State

DELICATE TRACERY of sand ripples usually mark the dunes of North Carolina. These are on Jockey’s Ridge, tallest of North Carolina’s sand dunes, which are the largest on the eastern coast. A dune like this will move three-quarters of a mile in 20 years or less, and there’s nothing that will stop it except vege¬ tation. Anchoring the Dunes It*e л Iroiuoiidous project, but .steps to halt the roving dunes probably will be taken on a large scale just ns soon as the war comes to a close. WHETHER the gigantic sand dunes of North Carolina, largest on the Eastern coast, will be forcibly dissuaded from their southward wanderings through a postwar planting project may depend upon whether the National Park Service considers them a desirable part of the “natural wilderness" — and also on conclusions reached from the dam¬ age done to man-made barrier dunes by the September 1944 hurricane. That the dunes in Currituck and Dare counties can be anchored down was thoroughly demon¬ strated in 1929 when Capt. Wil¬ liam H. Kindcrvater. retired Army Engineer, did it to old Kill Devil preliminary to erection thereon of the massive granite Wright Me¬ morial pylon. Ninety-foot Kill Devil now stands thoroughly vege¬ tated and subdued, whilst Jockey's Ridge. Engagement Hill, the Seven Sisters and nearby lesser dunes wander incontinently around, po¬ tential menaces to the sounds, roads, forest and even homes. Most visitors agree that from an aesthetic III/ KILL SHARPE point of view, old Kill Devil is pretty drab when compared to his neighbors, which blaze like bea¬ cons in mid-day and take on the soft hues of rubies or acquamarines in the failing sun. The halting of wind erosion at Kill Devil partly inspired an am¬ bitious federal project of the late 30‘s, which utilized the known principles of dune formation and movements. Men and animals had Stripped the Outer Banks of pro¬ tective vegetation, and the con¬ stant winds picked up the dried sand particles and blew them westward toward the sound, a mile, more or less, away. Wind erosion, abetted by gnawing ocean currents, gradually cut away the ocean side and shoaled up the sound waters behind. Dunes result when an obstruc¬ tion, even as slight as a brush or stone, creates an eddy behind it, forcing the wind to drop its sandy burden. Thus is started little dunes, and. given enough time, they grow into the adults of Nag’s Head, scientifically acolion de- e. locally known as “whale- At Kill Devil. Captain Kinder- vater first sent to Puerto Rico for seeds of crotolarian, a fibrous, warm-climate plant, and to Aus¬ tralia for marram, a hardy shore grass. These he planted on the drifting sands, then covered the hill with hundreds of tons of woods- mold, primarily to protect the seed from wind and sun, and also to act ;.s a fertilizer. Next. Kindervater augmented his still precariously grassed hill with native wire grass, bitter tannic, myrtles, yaupons; and the trick was turned. The thing had worked, in spite of a skepticism which made the Captain the temporary laughing stock of a good share of the local population. Taking a cue from this experi¬ ence. and from a sensational engi¬ neering project of 1784. where dune planting transformed the "landes” and dunes of Gascony