Hatteras Island - Now and Then
HATTERAS NOW
Hatteras Island is part of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Today, visitors from all over the world vacation on the Outer Banks. Many visit the Hatteras National Seashore – over 30,000 acres of beaches and wild places, plus the Hatteras Lighthouse.
Stick, Neb and Rain used the abandoned Hatteras Lighthouse for their headquarters. Here's their office today, including its once-treacherous balcony.
The Dime Novel Kids tracked spies. Today, people...
Enjoy the beach.
Snorkel, swim and dive.
Surf.
Climb the stairs the Dime kids once climbed. And go fishing, just to name a few things.
OLD HATTERAS - THE OUTER BANKS BACK THEN
Today's visitors cross graceful bridges connecting Hatteras Island to the mainland or take the ferry from Ocracoke. The Outer Banks were isolated before bridges. How different was life? The villages, along the Outer Banks' sound-side shores, were simple – not like today's vacation communities.
People drove on sand roads, just like Reed, the postmistress, the artists – and maybe some spies you know.
People took the Manteo-Hatteras Bus, which also used sand roads. And they got out to push when the bus got stuck, like Ralph and Karl did.
They took small boats up and down the coast like this one, probably photographed on Roanoke Island
They went swimming.
They built their own boats.
Mailed letters in post offices like this one.
This house reminds me of Stick's house, complete with chickens.
And this church is like the one Stick and Rain snuck into....
I don't have a photo of Rain's barrel-house, but in my imagination, it looks like this.
© 2022 Sheila Turnage, Inc
Aycock Brown Papers, the Outer Banks History Center
David Stick Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
Bill Meekins. D. Victor Meekins Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
D. Victor Meekins Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
Otis Dough in Manteo: A Roanoke Island Town by Angel Ellis Khoury, the Outer Banks History Center.
Hatteras PO, 1942, Aycock Brown Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
D. Victor Meekins Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
D. Victor Meekins Papers, the Outer Banks History Center.
OBHC is part of the State Archives of NC.