Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Newspaper Articles

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

November 14, 1999

The News & Observer

Settled in a new home

By JERRY ALLEGOOD; STAFF WRITER

Page: A12

BUXTON -- It's now marked only by a makeshift circle of granite slabs, but people still come to the spot where the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse stood watch by the sea for 129 years. On the nearby beach, visitors gaze at the shoreline panorama that was painted and photographed thousands of times before the lighthouse was picked up and hauled a half-mile away. Some take photos anyway, even though a distinctive black-and-white tower no longer looms over the dunes.

"It's a whole different place," said Mark Barnes, an Annapolis, Md., resident who was surf fishing near the old site earlier this year on an Outer Banks beach.

Barnes' perch on the beach would have been in the shadow of the nation's tallest lighthouse. Now, the lighthouse shades a wooded area well away from the beach, where the structure was relocated to protect it from erosion. The entire lighthouse complex -200-foot-tall tower, two houses where lighthouse keepers once lived, an oil storage building and water-storing cisterns - were moved one by one as part of a $9.8 million National Park Service project.

All that's left at the old site are the granite stones, cut from the lighthouse foundation before the move, that have become a makeshift memorial. And still, people debate whether moving the lighthouse was the right thing to do. It is an argument that may go on for years.

The new look brings on something like phantom pain in an amputated limb to those accustomed to seeing the light in the same place all their lives. It no longer stands at the end of Old Lighthouse Road in Buxton, and it doesn't come into view as quickly when traveling south toward the village on N.C. 12.

For those who wanted the light to stay put, the beacon lost more than aesthetics. They say it no longer symbolizes mankind's vigilance against the sea.

Some, like Linville developer Hugh Morton, said the proximity to the sea, the danger and the beauty were part of what made the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse unique. Now, he says, the Hatteras light is no different from the Bodie Island Lighthouse or any sentinels away from the beach.

Morton, who headed a committee that vigorously fought relocation, said Hatteras was one of the three best-known landmarks in America, along with the Golden Gate Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. "Now, we've abdicated our position of honor in that select company," he said.

Morton's group, the Save Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Committee, raised about $500,000 from private contributors that included business people and schoolchildren. Morton said the 19 members of the committee will meet Friday to discuss what to do with $250,000 left over.

"We've had a lot of contributions voluntarily, but so many of them were made with the understanding that we wouldn't give a dime to the cause of moving it," he said. "So we absolutely are not going to have anything to do with moving of the lighthouse."

One possibility, he said, is giving the money to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. He said he would like to see the money used to commemorate the lighthouse's earlier location.

The National Park service says both places add to the lore of the Hatteras light. "We get folks who haven't been here since the move or haven't been up to speed on the issue coming in and saying, 'I thought it was back that way,' " said Rob Bolling, historian for the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. "I think we'll be dealing with that for some time."

But Orrin H. Pilkey, a Duke University geologist who is a well-known opponent of erosion-control measures on ocean beaches, disagrees with suggestions that the structure, now 1,600 feet from the ocean, has lost its symbolic role.

To the contrary, he said, retreating from the inevitable advance of the ocean is wiser than trying to protect homes and businesses by armoring the beach. The path from the stone circle to the lighthouse shows the way, he said.

"The lesson," he said, "is that if we can move a lighthouse, we can ... sure move a beach cottage."

Section: News
Edition: Final
Estimated Printed Pages: 3

Index Terms:
NC
coast

Caption:
2 c photos

MEMORIAL IN STONE: Chunks of granite, cut from the foundation before the move, are all that remain at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse's original site.

Staff photos by Chuck Liddy

Copyright 1999 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

Record Number: fl8uh689