Constructing the Outer Banks: Land Use, Management, and Meaning in the Creation of an American Place

ABSTRACT LEE, GABRIEL FRANCIS. Constructing the Outer Banks: Land Use, Management, and Meaning in the Creation of an American Place. (Under the direction of Matthew Morse Booker.) This thesis is an environmental history of the North Carolina Outer Banks that combines cultural history, political economy, and conservation science and policy to explain the entanglement of constructions, uses, and claims over the land that created by the late 20th century a complex, contested, and national place. It is in many ways a synthesis of the multiple disparate stories that have been told about the Outer Banks—narratives of triumph or of decline, vast potential or strict limitations—and how those stories led to certain relationships with the landscape. At the center of this history is a declension narrative that conservation managers developed in the early 20th century. Arguing that the landscape that they saw, one of vast sand-swept and barren stretches of island with occasional forests, had formerly been largely covered in trees, conservationists proposed a large-scale reclamation project to reforest the barrier coast and to establish a regulated and sustainable timber industry. That historical argument aligned with an assumption among scientists that barrier islands were fundamentally stable landscapes, that building dunes along the shore to generate new forests would also prevent beach erosion. When that restoration project, first proposed in 1907, was realized under the New Deal in the 1930s, it was followed by the establishment of the first National Seashore Park at Cape Hatteras in 1953, consisting of the outermost islands in the barrier chain. The idea of stability and dune maintenance continued to frame all landscape management and development policies throughout the first two decades after the Park’s creation. When scientists proved convincingly in the early 1970s that those assumptions were incorrect, that barrier islands were inherently migratory and dynamic, and that shoreline dunes actually accelerated the loss of beaches, the relationships that had been constructed on the landscape prevented a fundamental shift in land management policy. The inability of new science to lead to new ways of living with the Outer Banks reflected the deep investments, both economic and cultural, that many thousands of people had in keeping the place as it was in 1970. To contextualize those investments, this thesis examines both the marketing of the northern banks in the 1920s and the creation of new, nationalizing narratives about the shore and its past that re-conceptualized the meaning of the Outer Banks. Those who invested in the Banks by the early 1930 and those new narratives helped to steer the New Deal conservation effort, and the commercialization of the Outer Banks blossomed in the postwar era. The relationships that resulted from that marketing of the place and its past in many ways served to create the cultural landscape that existed in the 1970s. Local villagers—“Bankers”—also shaped the Outer Banks throughout the 20th century, and their cultures, their claims on the land, and their collaboration with or resistance to development and conservation are all explored. Indeed, much of this story is the transformation of a local place, and those who lived intimately with the land for generations brought unique perspectives to those changes. This thesis traces island settlement back to the earliest records in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but it also shows that in many ways those societies formed around and in response to state and federal governmental projects. In fact, the entanglement of desires for the coast was nothing new, but the scale, complexity, and seeming intractability of those constructed relationships by the late 20th century defined the modern Outer Banks. Constructing the Outer Banks: Land Use, Management, and Meaning in the Creation of an American Place by Gabriel Francis Lee A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts History Raleigh, North Carolina 2008 APPROVED BY: _______________________________ ______________________________ David Gilmartin Michael Allen ________________________________ Matthew Morse Booker Chair of Advisory Committee ii DEDICATION To my mother and father who supported so many versions of me. iii BIOGRAPHY Gabriel Francis Lee was born and raised in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he lived the first 24 years of his life. He attended his hometown institution, Fairmont State University, for his undergraduate education, where he earned a BA, double majoring in History and French, and graduated summa cum laude in May of 2003. Before entering college, Gabriel discovered stone masonry, first apprenticing for, then mastering, a skill that would become a lifelong vocation. Following graduation, Gabriel moved from West Virginia to join a stone mason and friend in North Carolina. A year later, he spent seven months abroad teaching English to high school- and middle school-aged students in Rethel, a small town in northeastern France. Upon returning, he commenced the graduate work that would prepare him to master his intellectual vocation as a historical scholar. Gabriel was lucky to attend North Carolina State University, because there, in pursuit of his Master’s degree, he received not only a strong education among an outstanding group of scholars, but also, and more importantly, met some of the people who are dearest to his heart. