Longtime residents represent a continuum of history on the cape that reaches back at least to the early i8th century. 



property between Ocracoke Inlet and 

 Cape Lookout, with plans to transfer the 

 land to the National Park Service. When 

 the Cape Lookout National Seashore was 

 established as a separate park unit in 

 1966, Cape Village property owners 

 suspected that sooner or later they would 

 have to sell their land, either willingly or 

 through order of the courts. 



Yeomans struck his deal in 1977: 

 He sold his cabin but kept a 25-year lease 

 to occupy the house. A handful of the 

 other property owners on the cape did the 

 same. Unless their leases are extended, 

 they all will have to abandon the island in 

 the next decade or so. "Congress has 

 already spoken as to how we should 



manage the seashore," says Bill Harris, 

 the Cape Lookout National Seashore 

 superintendent. "We've held up our end 

 of a fair bargain." 



Even though the property is paid for 

 and it would take an act of the U.S. 

 Congress to extend or renew those 

 leases, the specter of these long-term 

 leaseholders loading up their belongings 

 for the last time angers some locals. 

 Their presence represents a continuum of 

 human history at Cape Lookout that 

 reaches back at least to the early 1 8th 

 century. 



Such a link to the past will be 

 difficult to sustain once the few Lookout 

 old-timers are gone. Already many locals 



hold the Park Service liable for what 

 they consider the whitewashing of Core 

 Banks' human history. Harkers Island- 

 ers still talk about the day the Park 

 Service burned their squatters' camps on 

 Shackleford Banks, camps some had 

 used for generations with few questions 

 ever raised about their right to be there. 

 Throngs of people gathered on the 

 Harkers Island shore, looking over the 

 sound, weeping as the smoke rose three 

 miles away. 



"You go to the Park Service 

 (visitors center), and they have pictures 

 of turtles and piping plovers and crabs," 

 says Karen Amspacher, director of the 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 1 1 



