Post by Charity on Oct 1, 2006 16:09:17 GMT -5
The area around Nags Head is rich in history and in folklore from Virginia Dare to the Wright Brothers.
Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, disappeared in 1587 from nearby Roanoke Island. Blackbeard is said to have roamed the waters of the Roanoke Sound and rumored to have lost buried treasure beneath the shifting sands of Nags Head’s giant dune, Jockey’s Ridge. The Wright Brothers flew the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, just 15 minutes to the north, and the carcasses of boats from the Civil War and two world wars sit abandoned on the floor of the Atlantic, a few miles off shore.
Though some credit the name Nags Head to shipwrecked sailors hailing from a town of the same name in England, those who love the area favor the tale, recorded in the mid-19th century by a writer from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, of pirates roaming the beach at night with a lantern tied to the neck of an old nag, trying to lure ships into the shallow waters near the breakers. In the center of it all is the village called Nags Head.
Established in the 1830s as North Carolina’s first tourist colony, it soon became a summer destination for families living within a day’s boat ride across the Roanoke Sound. Perquimans County planter Francis Nixon is credited with bringing his family to the area in 1830 to escape from malaria prevalent in the fields back home. Docking at an established soundside village near the base of Jockey’s Ridge, Nixon began a summer tradition among relatives and friends that continues to this day. When Nixon and other planters and merchants from neighboring Bertie, Chowan and Pasquotank counties arrived by boat, they found a scattering of people already on the island. “Bankers,” as they were called, had been living in the area since the 18th century.
Likely herdsmen, fishermen and ship salvagers shipwrecked on the barrier island once upon a time, the Bankers built huts in the flats — wooded areas at the base of a line of large sand dunes — earning their living by farming and salvaging wood and other items from sinking ships offshore. The first tourists brought a boon to the Bankers, who sold fresh vegetables and fish to the summer families, even carrying well-dressed ladies to the ocean in horse-drawn carts over a sound-to-sea boardwalk.
more
www.nagsheadguide.com/history.htm
Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, disappeared in 1587 from nearby Roanoke Island. Blackbeard is said to have roamed the waters of the Roanoke Sound and rumored to have lost buried treasure beneath the shifting sands of Nags Head’s giant dune, Jockey’s Ridge. The Wright Brothers flew the first airplane in Kitty Hawk, just 15 minutes to the north, and the carcasses of boats from the Civil War and two world wars sit abandoned on the floor of the Atlantic, a few miles off shore.
Though some credit the name Nags Head to shipwrecked sailors hailing from a town of the same name in England, those who love the area favor the tale, recorded in the mid-19th century by a writer from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, of pirates roaming the beach at night with a lantern tied to the neck of an old nag, trying to lure ships into the shallow waters near the breakers. In the center of it all is the village called Nags Head.
Established in the 1830s as North Carolina’s first tourist colony, it soon became a summer destination for families living within a day’s boat ride across the Roanoke Sound. Perquimans County planter Francis Nixon is credited with bringing his family to the area in 1830 to escape from malaria prevalent in the fields back home. Docking at an established soundside village near the base of Jockey’s Ridge, Nixon began a summer tradition among relatives and friends that continues to this day. When Nixon and other planters and merchants from neighboring Bertie, Chowan and Pasquotank counties arrived by boat, they found a scattering of people already on the island. “Bankers,” as they were called, had been living in the area since the 18th century.
Likely herdsmen, fishermen and ship salvagers shipwrecked on the barrier island once upon a time, the Bankers built huts in the flats — wooded areas at the base of a line of large sand dunes — earning their living by farming and salvaging wood and other items from sinking ships offshore. The first tourists brought a boon to the Bankers, who sold fresh vegetables and fish to the summer families, even carrying well-dressed ladies to the ocean in horse-drawn carts over a sound-to-sea boardwalk.
more
www.nagsheadguide.com/history.htm