Henderson daily dispatch., 1937-09-23
Hatteras Island May Be
Made Into Coastal Park
Little Work Dome Would Be Needed To Restore, Ter
ritory 10 It's wild beauty-Task Will Be To Make
Island More Accessible

are not required to have state license
tags for their cars.
| The plan to create a coastal nation.
al park has revived talk of a hard sur
race road on the strand, but islanders
say no road yet devised by man can
be anchored in the sandbar. Not in
frequently, storms drive the sea COM
pletely over the land, contingency
the islanders have met by construct
ing their homes on piles.
The park department will have no
dlfflculty in erasing mans blighting
hand from the beach itself. On the
Atlantic side of the bar, the beach
stretches IS miles away without so
much as one bathhouse, one beach
club, one signboard, or one summer
cottage to irritate the eye. Every
seven miles there is a coast guard
station, but that is all, unless one
wants to count the hulks of wrecked
ships which for centuries have been
cast upon the dread graveyard of
the Atlantic" The rest is silence
the sand, the variable sea. A recent
trip down the strand yielded not a
single encounter-in case YOU are
thinking about getting away from it
ALL
Nevertheless, Hatteras beauty and
solitude have not gone unappreciated.
Occasional triprers take the short
ferry trip to battle in majestic ex-
clusiveness and surf-casting from the
shore is secret Rugged close to the
breasts of some fishermen. A wealthy
G q n OF vato
the island, where waterfowl abound
and at least once year Hatteras gets
In the datelines-on January s, when
the inhabitants of Rondanthe cele-
brate Old Christmas.
Rondanthe is one, or rather two, of
the villages on the Pamlico sound side
of the island. There is North and
a South Rondanthe, with the church
which serves both communities stand
ing precisely halfway between. There
are others and they are peopled with
families of the numerous coast guard
crews, and by fishermen mostly-an
ancient and hardy folk, but not as iso-
lated as one would think. Pamlico
sound is an excellent highway.
At the moment, the island is seeing
a 81 cat 0CdA VI dCL4V4Ly Wu1CU COulO
be classed as restoration. Years ago
the sand bar contained considerable
vegetation which had adapted itself
to the rigors imposed by constant
wind, shifting sand, and frequent
northeasters. Wild stock, mostly
ponies, which roamed the islands was
blamed for the gradual disappearance
of the tough grass and plants, which
in turn, facilitated the erosive work
of wind and water. Success of science
in anchoring the dunes of the Kitty
Hawk section has led to an ambi-
tious program on Hatteras which is
designed to slow down the rate OF
geographical change of the coast.
Sand fences, tough grass and shrubs
are appearing along the strand. Since
the fleet, wild ponies could jerk up
project faster than Uncle Sam could
set one down, new stock law is APP
plicable in the coast counties which in
effect has outlawed roaming stock.
most of the islanders have rounded up
and fenced their own stock, and the
unclaimed stock has been captured
and sold, put even this month"; visi-
tor was able to get a photograph of
a wary pOuy. lac 0ASO Sow LII 90 ~
land cows, miles from a barn or ha-
bited, standing knee deep in the surf
and placidly chewing their cuds-a
pastoral scene so bizarre that it
would, if painted, be labeled sheer
piece of surrealisrn.
Selected as a coastal park site after
80 years of consideration in the park
service, Hatteras will otherwise be
unique reservation. It's flora and
fauna reflect hardihood and contact
with nature more restless than hen en-
countered in the mountains. Physical
ly still plastic, Hatteras is no museum
piece, tither in geography or history.
The first English settlers skirted the
banks and headed in at Oregon inlet;
Blackboard ran his ships past Dia-
mond Shoals at Ocracoke and buried
(some say) his booty in these sands.
But Hatteras as and is the dwelling
place of men and women who find the
present somewhat as their forefathers
found the past, and have, with forti-
tude and absence of melodramatlcs,
chung to their banks.
For, with all the advance of science
coast guardsmen still pace every foot
of Hatteras' shoreline on patrol, eyes
constantly turned toward the horizon.