The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1953-04-17
CHERRY BEGUN IT.
SCOTT FINISHED
HATTERAS RO AID
Had 1t Not Been for The
Scott Program, Citizens
Might Have Only
II Miles
By BEN DIXON MacNEILL


9.-This week has witnessed the
virtual completion of the Outer
Banks Highway, stretching its
black asphalt length II miles from
where the Whalebone Filling Sta
ton used to be to the village of
Hatteras, with her and there a
neighborhood road, among which is
Cherry Avenue" which reaches
down past the lighthouse to the
Point of Cape Hatteras.
Seven years, almost to the day,
between the April noon in 1916
when Governor R. Gregg Cherry,
speaking at the school house here
on the occasion of the Standard
Oil Company's oil-well party, to
the day when the first automobile
drove the whole length of the new
pavement that ends within casting
distance of the center of the surf
fishing universe. Incidentally, IS
drum were caught off the Point
that day, too.
No mention of the possibility
that the Island needed road and
that he would build them one was
made in the prepared text of the
Governors speech that day. The
road was something added, probab-
ly in the middle of Oregon Inlet
when the Governor was turning a
little green admidships the Coast
Guards Duck piloted by Capt. Le-
vene w. Midget. 1t was rough
day in the Inlet.
Nor was it any smoother when
the Governor finally got ashore
and transferred to an automobile
driven by Maurice Burrus to be
whisked down the beach. The go
ing was rough and before he con-
cluded his address at the school
house the Governor committed him
self and the state to building II
miles of road that would connect
four of the seven villages of Hat
teras Island.
From there he went on to say,
after looking severely around the
pint-sized auditorium in which he
was speaking, that he hoped the
road would bring the consolidation
of the village schools and the cree
ton of modern school house. He
didn't actually say, but he definite
ly looked, as if he were afraid the
school house might fall down and
mash him before he got through
talking.
Soon after he went back to Ra-
leigh surveyors appeared on the
island and soon after that Capt.
B. R. Balance gave utterance to
his classic 81 don't give a damn
where they put it I'm goin' to ride
on it." Plans were completed, the
project was advertised and the con-
tract went to the Ballenger-Gran-
mis- organization of Fayetteville
and Greenville, at price of about
$4,000 a mile. In June, 1947,
strange people and stranger ma
chimes began to appear on the is
land.
Young Charlie Ballenger bought
in California, and brought to the
island one of the two or three
Wood paving machines ever fetch
ed to the east coast of the United
States. Instead of hauling sand
and asphalt to a central mixing
plant which turned out paving by
the truck load, the Wood payer
scooped up its sand from right un-
der its belly, while the operator in
jected heated asphalt. After some
energetic mixing, the stuff was
elected, smoothed out, rolled and
packed and there was road.
1t was all very simple-after
they learned how. Nobody knew
much about such an operation be-
cause it had never been done be-
fore. In due time, after a lot of
mistakes and more headaches, the
whole operation was reduced to a
workable formula: take 81 gallons
of asphalt, mix it with one cubic
yard of sand, stir, spread and roll
and you have three running feet of
pavement Is feet wide. Simple as
that.
Since 1947 the paving machine
has scooped up pile of sand 100
feet high, so feet wide and POI
feet long. 1t amounts to 1922
cubic yards of sand. And to this
sand has been added 2,724, 160 gal
Ions of asphalt which came from
Mexico mostly and in the course
of its voyaging, rounded the Dia-
mond Shoals Lightship which