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No Longer the End of the Road
by Kip Tabb
The view from the top of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse is a revelation, a vista of extraordinary scope, it encapsulates the very essence of Corolla, its beauty, its history and its future.
To the east, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean break upon the light tan beaches of the Outer Banks, the sea rolling to the sand in crisp white parallel lines. To the south, vacation homes and businesses march to the Dare County line. Looking north, the homes begin to thin and the end of the paved section of Highway 12 can barely be seen. The paved road ends, though it continues as a state route on the beach, passing through the subdivisions of Swan Beach and Carova before ending at the Virginia State line. You are standing upon history Ð when it was completed in 1875, the Currituck Beach Lighthouse was the last lighthouse built in North Carolina, and it filled a gap of unprotected beach that had been the dread of mariners for centuries.
Looking to the west and slightly north, there is an island in the sound with a structure that is nearly hidden by trees and covered with vines. That is the remnants of the Monkey Island Hunt Club, one of the most storied of the many hunting clubs that once lined the shores of the Currituck Sound. Just below, to the south of the lighthouse, is perhaps the most ornate and palatial of those clubs. Completed in 1925, Corolla Island, now called The Whalehead Club, was originally built as a private vacation getaway by Edward Collins Knight for his wife. It is now open to the public for tours, and with the newly completed Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education just to the north, it forms Currituck County's Heritage Park. Currituck County has always been a tourist mecca. Before the surf shops, restaurants and beachfront getaways, the seasons were reversed and visitors flocked to the shores of the Currituck Sound in rhythm with the snow geese and green-winged teals, the migratory waterfowl that carpeted the waters of the sound.
The hunt clubs are almost all gone now, their legacy found only in the names of the subdivisions of Corolla: The Currituck Club, Pine Island, Whalehead. There is no one single factor that led to the demise of the hunt clubs. Migratory waterfowl populations thinned dramatically in the 1960s and an economic downturn in the early 1970s certainly contributed, but even before that, changing lifestyles and a new economic vision assured the end of the hunt club era. Corolla has always existed in isolation.
Up until the 1970s, the only way to get to the small community at the base of the lighthouse was to take a boat across the sound or drive on the beach or a dirt road from Duck or Sand-bridge, Virginia. Highway 12 ended in Duck, and Corolla was beyond the end of the road. Then Currituck County started to view its undeveloped beach as a potential tourist destination. The first comprehensive plan for the development of the Currituck Outer Banks was the result of an N.C. State University graduate school assignment in community development. Called the "Currituck Plan" and authored by four graduate school students, it presented a radical departure from typical vacation destination development.
The plan called for access to Corolla via ferry or bridge, with no direct link to the south. Four clustered subdivisions were to be developed with wide swatches of green space between them. The plan was widely praised and never implemented.
Although the concepts behind the plan were given broad acceptance, the potential for development of the Currituck Banks far exceeded the scope of the plan. Developers began to buy land north of the Dare County line, and as they did so, it soon became evident that without an improved road connecting Corolla with the rest of the world, development plans would not succeed. In 1975 a private developer built a paved road to Corolla, but he put a fence up at the southern end to keep out sightseers. It wasn't until 1984 that the state purchased the road and extended the paved section of Highway 12 north past Corolla village, to a point where U.S. Fish and Wildlife owned land spanning the dunes from sound to sea. (The paved section of Highway 12 still ends at that same point; however, the road continues on the beach as a state patrolled and maintained road to the Virginia state line.)
With access to the northern Outer Banks open, development quickly followed. In 1984 there were 422 homes along the Currituck Banks. By 2000 there were more than six times that number, and development continues to be strong today. The homes tend to be large,most are over 5,000 square feet, and designed to accommodate families of vacationers.
As development exploded, there was a widespread fear that the beauty of the Outer Banks would be lost in cookie-cutter construction and environmental degradation. But something happened along the way. Although large swaths of the land have been developed, in many places the original beauty of the region has been retained. As visitors enter the county, they are greeted with a vista of a time gone by, the marshes, reeds and sea grass lining the road for the first few miles are part of the Pine Island Audubon Society Sanctuary (a 2.5-mile walking trail begins at the county line). Ceded in perpetuity to the Audubon Society by the Pine Island Hunt Club, one of the few hunt clubs remaining, the arrangement ensures visitors will always have a reminder of the natural beauty of the Outer Banks. Government agencies have also kept significant parts of the Currituck Banks. The North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve has constructed two boardwalks and trail systems through the marshes and swamps that are so much a part of the ecological wonder of the region.
In 1992, Currituck County purchased a dilapidated Whalehead Club and spent the next ten years restoring it to its original glory. Today it is the centerpiece of Currituck Heritage Park and a tribute to the history of the Outer Banks. Included on the grounds is the recently completed Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, a state-run facility that offers programs for all ages in the natural areas of the northern Outer Banks. Developers have also taken advantage of the beauty of the land. When Kitty Hawk Land Company created The Currituck Club, great strides were taken to keep as much of the natural setting as possible. The golf course, a Rees Jones creation, is sanctioned by the Audubon Society, and the development itself retains much of the original beauty of the landscape. Along with the houses has come commercial development. The original concept of the Currituck Plan was to keep all commercial Ð primarily retail, development in clustered shopping plazas and centers, and that model has stood the test of time.
lf a first-time visitor to the Currituck Outer Banks came in January, they would wonder how any retail business could survive months of empty stores and echoing voices in a deserted supermarket, but it only takes a visit six months later to answer that question. Sales are so robust in the tourist season that summer profits carry them through the winter slump. Summer vacationers pile their grocery carts with far more food and supplies than any family of four could ever consume in a week, and cash registers at retail stores and restaurants start first thing in the morning and continue until night falls.
The retail expansion continues. Until recently the only grocery store in the Corolla area was the Food Lion at Monteray Plaza, but with a Harris Teeter opening in May at The Currituck Club, consumers will now have a choice of where to shop for their weekly groceries.
The exponential growth that Corolla has experienced in conjunction with the paving of Highway 12 is almost at an end. The Currituck Club, as an example, is selling its last lots of undeveloped land. And in fact, the build out up to where the pavement ends is almost complete. Only a few new development opportunities exist.
But what about beyond the pavement of Highway 12? Today the Four-Wheel-Drive area north of Corolla is "the end of the road." But development is brisk, and there are many homes among the sea oats and wide beaches. Swan Beach is a vacation home development sandwiched between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Monkey Island Tract and land owned by the N.C. National Estuarine Reserve to the north. Carova is an actual community nestled on the Virginia/North Carolina border. The village has perhaps 60 full-time residents, a community hall and a volunteer fire department. Swan Beach and Carova contain the last significant undeveloped tracts of land on the Currituck Outer Banks, and although new homes are being built, access is slow and limited to four-wheel drive vehicles only. The traditional view has been that with large stretches of land owned from sound to sea by state and federal agencies opposed to development, a paved road in the four-wheel-drive area is not a possibility. Realtors, however, are beginning to believe that changes may be coming. "In Corolla it's almost all built out," says broker Walter Stiff of Prudential Resort Realty of Corolla. "A road is a very good likelihood." We'll have to wait and see.
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