Category Archives: Outer Banks

Latest Casualty

Yesterday morning I heard that the yellow house at the end of Buela O’Neal Road had just fallen on to the beach. Of the latest casualties, this is one of the older ones, a modest beach box. It may have been built in the 70’s or early 80’s. There was a light rain coming down, but I went to look anyway.

The owner had been working with local government and Park Service officials on trying to save the house. His insurance company would not help. In order to collect through the federal flood insurance program, the structure has to have been already damaged or destroyed by flood (encroaching sea) before collecting. I hope this owner was covered.

Now the remnants will be all over the beach, creating an unsightly and potentially dangerous condition. This is nothing new. It happens time and again. There is little incentive to save these imperiled structures.

There is something wrong with the system that repeatedly allows this to happen.

This is the view looking to the south toward the Rodanthe Pier. So much for our pristine beach.

Soft Shell Guru

Some of my most gratifying work as a photographer has been freelance jobs for the North Carolina Sea Grant publication, Coastwatch. My work first appeared there in 1981, when it was a fledgling newsletter of just a few pages.

Living on Cape Hatteras, I shared many common interests with Sea Grant, and they began to give me some assignments. Each job was intriguing and put me in touch with some fascinating people.

One of these was Murray Bridges, a commercial crabber. Based in Colington, Bridges not only caught crabs, but he was and still is, best known for his business of producing soft shell crabs. He started Endurance Seafood in the 70’s as a family operated venture, and today at 79 years of age continues to do so. His pioneering contributions to the local soft shell crab industry are legendary.

I met Murray in May, 2001 for a Coastwatch story. He was very friendly, engaging and loved his work. These are a few of my shots using a Nikon F100 with Fujichrome slide film.

There were well over 100 tanks connected with plumbing, all for the purpose of molting crabs.

The crabs have to be attended 24 hours a day.

Peelers await to shed their shells.

Murray picked up a nice buster for me.

A pile of empty shells was evidence of past shedding.

Once packed in wet eel grass, they’re cooled and ready for shipment.

In season, they move them out by the thousands every day.

I enjoyed my visit, and went home with 4 dozen soft crabs.

The Grommet House

An accountant from Northern Virginia by the name of Myers, owned a cottage on the oceanfront in Rodanthe. It was a ramshackle place, built at a time when, if there were any building codes, they weren’t enforced much. The Myers family used to spend Summers there. Two of their kids were Worth and Gladys. They partied with the locals. In the winter, two of my friends Carlen and Dave, rented the place.

Robin and I surfed in front of it for years. It had a consistently good breaking wave and the mainstream surfers from Virginia Beach hadn’t discovered it.

A bit of a landmark, I photographed it for a period when I thought it was going to wash away. I saw the Rodanthe oceanfront nearly every day, checking the waves and exploring. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that I was also witnessing a complex process of barrier island dynamics. It fascinated me, how the beach environment reshaped with each storm.

Then the surfers from the north began coming. And as surfers will do, they name a spot after something they can relate to. From then on it was dubbed the grommet house. Grommet is surfing slang for a young or beginning surfer. In the longboard days, they were referred to as a gremmie. The Grommet House became a popular, packed out surf spot, but by then Robin and I moved on to other secret breaks to elude the crowds. We were always one or two steps ahead of the masses.

The Myers cottage gets some weather in March of 1980.

The house was still holding fast in 1982, and the beach made some accretion. The dune line in the background would later shelter a subdivision called Mirlo Beach.

The driveway got pummeled into the sand.

The ocean eventually took over, and the house fell into the sea.

Jim Henry

In the late 70’s, when I moved to a house in North Rodanthe, there wasn’t much around at the time… only a few beach boxes with several old family homesteads scattered about. Most prominent in the neighborhood was the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station complex. I used to wander over and take a lot of pictures of the buildings and surroundings. Part of the allure for me was the dilapidated state of the place. It was a palette for some wonderful photography.

Restoration had not yet begun and it was wide open. It was there that I met an older, gray-haired man who also had an appreciation for the place. He was a federal employee working as an economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, and was nearing the end of his career in Washington, DC. Jim Henry had been visiting the area for years and purchased a tract of land from ocean to sound in 1953 for $3000. His dream was to build a nice house there and live out his retirement.

Meanwhile the Chicamacomico Historical Association, the non-profit incorporated in 1974 to promote and restore the old station, was having problems with a lack of good leadership. Long story made short, Jim was suddenly thrust with taking charge of that responsibility. In 1982 he was elected to manage the organization as it’s president. He had an appreciation for the finer things in life, was well-traveled, educated, loved opera and a martini. At the same time he enjoyed the simple life that the villages had to offer.

One of his first tasks was to rehabilitate and open up the main 1911 building to the public. That included getting it weathered in. Through a series of state and federal matching grants, Jim raised $44,000 to finance a new cedar shingled roof and other exterior projects.

As a result on May 1, 1984, Jim was invited to Washington to give a presentation before the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. It was there that Jim accepted a prestigious award on behalf of the Chicamacomico Historical Association, largely because of his efforts.

Later he gathered historical photographs to mount exhibits. That’s when Jim met with me. My studio was up and running nearby, and he hired me to make printed copies from archived photographs. I mounted hand-made sepia toned prints on foam board, and those became the first exhibits displayed on the station’s first floor.

The boatroom of the main building got cleaned up. There was battleship linoleum glued on top of beautiful heart pine flooring, not to mention lead paint covering the walls.

From then on, I was a willing helper to Jim. The Chicamacomico Historical Association rewarded me with a lifetime membership, and subsequently invited me to join the board of directors. I can’t count the number of times that Jim would pull up in my driveway to get some advice or assistance. I’d roll my eyes back and think, “oh, here we go again”. He was somewhat a persistent pain, but I too loved the old station, and always caved in to help.

In 1988 we acquired a collection of shipwreck name boards from the Fearing family. An exhibit was mounted in the small boathouse. Jim presided at the grand opening. Fearing family representatives were present along with association members, Coast Guard personnel, historians and media. Jim was really proud of this display to educate the public about shipwrecks.

No individual has done so much to save Chicamacomico as Jim Henry. When no one else stepped up to the plate. Jim did. He wanted to tell the station’s history, get it properly restored, and always have free admission to the public. It was a labor of love. He came to the rescue, just in time to save it from falling apart.

An early morning beach stroller, Jim often came back with what he called “treasures from the sea”. Here he holds a lower jaw from a walrus, deposited thousands of years ago during glacial migration through the Chesapeake Bay.

In 1992, Jim passed away after a short illness, and I was elected to the unenviable position of president for the next 6 years. That’s another story.

Mirlo Madness

The road conditions at Mirlo Beach continue to plague NCDOT, as well as residents of Hatteras Island. It’s an issue that has been ongoing during the decades that I’ve lived here, and longer.

In the past several years the problem has accelerated and occurs more frequently. NCDOT’s reaction has been to perform the same repairs over and over again. They dig overwashed sand from the road surface, and pile it seaward to build a dune. Storms wash over the dune, moving the sand back onto the road.

The recent storm that moved off the coast buried the road and left standing water on the surface. I put my boots on and walked there to document the scene in photographs… again.

A number of homeowners in the Mirlo Beach subdivision have been trying to repair their condemned rental properties in hopes generating income. A pile of newly delivered lumber lies washed up in the sand. The approach taken to save Mirlo and highway 12 is not working.