On the Beach

Sunday was a windy but sunny and warm day in Nags Head so Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. grabbed the Sony and went forth to visit some of their favorite beachwalking haunts.  Some of the results are presented herewith.

This cottage just north of Surfside Drive in South Nags Head was knocked slightly askew by a storm this winter.  Worth Hare movers of Elizabeth City plucked it off the beach and moved it back a bit and it looks like it will get a new set of pilings where it now sits. This strategic retreat might give it a few more years of  life. Who knows.

The former location next door to another house that is now the sole remaining occupant of this section of the public beach. A massive sandbag wall has helped it survive for the past several years.

. The Worth Hare company has probably moved more houses on the Outer Banks than all the other housemovers put together.  It's a fascinating process to watch, especially when that rabbit really hunkers down and pulls..

Battered Seagull Drive has been prepared to receive a gravel surface which will enable owners and renters to reach the houses on the left this summer.  A dozen or so houses on the right are condemned and awaiting demolition or removal which will probably occur sometime around the time hell freezes over if  previous experience with such structures is our guide.

The new gravel street will not be the first "fix" for Seagull Drive.  Shortly after Hurricane Isabel, using FEMA funds,  the town built a new "temporary" street (shown here on the left) as well as a huge berm of trucked-in sand to protect it.  The whole works washed away in a relatively short time suggesting that "temporary" is the operative word for structures on the ocean front.  The cottages on the right are the condemned buildings shown in the previous picture.

No sandbags or bulldozers needed here.  The expansive beach in front of the "historic" cottages of Nags Head demonstrates the virtue of  "retreat" as a way of coping with erosion.  The older cottages in this picture have been moved back several times (often by Worth Hare) on their lots which were platted from the water to the Beach Road.  Unfortunately most of South Nags Head was chopped up into smaller lots in such a way that retreat is seldom possible, hence the large number of cottages that are "trapped" at the ocean front.

The iconic Buchanan cottage, largest and grandest of all the houses in the historic district of Nags Head, is on the market for $3 million.  It was built in 1934 and only recently moved back to what will possibly be its final resting place close to the Beach Road.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt once lunched here while in town to attend a performance of the "Lost Colony".  Google "Buchanan Cottage" for further information and pictures of the interior.