Hatteras Highway
Xo road in North Carolina will bring
so many c*li;iiigc\s as the one driving
its way down the Outer Hanks to the
Cape Country.
By BILL SHARPE
Back in 1936. a bewildered motor-
isi, struggling through the sandy ruts
of the Outer Banks, stopped on top
of the great flat near Pea Island where
a WPA worker was building sand
fences.
He wanted to know which road to
take to Hatteras.
"Take road 108.” he was told.
A half-hour later, after following
one auto track in the sand after an¬
other, he had circled back and ap¬
proached the same man. “Which road
did you tell me to take to Hatteras?"
he asked.
Old 108.
The boy wearily pointed to the
maze of ruts. ‘‘Take 108. There's 108
roads to Hatteras."
Morris Burrus, of Hatteras, told it
mirthfully. It is a lot funnier to a motor¬
ist today than it was to the badgered
and laughed-at beach traveler of 1936.
There’ll be a road all the way to
Hatteras soon, and it isn't any joke.
It’s a real, paved highway, the solu¬
tion to one of North Carolina’s most
unusual engineering problems.
To most people — native and trav¬
eler — who for years have groped their
way along old 108, the new highway
is a success story. But to others, the
highway not only is not a joke; it is a
grim door slammed shut upon another
fragment of the vanishing frontier.
The slow ferry landed you on the
south side of Oregon Inlet and you
were upon a finger of sand which
pointed in a general southeasterly di¬
rection. As you headed south, the surf
broke upon a lonely beach on your
left, and on your right, Pamlico Sound
swiftly widened into the vast inland
sea which it is, until the continental
mainland was pushed far to the west,
and you rode a tight rope of sand
to the ends of the earth.
The upper end of this serpentine is¬
land — for it actually is Hatteras Island,
50 miles long, from one-half to three
miles wide — is almost all sand. To¬
ward the sound side is marsh grass
and an occasional shrub, hanging on
for dear life against the elements. Once
the Bank was timbered — almost all of
it — but shipbuilders cut down the for¬
ests; wild ponies ate the grass, and the
exposed sand became a pawn of
wind and tide.
There was a choice of routes. At
low tide, most people “rode the wash,"
which is the business of driving your
car with the left wheels almost, but
not quite, in the ocean, and if
there were no wind-made camel-back
The old light looks down on a strange
new utility. — (Aycock Brown Photo.)
humps, and if the sand was hard and
firm, as it usually was. this was a fine
speedway.
Or you took the inside, a “road"
composed of the most recent set of
ruts made by those who preceded you.
It was a road by custom only; it had
neither right-of-way or maintenance.
An old driving rule on the Outer Banks
is to follow the most auto tracks, no
matter where they lead; it is a good
rule today, and will be good until the
last stretch of pavement on the new
highway is completed.
Those first 20 miles of driving from
the ferry had a lot to do with deter¬
mining whether you were suited for
the Outer Banks or not. No matter
where you went, the dull roar of the
surf always was in your cars. Except
for Pea Island Coast Guard station
(until recently manned by the only
all-negro life guard crew in America)
there was not a habitation in that first
20 miles. There are no ‘‘rural" people
on the Banks. Simple and inconvcn-
THE STATE, Vol. XX: No. C. Entered ai second-class matin. June I. 1911. at the Postolhce at Kalelch. North Carolina, undrr thr art of
March 1, ISIS. Published by Sharpe PubUshlnf Co., Inc., Lawyers Bide., Kaleljh, N. C. Copyrl(bt, 1952, by the Sharpe Publishing Co., Inc.
