“We flew on the wings of the wind at the varied speed of fifteen to twenty-five miles an hour, annihilating time and space.”
In the 19th century, the building of the railroads allowed such great distances to be traversed at what was previously unimaginable speeds, resulting in new comprehensions of time and space and the opening of a new frontier. In the 20th century, the construction of NC Highway 12 had a similar effect on the Outer Banks. In 1900, when Wilbur Wright set out for Kitty Hawk, NC from Dayton, Ohio, the train arrived in Elizabeth City, NC two days later. The last 35 miles of his journey to the small fishing village of Kitty Hawk, isolated and without infrastructure, took four days and almost ended in shipwreck. For a detailed account see Wilbur Wright Travels to the Outer Banks: Dayton, Ohio to Elizabeth City, NC, September 6-September 13, 1900.
Long before there were paved roads on the Outer banks, the teenaged brothers Harold, Stocky and Anderson Midgett operated the Manteo-Hatteras Bus Line in the late 1930s. Driving on the wet sand, dodging shipwrecks, and even swinging out into the shallow sound, the 50 mile trip to the ferry at Oregon Inlet could take anywhere from four and a half to ten hours to complete, and occasionally passengers had to spend the night on the beach due to mechanical problems. For an excellent account of driving on the Outer Banks before the road, see Anderson Midgett talks to Amy Glass about running the Hatteras to Manteo Bus Line with his brothers on Carolina Coastal Voices, embedded below.
“Nothing changed banks societies more than transportation. Transportation framed the ways the islanders related to the land and to each other, and later transformations of the landscape were linked to the anticipated paving of roads and the proliferation of cars. In 1900, villagers relied almost exclusively on boats, and horses facilitated overland travel. They employed horse carts, but the carts usually carried goods, not people. Boats were personalized. Every man owned his own skiff, hand-made and sufficiently customized that locals could recognize each other from great distance. Before cars reduced the relational space on the banks, villages seemed very far apart; Ocracoke was a distant land. Automobiles changed that sense of space.”
The road not only linked the isolated communities of NC's barrier landscape together like never before, but also opened them up to the growing numbers of temporary visitors that would soon transform the place and its economy. The road tamed the atlantic frontier, bringing human convenience wherever it went, but it also locked visitors, locals, politicians, engineers, and numerous governmental agencies into a seemingly unwinnable gamble with the forces of natures: how to maintain a brittle, vital ribbon of asphalt atop a strip of sand in one of the most kinetic environments imaginable.
Flooding along N Virginia Dare Trail (part of Highway 12) in Kitty Hawk.
At 148 miles long, Highway 12 is the critical element that allows people to easily experience the Outer Banks. It is a two-lane road that runs North-South along the barrier islands (in some places barely wider than the road) beginning in the south at a junction with US 70 in the community of Sea Level on the mainland and ends just north of Corolla, where the road becomes a sandy path along the beach for the last few miles, terminating near the Virginia border. The route includes two ferry trips to cross both the Ocracoke and Hatteras inlets, one major bridge across the Oregon Inlet, a presently temporary bridge over New Inlet, and the ever-present sight of both beautiful vistas and construction crews.
Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet.
The road was the key infrastructure that opened the Outer Banks to profitable development, increasing tax revenues and real estate value. Its existence allowed countless Americans to easily venture to the coast, experiencing a place prized for natural beauty and steeped with the lore of a national identity built on tales of the Lost Colony and the Wright Brothers' first flight. In the first half of the 20th century, a road was not at odds with the prevailing ideas about the geology of the islands. They were considered to be constant, permanent; though damaged by poor human stewardship, capable of rehabilitation to a former pristine, forested, and stable condition. Current science gives us a more advanced view of the complex and kinetic systems of the barrier islands. The Outer Banks are naturally migratory.
A man looks out from the deck of the Hatteras-Ocracoke Ferry, part of Highway 12.
“In a natural system, storm waves wash over the islands, carrying sand from seaside to soundside. As sea level rises and the sand moves, the islands drift to the west, eroding in the front and building up in the back, but always maintaining their relative distance from the mainland, where rising sea level is also moving the shoreline west.
Major storms can cut inlets right through the islands, creating large fan-shaped deltas of sand. Marsh plants take root in the deltas, catching more sand that builds elevation and island width. Over the years, as the sand moves, most inlets fill up and become part of their islands again.
Perpetual motion is good for barrier islands, but about 78 years ago, man interrupted the natural cycle.”
The dunes are the primary stabilizing element of the Outer Banks. They were originally built and maintained by the Park Service in an attempt to protect the islands and allow them to revert back into an imagined, idyllic state, though as updated science explained otherwise, the Park Service stopped all dune maintenance, potentially leaving the road susceptible to erosion, washouts, and decay. Instead, the job was passed to the NC Department of Transportation.
Heavy tire tracks are evidence of the dune construction along Highway 12 in Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.
“In 1977 the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), successor to the Highway Commission, agreed to take over sole responsibility for dune stabilization on the shoulder of the road near the volatile Buxton area. Eventually, the NCDOT took over responsibility for dune maintenance anywhere that overwash threatened their road, which extended to village shorelines. The “reversal” of Park Service policy was in reality a compromise. Rather than letting the beach revert to former dynamics, the Park Service transferred responsibility to another government body. Each year one could see state workers walking along towering dunes to plant grasses and install new sand fences, perpetuating the projects of the 1930s in order to protect private property and access to it on the Outer Banks.”
A particularly volatile section of Highway 12, north of Rodanthe.
“Storms have repeatedly damaged or destroyed parts of Highway 12. For the segment of road between Oregon Inlet and Ocracoke Village, the cost of maintenance and storm fixes over the past 10 fiscal years exceeds $104 million, according to figures provided by NCDOT. Bridge construction in three locations will cost up to $464 million more.
However, property values in Dare County, where Hatteras Island is located, reach into the billions.”
To maintain the road, fixed in place, and the developed shoreline that it has created, we must stop the migration of the islands. But to stop their migration is also to rob them of the natural processes that replenish their supply of sand and consequentially they are shrinking, fading into the Atlantic. It is an expensive, emotional, and exceedingly complex issue, born of American desires for both nature and convenience, and delivered by the road.
Coastal Research Amphibious Buggy, or CRAB, is used for a a beach nourishment project north of Rodanthe to protect Highway 12 from storm damage and overwash.
“It is NC highway 12 that keeps the Outer Banks in place. Take it away, and the future is much more uncertain. If one wants to know in what direction the Banks are headed, it would be a good bet to follow the road.”
"DARE TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM."
“The reality is that, in a couple of decades, I don’t think we’re going to be talking about the issues regarding Highway 12 because it’s not going to be there anymore,” said Robert Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “The idea that we are going to keep that highway there – it’s just not going to happen.”