Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Newspaper Articles

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

February 26, 1999

The News & Observer

Moving day at Cape Hatteras

By Jerry Allegood; STAFF WRITER

Page: A1

BUXTON -- In its 145 years on the Outer Banks, the simple two-story house where keepers of the Cape HatterasLighthouse once lived has been subjected to storms, wars and even a bright blue paint job that gave it a garish glow.

But the hardy wooden house beside the spiral-striped lighthouse stood pat until Thursday, when the movers came. Uprooted from its ocean-view perch, the house was rolled to a temporary location 3,000 feet away as part of the project to save the lighthouse complex from the encroaching sea.

"It's starting to look different," said Rob Bolling, a historian for the National Park Service. "That's the largest and most significant structure at the site other than the lighthouse."

The principal keeper's quarters, a two-story brick house built about 1871, will be moved next, and then the lighthouse itself in June or July.

The structure moved Thursday was called the double keepers' quarters because it was divided to house two families. It was restored in the 1980s and used as a visitors' center until last year, when the park service moved ahead with the $9.8 million lighthouse relocation.

Each keeper's quarters has a colorful history. As recently as the early 1980s, the smaller house was known as the pink house and maintained by the park service as a VIP retreat for members of Congress and top-level Washington bureaucrats. A family of four could stay for as little as $25 a night - a bargain that prompted a presidential aide to describe the house as "the best kept secret in the White House."

Bolling said the Coast Guard, which previously maintained the structures, had painted the small house "salmon red" and the larger house "electric blue" in the 1950s.

"It would burn your eyes when you saw it," he said of the blue hue.

The park service later had both structures painted white.

Workers for Expert House Movers of Virginia Beach, Va., spent several weeks preparing the house for the move by digging sand from underneath and bracing the structure with steel beams. The beams were lowered onto dollies or huge wheels that look like the tires on a jet.

About 50 people, many of them area residents who do volunteer work at the tourist attraction, watched as the house was pulled out of a depression in the sand and rolled about the pace of a slow walk along a temporary gravel road. Onlookers snapped photos, but the mood was solemn.

Workers previously moved a small brick building once used to store oil for the lighthouse lamp and three cisterns, brick structures that held drinking water. Park service officials said that when the lighthouse is moved, all the structures will be put in the same relative positions they held at the old site. But they will be about 1,600 feet from the ocean.

Meanwhile, workers for International Chimney Co. of Buffalo, N.Y., continue to saw and chip away at the granite foundation under the 200-foot tall lighthouse. Using a saw with diamonds on the blade, the workers cut horizontally into the base and use drills and power hammers to chip out chunks of rock.

Cutting the lighthouse off at its base probably will take another month, but the park service said the light would be turned off Monday.

The work takes place in a 6-foot hole excavated around the lighthouse after groundwater was pumped out. The excavation has uncovered a mat of pine timbers that holds the granite base and the conical tower - a structure that weighs 4,800 tons.

Company spokesman Joe Jakubik said the excavation reveals the craftsmanship of the construction.

"It's a credit to those who built the structure," he said. "Believe me, this is beautiful compared to some of the stuff we've worked on. Just gorgeous.

Section: News
Edition: Final
Estimated Printed Pages: 3

Index Terms:
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
NC
coast

Caption:
c photo

Two bulldozers and a truck work to move keepers' quarters away from the Hatteras Lighthouse.

Staff Photo By Chuck Liddy

Copyright 1999 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.

Record Number: 1999056087

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