Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Newspaper Articles

Reprinted by permission of The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina

February 15, 1998

The News & Observer

Should it stay or should it go?

By JERRY ALLEGOOD; STAFF WRITER

Page: A23

BUXTON -- After standing like a rigid sentry for more than a century, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is poised for a retreat from the advancing sea.

If Congress approves the money this year, the National Park Service could move the spiral-striped beacon - the nation's tallest and best-known lighthouse - as early as next spring. Money for the relocation - $10.5 million - is in the president's proposed budget, and a mover is about to be hired.

The retreat could come just in time.

Waves already lap the beach near the lighthouse base, and scientists have been warning for years that one good storm could bring it down.

But just as plans to move the lighthouse seem about to get going, a campaign to stop the move suddenly has picked up steam.

The Save the Lighthouse Committee, a private group formed in 1981 to help preserve the lighthouse, argues that the tower should be protected where it is by armoring the shoreline with erosion-control devices.

Led by Hugh Morton, president of Grandfather Mountain Inc., a second popular tourist spot in the state, the group is spreading its message via the Internet with a Web site. It also is lobbying state leaders to try to get them to stop the relocation.

On the coast, local government officials and many Hatteras Island residents who live beneath the beam also don't want the lighthouse moved. Dare County commissioners voted unanimously in November for an alternative that calls for building a groin or seawall out from the beach in front of the lighthouse.

Lighthouse lovers on both sides agree that the structure is a state and national treasure that should be protected. The question is: Will moving the lighthouse save one of the nation's best-known maritime symbols or destroy it?

"Something needs to be done immediately to save it," said Danny Couch, a Hatteras Island native who opposes relocation. "We're just not on the same page about how to do it."

The debate is both emotional and scientific.

The 208-foot tower with bold black and white bands curling around the sides is a national symbol of the coast that some rank with the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco as an immediately recognizable coastal landmark.

In North Carolina, the candy-striped image is an icon that has been reproduced on logos and letterheads, state road maps, touristy trinkets and countless paintings.

The vaunted lighthouse is largely obsolete as a navigational tool because modern ships rely primarily on electronic and satellite navigational systems.

Seashore officials say a quarter of a million people climbed the winding stairway inside the tower during the five months it was opened to the public last year. Some days, as many as 2,500 people make the climb up the 268 steps.

Many of those visitors wonder whether the lighthouse will be there in the future. Hundreds of people have written letters to newspapers, legislators and state and federal officials with testimonials about the lighthouse and appeals to save it.

"Why are we risking the collapse of such a valuable thing?" wrote Teresa Simpson, a 28-year-old Richmond, Va. resident in a letter to state Sen. Marc Basnight D-Manteo, whose district includes the lighthouse. "If it were the Statue of Liberty, there wouldn't be a moment's hesitation. The money would be found and she would be saved. The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is my Statue of Liberty."

Although the lighthouse is now praised for a stoic beauty, it was strictly functional when it was built for sailing ships in the 1800s as a guide to help them navigate the treacherous shores that helped give the North Carolina coastline the nickname, "Graveyard of the Atlantic."

The first light at Cape Hatteras, a 90-foot tower built a mile from the beach, was completed in 1803. It lasted until 1870, when the current structure was erected.

Workers started with a layer of pine timbers buried underground and added an octagonal base of granite stones. The conical tower required a million bricks placed upward in a circle that grew smaller as the height increased.

When completed, the lighthouse stood 1,500 feet from the ocean.

Erosion spurred by a rise in sea level gradually ate away the shoreline, bringing the ocean within 300 feet by 1919 and 100 feet by 1935.

Since then, the erosion rate has ebbed and flowed as the shoreline has been laced with various erosion-control measures.

Worries about the threat the sea posed prompted a statewide movement in 1981 to save the lighthouse.

The movement brought together the state's two top political figures - Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms and Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt - and the Save the Lighthouse Committee, headed by Morton, raised a half million dollars with the help of North Carolina's schoolchildren.

Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers developed elaborate plans for building a massive stone wall around the lighthouse. The park service endorsed the project, which eventually would have left the lighthouse on an island as the surrounding shoreline eroded away.

Then, an ad hoc committee of engineers and scientists came up with another idea. The group, called the Move the Lighthouse Committee, persuaded the park service to study moving the lighthouse away from the advancing ocean.

In 1988, to help settle the debate over how to save the lighthouse, a panel of scientists, engineers and meterologists, under the banner of the National Academy of Sciences, was called in to study the issue.

