Head is south of Kill Devil Hills and north of Oregon Inlet. It stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Roanoke Sound and has remained a popular vacation destination for more than 150 years. Many first-time vacationers mistakenly refer to the whole middle-Banks area as "Nags Head," lumping the town together with neighboring Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk. Most likely this is historically based, due to the fact that at one time Nags Head was the only true destination on the middle Banks.

The booming summer scene was once anchored by cottages towering over the shallow sound, elaborate hotels facing the mainland, and calm-water canoeing, crabbing, and conversation. This relaxed style of soundside vacationing has long since been altered by shifting sands and changing values.

Nags Head History and
the Story Behind the Name

The primary resort destination on these barrier islands for more than a century, Nags Head has been the official name of the area since at least 1738, when it first appeared on maps. Historians say the beach town got its name from the horses that once roamed throughout the islands. The much more colorful legend we Insiders prefer is that Nags Head was derived from a custom locals used to lure ships to the shores. Securing a lantern from a Banker pony's neck, residents would drive the horse up and down the beach, the light swinging with the same motion as a sailboat. The unsuspecting offshore vessel would steer toward the light and proceed to get grounded on the shoals. The locals would then promptly ransack the hapless ship.

In the early 1830s, a Perquimans County planter explored the Outer Banks "with the view of finding a suitable place to build a summer residence where he and his family could escape the poisonous miasma vapors and the attendant fevers," wrote author and historian David Stick in The Outer Banks of North Carolina. "He explored the beach and the sound shore and picked his house site overlooking the latter, near the tallest of the sand hills." The planter paid $100 to an unknown Banker for the 200 acres and built the first summer house on the Outer Banks in Nags Head.

In 1838 the Outer Banks's first hotel was built in Nags Head midway between the sound and the sea. A two-story structure, the grand guesthouse had accommodations for 200 travelers, an elaborate ballroom, a bowling alley, covered porches, and a 5-foot-wide pier that extended from the hotel's front a half-mile into the sound.

The 1850 census showed that 576 people, including 30 slaves, lived year- round in Nags Head, but hundreds more came each summer. By that time the soundside community had become a well- known watering hole for the families of mainland farmers, bankers, and lawyers.

Elizabeth City doctor William Gaskins Pool was the first to build a home on the seaside in 1866, according to a 19thcentury journal kept by Outer Banks resident Edward R. Outlaw Jr. On September 14, 1866, Pool purchased 50 acres "at or near Nags Head, bordering on the ocean, for $30" and constructed his one-story cottage 300 feet from the breakers. "But over there by themselves, his family was very lonely," Outlaw wrote in his book, Old Nag's Head.

Seeing that the Pools survived beside the sea, more people began building on the eastern edges of Nags Head. By the early 1900s, homeowners were erecting their cottages on logs so they could roll them back from encroaching tides. Some of the houses moved three or four times during residents' lifetimes. Oceanfront house moving is still a common practice in Nags Head today. The houses are jacked up, mounted onto a flatbed truck, and slowly inched away from the encroaching sea.

Nags Head became an incorporated town in 1961. This beach area continues to attract anglers and surfers, nature lovers and shoppers, families and fun-seeking adventurers. Charter boat captains Sam and Omie opened a restaurant at Whalebone Junction more than 50 years ago, serving breakfast to their fishing parties. The small wooden eatery still bears their names-and still serves some of the best she-crab soup around.

Nags Head Today

Today, Nags Head is home to almost 3,000 residents. Hotels, restaurants, piers, rambling residences, and luxurious vacation cottages line Nags Head's oceanfront, which remains predominantly vacation oriented. Local residents live in the middle and on the west side of the island, away from the harsh elements of the sea. The sound shores are filled with private cottages, except one portion of lower Nags Head that features watersports outfitters, go-kart tracks, and minigolf galore. South Nags Head, stretching from MP 17 to MP 21, is an exclusively residential area with no commercial development.

Jockey's Ridge State Park is Nags Head's most popular attraction aside from the beach. The best kite flying, hang gliding, and sunset views are found atop this natural phenomenon, which is the largest sand dune on the East Coast. Every summer day, the sprawling dune is dotted with hundreds of people who climb to the top for recreation and for the expansive views of sea and sound.

Another Nags Head natural attraction is the Nags Head Woods Preserve, actually in both Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills. Hikers, bird-watchers, and nature lovers delight in this wooded anomaly, where diverse flora and fauna can be enjoyed in stunning silence (see our Natural Wonderschapter).

Nags Head is well-known for its recreational opportunities. A paved bike path stretches almost the entire length of the town. A Scottish links-style golf course, The Village at Nags Head Golf Links, is one of the area's most beautiful and challenging courses. The village stretches along the Roanoke Sound, offering sound views and the opportunity to see a variety of waterbirds and wildlife. Dolphin tours, airboat rides, boat rentals, JetSki rentals, kiteboarding lessons, windsurfing, and sailing are all offered on the sound in lower Nags Head, around MP 16 and on the Nags Head-Manteo Causeway. Miniature golf and go-kart tracks also cluster in this area. Nags Head has the YMCA complex and the area's only bowling alley.

Shoppers flock to Nags Head's name- brand outlet stores and to its several strip malls and grocery stores. Nags Head is home to many art galleries, including an artists' enclave known as Gallery Row (see our Arts and Culture chapter). Restaurants and nightspots lure diners and revelers to Nags Head. Owens' Restaurant has been a Nags Head institution for more than 50 years; Kelly's Tavern is the most well- known nightspot on the Outer Banks.

Since it's centrally located on the Outer Banks, Nags Head is a favorite destination of people who want to take day trips to Hatteras Island and Corolla. If you don't want to get back in the car once you've arrived at your vacation destination, you can get everything you want within walking distance of most Nags Head hotels and cottages.

Whether you're looking to escape the bustle of the beach by taking a quiet hike through the Nature Conservancy's Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve or dance the night away at a beachside tavern, this Outer Banks town remains one of the area's most popular resorts.