Coastal GhostTowns: 



'Everywhere we go down there, were walking on graves! 



Cali 



ilamities — hurricanes, war, disease - 

 were the ruin of some communities that have 

 vanished from North Carolina's coast. Changing 

 times, altered circumstances and simple 

 economics, however, doomed many more. 



"I can think of several dozen right offhand — 

 fishing villages that died when the fish got used 

 up, river towns that died when dredging opened 

 up more inland ports, orwhen the railroads came 

 or the highways; timber boomtowns that died off 

 when the forest got cut down. To say nothing of 

 all the Indian villages that are gone," says David 

 Cecelski, who grew up on the coast and teaches 

 history at Duke University. "Everywhere we go 

 down there, we're walking on graves as 

 far as I'm concerned." 



Most deserted places are long 

 forgotten but a few live on in legend 



Cape Lookout National 

 Seashore in Carteret County is the 

 setting for two stoned ghost towns 

 — Portsmouth Village and 

 Diamond City. Founded in 1753 

 nearOcracoke Inlet on North 

 Core Banks, Portsmouth was a 

 busy port until an 1 846 

 humcane opened new inlets — 

 and new shipping routes. 

 Then, when Northern 

 troops approached in the 

 Civil War, many residents 

 fled, never to return. 



Ferocious storms, the closing of a 



U.S. Lifesaving Service Station and modem 

 mobility slowly emptied the island village, 

 accessible only by boat. Its last residents left in 

 1 971 . Its pretty church, tiny post office and several 

 quaint yellow houses still stand, maintained as a 

 histonc exhibit by the National Park Service. 



Diamond City on Shackleford Banks was 

 scared to death by a humcane. A whaling and 

 fishing outpost in the 1800s, Diamond City's 500 

 residents made it the largest of several 

 communities on the island. 



In August of 1899, a fearsome storm scoured 

 away houses, gardens and livestock, and flattened 

 sheltering dunes and trees. Feanng future tropical 

 tempests on the bared sands, islanders departed 

 Shackleford, taking their houses 

 with them. 



A soundside graveyard is all that remains. 



On the Dare County peninsula, supply and 

 demand — involving lumber, then liquor — 

 accounted for the nse and fall of Buffalo City, once 

 Dare's biggest settlement. The now quiet shores of 

 Mill Tail Creek off the Alligator River hosted a 

 boisterous sawmill boomtown, named for Buffalo 

 City Mills, the New York lumber company that built 

 and operated it, from the 1880s until the 1920s. 



After loggers had taken the choicest timber 

 and left, moonshine kept the remote enclave in 

 business until Prohibition's repeal in 1933 ended 

 the market for bootleg booze. People gradually 

 moved away, and sweet gum and cypress cloaked 

 the remains of the sawmill. 



The forest also has taken back nearby 

 Beechland, except for a wisp of mystery. A plague 

 of "black tongue," presumably cholera, is said 

 to have wiped out most of the 

 population in the mid-1 800s. 

 Beechland's beginning is 

 not so well defined. And that, 

 for some, poses an intnguing 

 question about North Carolina's 

 foremost missing town — the Lost 

 Colony that disappeared in the 1 580s 

 from Roanoke Island. 



An enduring Dare County legend 

 says the Roanoke colonists, fearing a 

 Spanish attack, fled a few miles inland to 

 a sandy, beech-covered ndge in the 

 swamp, and established their new home 

 at Beechland. □ 



For More Information 



BOOKS: 



♦ A Historian 's Coast by David Cecelski, 

 published 2001 , John F. Blair. 



♦ The Outer Banks of North Carolina by 

 David Stick, first published 1958, University of 

 North Carolina Press. 



♦ The Five Lost Colonies of Dare by Mary 

 Wood Long, published 2001, Family Research 



Society of Northeastern North Carolina. 



♦ South River. A Local History from 

 Tumagain Bay to Adams Creek by Dollie C. 

 Carraway, published 1994, M&L Designs. 



OTHER SOURCES: 



♦ The History Place, Carteret County 

 Historical Society, 1008 Arendell, Morehead 

 City, NC 28557; phone 252/247-7533; 

 www.genelines.net/phpBB2/. 



* Outer Banks History Center, Route 400, 

 Ice Plant Island, P.O. Box 250, Manteo, NC 

 27954; phone 252/473-2655; www.ah.dcr. 

 state.nc.us/sections/archives/arch/obhc/. 



* Cape Lookout National Seashore, 131 

 Charles St., Harkers Island, NC 28531 ; phone 

 252/728-2250; www.nps.gov/calo. 



* Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, 1785 

 Island Road, Harkers Island, NC 2853 1 ; phone 

 252/728-1500; www.coresound.com. 



COASTWATCH 15 



