The coastland times with which is combined the pilot and herald of Belhaven and Swan Quarter. [volume] (Manteo, N.C.) 1959-1973, 1960-07-08
Ours Is A Land Where The Wind Does
The Work; True Now; True SO Years Ago
An Entertaining Article About The North Carolina Seacoasf
Written by the Removed Dr. Collier Cobb aand Published in
the American Geographic Maeazine in June 1905.

ward and shoaling the waters of
the sounds. At Mays Head large
hotel, constituting solid OBJ
struction, soon had a sand wave
built up short distance in its
rear until the level of its roof was
reached, when the wave moved
forward and engulfed the hotel.
In the. immediate neighborhood
two cottages suffered a similar
fate. Here the land gained on the
sound $50. feet in 10 years.
On the northern end of Hat
teras Island fishing village has
been similarly buried, while the
sand has entirely crossed the is
land at several places north of
the cape. This movement of the
sand was started just after the
Civil War by the cutting of trees
next the shore for ship timbers,
and the section is still known as
The Great Woods, though not a
stick of timber stands upon it
today. Pamlico Sound for two
miles from the Hatteras shore is
growing steadily shallower from
the deposit of blown sand.
On Smiths Island a pilots vii
lage has been buried beneath the
sand wave for a number of years,
but this has been quite recently
resurrected and it's houses are
again occupied. On Currituck, be-
low Caffey's Inlet life-saving sta
ton, the sand has advanced en-
tirely across the land, and one
man, moving before the advanc-
ing sand, has at last built his house
on piles in the sound.
The writer has found by expert
ment that heterogeneous sands,
consisting essentially of quartz,
orthoclase, some mica, iron, bits
of shell, and many mineral SUBJ
stances, showing little if any de-
composition, ripple readily in the
wind and are easily arrested. This
he accomplished in one instance
by planting the seed of native
pine and covering the dune with
brush. In another case, the move
ment was checked by the unas-
sisted growth of grass upon
dunes from which hogs and cat
tie were fenced out. Several ma
tive grasses on these islands are
excellent binders; but so far
he has found no means of check
ing the movement of homogene-
Gus sands that do not ripple, these
consisting entirely of we'll round
ed and windsorted quartz grains
of the same size throughout a
single dune.
Other trees besides the pine
may be used as sand-bindefs.
Some live oaks and myrtles serve
well in this capacity, and on Hat
teras Island young olives and
palms have been observed grow
ing on the dunes, though this is
the northern limit of both these
trees, and they are even unknown
on Ocracoke Island next to the
south.
AS already pointed out, the
movement of these sands was in
every case started by the defor-
esting of strip of land next the
shore; but in several instances
nature has herself grown forests
on dune sands. Above Kitty
Hawk Bay large dunes are COW
cred with a growth of pine, ma
Pile, oak, cedar, sassafras, elm,
/ locust, beech, persimmon, syca-
more, hickory, and, in the damp
interdune areas, gums and cy-
presses. Here are many veteran
pines, some of them having at
tanned a diameter of three feet
An essentially similar forest is
found growing on the high dunes
to the southwest of Cape Hat
teras, but here we have to add
the olive to the list, and there
are broad interdune palmetto