Cape Hatteras National Seashore
05 542745 ch05.qxd 3/23/04 9:01 AM Page 105 CHAPTER 5 Cape Hatteras National Seashore Driving along Hatteras and Ocracoke islands national seashore and other nature preserves are on a narrow strip of sand with the ocean close wild and beautiful. Being here, it’s easy to on both sides, you may think that the Outer imagine what it was like when the first English Banks are a geographic miracle. Why should colonists landed more than 400 years ago, or this razor-thin rim of sand persist far out in the when the Wright brothers flew the first airplane sea? How wild it seems, a land of windy beach over a century ago. Both events are well inter- with no end, always in motion, always vulner- preted at their sites. The area is fascinating eco- able to the next, slightly larger wave. There’s so logically, too. Here, north and south meet, the much here to see and learn, and so much soli- mix of ocean currents, climate, fresh and salt tude to enjoy. You’re like a passenger on an water, and geography creating a fabulous diver- enormous ship, and unpredictable nature is the sity of bird and plant life at places like the Pea captain. Island National Wildlife Refuge (p. 124) and Oddly, many people don’t see Cape Hatteras Nags Head Woods Ecological Preserve (p. 124). this way. When they think of the Outer Banks, In this sense, the area is much like Point Reyes, they think of Nags Head or Kill Devil Hills, its counterpart on the West Coast, covered in towns where tourist development has pushed chapter 21, “Point Reyes National Seashore.” right up to the edge of the sea and, in many And for children, the national seashore is a places, gotten really ugly.
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