It concluded: "The Atlantic Ocean will destroy the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the other structures of the Cape Hatteras Light Station Historic District unless actions are taken soon to move these structures farther from the sea."

The next year, the National Park Service scrapped plans to build the seawall and endorsed the relocation plan instead.

In 1996, Basnight asked a panel at N.C. State University to review the academy report to determine whether the conclusions were still valid. The panel agreed with the earlier findings.

"Since 1988, additional information about the structural geology of the Hatteras shore, the rate of shoreline retreat, the rate of sea-level rise and coastal storms indicates that unless the lighthouse is moved, it will be destroyed by the Atlantic Ocean," the panel wrote. "Continuing shoreline erosion will undermine the lighthouse and destroy the structural integrity of its foundation."

The current $12 million price tag involves more than the lighthouse. The project would include moving two keepers' quarters, roads and parking lots, and visitor programs that explain the history of the site.

Plans call for lifting the lighthouse with hydraulic jacks and moving it slowly on rails or a temporary road a half mile to the southwest. It would end up 1,600 feet back from the shore, a hundred feet farther back than its original distance from the sea when constructed in 1870.

David Laux, park service project manager in Denver, said the agency plans to ask two or three companies to submit detailed engineering plans on how to move the lighthouse. A company will be selected in June, he said, and the move could begin early next year.

"That's our target," Laux said. "We can't award the contract for the move until we have an approved budget. If that doesn't fit in that time frame, we're going to have to delay it by a year."

Lighthouses have been moved successfully before.

Cullen Chambers, a national lighthouse specialist with the Tybee Historical Society in Savannah, Ga., said 17 lighthouses have been successfully relocated historically.

Bob Reynolds, who took over as superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore last month, said the park service believes relocation provides the best long-term protection.

"It has been examined for an awful lot of years and I understand the debate is continuing, but on the other hand, last year when Congress appropriated this money to start doing the physical planning, they basically told us it's time for us to move ahead and get started," Reynolds said.

Morton's group and others contend that the lighthouse can be protected better at its current site and at a cheaper price. They prefer alternative erosion-control measures, such as artificial seaweed in offshore waters or the groin, measures designed to break the force of waves and trap sand.

The groin, which would cost about $1.7 million, would be an 800-foot-long wall of metal built perpendicular to the shoreline. Seawalls and other so-called shoreline-hardening structures are not allowed under state coastal development regulations but they can be approved in special cases.

Couch, a mechanic who operates the Lighthouse View Service Center at Buxton, said he has seen the groins work. He said that three groins built along the beach near the lighthouse in the 1970s to protect a Navy installation have kept the shoreline from eroding and that building a fourth groin would extend the protected area.

Congress will end the debate by deciding whether to pay for the move.

Although the money is included in President Clinton's proposed budget, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., whose congressional district includes Cape Hatteras, says he is not sold on relocation.

"It's not a done deal," said Jones, a Republican from Farmville.

Jones said he would not support the $10.5 million request until he considers the alternatives, including a shoreline groin. He said the Corps of Engineers has told him that a groin could protect the lighthouse for more than 20 years.

"If they [park service officials] prove that this was the only alternative to protect the lighthouse then obviously I would have to consider that only alternative," Jones said. "At this point I want to try to get all the information that I can from the standpoint of what are our alternatives. Do we have more than one?"

Jones and U.S. Sen. Lauch Faircloth, a Republican from Clinton, are planning a hearing on the Outer Banks on April 9 to gather information on the lighthouse from government agencies and area residents.

Faircloth, who has previously supported efforts to obtain federal funds for planning relocation, said in a statement released by his Washington office that he wants to hear from all sides on the issue.

"If it is a choice between move it or don't move it, then I'd prefer the lighthouse stay where it is," Faircloth said in the statement. "But if the scientists are correct and the real choice is move it or lose it, then we must do what is necessary to protect this national treasure."

So far Hunt, as governor, is backing the relocation plan. So is Basnight, who helped persuade President Clinton to budget money for the move.

Till Congress votes, lighthouse enthusiasts worry about each storm that passes by the cape.

Morehead City artist John M Moran warns that failing to move the lighthouse will lead to a scene nobody wants to see, a scene he has depicted in a water color painting of the lighthouse toppled onto its side in the surf.

"I've had people who have seen the painting start crying and say 'When did that happen?' " Moran said. "It's not a happy picture."

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Section: Question
Edition: Final
Estimated Printed Pages: 6

Index Terms:
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
coast
cost
environment
NC

Caption:
c graphic

Copyright 1998 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

Record Number: 1998045069