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"If you're lucky enough to be a the beach ... then you're lucky enough"


John White and 116 English colonists were the first English to settle the Outer Banks. On June 22, 1587, the colonists touched down on Hatteras Island, but later considered the dry area unsuitable to establish a colony.


What are the Outer Banks? To the visitor, they are wind, sand and fun. To the artist, they are a thin line of beauty drawn at the edge of a blue, blue sea. To lovers of the past, they are the cite of events that created not just Outer Banks history but history that impacted humankind. To the resident, whose family has lived there for generations, they are, quite simply, home.

How do you describe these wind and sea swept bar­riers to the ancient sea?

Geologists call the Banks a prime example of the land form called the barrier island. They are made entirely of sand, without the keel of rock that anchors most islands firmly to the earth. It is a fascinat­ingly evanescent phenomenon in geological terms, a land form so transient that changes are visible from year to year. A phenomenon that is, even now, in the process of passing forever out of existence.

As most people know, the level of the ocean has changed steadily throughout geological history, as a result of water released or stored up in the great polar icecaps. When, during the ice ages, great amounts of water are withdrawn from circulation, the consequent lowering of the sea extends coastlines far out into what is now the ocean.

This is, as most authorities now agree, how the Banks were formed. They are surprisingly recent. As the last great ice age, some 20,000 years ago, drew to an end, the sea was more than 400 feet lower than it is now. The area we now call North Carolina extended some 30 miles farther out, to the edge of the North American Continental Shelf. The polar icecaps, warmed by some still mysterious climatic change, then began to melt, and the sea rose.

The Banks must have begun as dunes, at the very edge of that an­cient shore. Rivers from inland contributed silt to build them up. But as the sea rose, the dunes were submerged, becoming sand bars.

Thousands of years passed. The waves kept rolling in, and the bars grew. They also moved, pushed westward and southward by the prevailing northeast winds and seas. The rising sea flooded the low land behind them, forming estuaries that we today call the sounds. The Banks grew and broke to the surface once again.

A few thousand years later, the rise in the ocean slowed, though it continues today at an accelerating rate. The Banks had a breathing space. Life began to take root as rain leached the salt from the sand. Beach grass and other vegetation helped to keep sand in place, further slowing the rate of migration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Banks

The Outer Banks is one of the most culturally distinctive areas of the East Coast of the United States. The Outer Banks were inhabited before the arrival of Europeans, with small branches of larger tribes, such as the Algonquin speaking Chowanoke, Secotan and Poteskeet living semi-nomadic lives. Oftentimes Native Americans would use the barrier islands facing the Atlantic Ocean for fishing in the summer, and reside on Roanoke Island or the North Carolina mainland in the winter.

European explorers to the Outer Banks as far back as the 1500s noted encountering the friendly Hatteras Island and Outer Banks Natives, noting their hospitality to foreign explorers as well as their happiness and overall quality of life. European-borne diseases and migration to the mainland were likely the main causes for the decline of the Native population. The most notable event was the attempted colonization of Roanoke by the English beginning in 1584.

Before bridges were built in the 1930s, the only form of transport between or off the islands was by boat, which allowed for the islands to stay isolated from much of the rest of the mainland. This helped to preserve the maritime culture and the distinctive Outer Banks accent or brogue, which sounds more like an English accent than it does an American accent. Many "bankers" have often been mistaken for being from England or Ireland when traveling to areas outside of the Outer Banks. The brogue is more distinctive the further south one travels on the Outer Banks, with it being the thickest on Ocracoke Island and Harkers Island.

Some residents of the Outer Banks, known as wreckers, made part of their living by scavenging wrecked ships—or by luring ships to their destruction. Horses with lanterns tied to their necks would be walked along the beach; the lanterns' up and down motion would appear to ships to represent clear water and a ship ahead; the unsuspecting captain would then drive his ship ashore following this false light. Ocracoke was the last refuge of pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. It is also where the infamous pirate was killed November 22, 1718, in a fierce battle with troops from Virginia.
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Categories & Keywords
Category:Scenic
Subcategory:Coastlines
Subcategory Detail:
Keywords:air, banks, bay, beach, carolina, chair, dunes, island, north, ocean, outer, outerbanks, peace, relax, salt, sand, sea, summer, surf, vacation, wave, zen