Hatteras Island Lighthouse

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is the tallest in the nation and famous symbol of North Carolina. The lighthouse site houses a visitors center that is open throughout the year and houses displays on the island's maritime history. The beacon from the light can be seen some 20-miles out to sea and has warned sailors for more than 100 years of the treacherous Diamond Shoals, the shallow sandbars which extend some 14 miles out into the ocean off Cape Hatteras.

It was built with 1,250,000 bricks baked in kilns along the James River in Virginia and brought in scows into Cape Creek where it was hauled by oxen one mile to the building site in Buxton. Its walls at the base are 14 feet of solid masonry and narrow to eight feet at the top. Weighing 6,250 tons, the lighthouse was built with no pilings under it - just a foundation built of heart pine. Towering 196 feet from the base to the top brick and then topped with an iron superstructure it become the tallest brick lighthouse on the American coast at 208 feet and at a cost of $155,000.00.

In the summer of 1999, as the ever-encroaching waters of the Atlantic Ocean threaten this stalwart structure, the Cape Hatteras Light was moved from its original location!
Hatteras Island and the Civil War

In the northeastern section of the state, a series of forts and gun batteries were built at Hatteras, Ocracoke and Oregon Inlets. As part of the comprehensive coastal defense system designed to defend North Carolina's northerly inlets and upper sounds from invasion by Union forces, two fortifications were erected on the north side of Hatteras Inlet . These forts, later named, Fort Hatteras and Fort Clark, were specifically built to defend Hatteras Inlet. The inlet was rightly considered by both Confederate and Union military officials to not only be one of North Carolina's major shipping inlets, but also the key to the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound region.
The Chicamacomico Races - A Prelude To Courage

On 26 August 1861, Wabash departed Hampton Roads, bound for Hatteras Inlet, N.C., to take part in the first combined amphibious assault of the war. Wabash accompanied Monticello, Pawnee, revenue cutter Harriet Lane, the tug Fanny, and two transports, carrying over 900 troops under Major General Butler. Union forces secured Hatteras Inlet with the capture of Forts Hatteras and Clark on 29 August 1861. The attack force suffered no casualties and took over 700 prisoners.
The Monitor's Turret is Raised: The Virginian-Pilot

OFF CAPE HATTERAS -- Orange with rust, encrusted with sea life and bearing dents from one of the most famous naval battles in history, the ironclad Monitor's turret broke the water's surface on calm seas Monday after nearly 140 years at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Mirlo

This is the British tanker, the Mirlo, that was torpedoed by German U-boat U-117, August 16, 1918, off the coast of Rodanthe, North Carolina. For their heroic efforts in saving the lives of 48 men from the burning ship and gasoline and oil coated waters, the British government awarded the keeper and surfmen of Chicamacomico the gold lifesavings for "Gallantry and Humanity in Saving Life at Sea.".
Twenty four British trawlers were sent to help the United States.

May the 11th, 1942:... "HMT Bedfordshire went out as usual and patrolled the coast. During that night her luck suddenly ran out and she was torpedoed and sunk by German U-Boat U558 off Ocracoke Island, NC. All 37 crew were lost and only four bodies were ever recovered from the sea".
The Lost Forests of Hatteras Island
by Thomas Yocum

More than 150 years ago, children clambered across grapevines between the tops of ancient live oak trees and dropped into the ocean from vine swings. Forests covered large portions of Hatteras Island from surf to sound. It was a very different place. The trees are gone. The result of a fateful chain of events that has changed Hatteras Island forever.
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932)
Father of Radio Broadcasting

"Nearly a hundred years ago, a group of workers struggled to raise a 50-foot pole above the hot sands of Hatteras Island. On top of the pole was electronic equipment pointed north toward Roanoke Island. At the pole's base was a small field laboratory barely large enough for equipment and a technician. It was a very unlikely place for an event that would change the world".