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My most sincere and deepest gratitude must go to Mathew Booker, without whose guidance this project simply would not have been undertaken. His enthusiasm for my work and unfailing dedication shaped this thesis in countless ways and often provided much- needed confidence to persevere. Matthew read and re-read multiple drafts and always made time for my concerns, even at his busiest moments. His warm personality made this gargantuan task a pleasure. Michael Allen and David Gilmartin deserve my praise. Michael and I worked together often, and our conversations and his guidance strengthened my framing of historical questions in many ways. He was always kind enough to lend an ear, and his careful and incisive thinking helped lead me through some murky territory. David offered thoughtful and kind support as often as I asked. Our conversations were always both delightful and productive, and he helped me to more clearly see the strengths and shortcomings in my major arguments. I would also like to thank all of the many scholars at NCSU who influenced me throughout my career here, especially Steven Vincent, Lauren Minsky, Blair Kelley, Ross Bassett, Jon Ocko and Nancy Mitchell. All of them contributed wisdom, directly or indirectly, to this project. Special recognition must be made of Gail O’Brien and Tony La Vopa. Both Tony and Gail read various parts of this thesis and proved to be invaluable editors as well as excellent shorthand references. Our countless conversations often spilled over into my concerns for the coast, where I would test my latest thoughts and nearly always refine my thinking and v discover new and useful avenues. Their uncanny patience, exceptional generosity, and wonderful companionship made my experience at NC State more valuable than they can know. Thank you to the wonderful staff at the Outer Banks History Center, particularly to the curator, KaeLi Spears, who lent more help than any person can reasonably expect. The great and helpful staffs at both the North Carolina State Archive and the National Archive at College Park were patient enough to field all of my questions, and always helped me find the answers. At the Cape Hatteras Park Service archive in Manteo, Doug Stover deserves special commendation. His generosity in making the Park Service holdings accessible even when they were between archivists was of incalculable help, and many of the documents Stover shared with me greatly strengthened this work. This project could not have been completed without all of these wonderful archivists and historians. I would also like to thank those who guided me toward a career as a historian, even if they did not foresee that outcome. My 7th-grade teacher, Charles Berry, at Miller Junior High School, who unfortunately passed away the following year, first taught me that history could be both intriguing and fun. I want to send warm thanks to Brian Cole at Fairmont Senior High School, who was an outstanding teacher and also a patient ear to a rebellious teenager. The great scholars with whom I studied at Fairmont State University—Jack Pulsifer, the late David Pudsell, and Kenneth Millen-Penn—all deserve my praise. They endowed a young and naïve student with a superb foundational education. Any success I had, or will have, began at Fairmont State. vi Above all, I would like to share my most heartfelt gratitude for the tremendous support my family has given me throughout the years: to my brother, Jeremy, without whose companionship my life would have been very different and much impoverished; to my sister, Jennifer, for whom I have a special place in my heart; to Betty Pat and all of the Pratts, who became nothing less than extended family; to Bob Kettig, without whose love for the Outer Banks and generosity in letting me tag along on vacations I would never have seen the North Carolina shore; and, finally, to my mother and father who always believed that I could accomplish anything, let this serve as evidence that I have at least accomplished something. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………...………… 1 PROLOGUE Shaping the Outer Banks Landscape: Nature and the Barrier Coast .….…………… 16 CHAPTER ONE Shifty Lands and Shallow Waters: Uses of the Banks to 1900 …………………….. 29 CHAPTER TWO Making Claims on the Past: North Carolina Banks Cultures, 1900-1933 …..…….…78 CHAPTER THREE The Making of Nature on the Outer Banks: Engineering Landscape and Social Space, 1907-1953 ………………………….… 135 CHAPTER FOUR An Entangled Banks: Tourism, Management, and Meaning, 1953-1977 ………...

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