| Hatteras Village at a Glance For many years, Hatteras and Ocracoke islands were joined. Then on the night of September 7, 1846, a hurricane opened the present-day Hatteras Inlet. (The following day, the same storm opened Oregon Inlet, thus establishing the current boundaries of Hatteras Island.) Redding R. Quidley, a ship´s pilot from Ocracoke quoted in David Stick´s history, The Outer Banks of North Carolina, recalled the reaction of his uncle and other families who lived in the area: "To their great surprise, in the morning they saw the sea and sound connected together, and the live oaks washing up by the roots and tumbling into the ocean." Apparently, some five months passed before the first major merchant vessel, the Arthur C. Havens, dared to navigate the new Hatteras Inlet. Soon, however, it was a major shipping channel with tonnage that surpassed that of Beaufort and rivaled Wilmington. During the decade before the Civil War, there appears to have been a rapid influx of people to Hatteras village. In addition to those arriving on purpose by sea, some members of the Gray and Farrrow families migrated down from Kinnakeet (Avon), some of the Midgetts and Meekins from Chicamacomico (Rodanthe); and John Rollinson moved the short distance down from Trent (Frisco) to become Collector of the Port of Hatteras in 1859. By the Civil War, Hatteras had become the pre-eminent town on the Outer Banks, so that, in 1862, the Union temporarily recognized it as the capital of the reclaimed state of North Carolina. During the frenzy of lifesaving station construction in 1878-9, Hatteras was not left out. The station there became known as Durants and, among the many rescues the surfmen there participated in, the one that was carefully recorded, and so comes to us intact, is the story of the unfortunate little schooner Nellie Wadsworth that tried to ride out a gale in Hatteras Inlet on the cold winter morning of December 5, 1885. In a rescue that required the lifesavers to carry five spent and freezing men on their backs three miles to their station, four of the crew were saved and one perished on the beach from exposure. Hatteras village has fewer permanent residents than Avon or Frisco and half as many as Buxton. But a recent boom in commercial and home construction near the ferry landing to Ocracoke, the promise of fresh seafood, pristine beaches, and annual sport fishing and surf fishing tournaments keep drawing serious fishermen and summer tourists all the way to the end of the island. Nature and long-time residents of the island have their own ways of discouraging over-development. Limited growth and rising property values, therefore, are the most likely outcome for this relatively undeveloped 70-mile stretch that includes, north to south, the towns and villages Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo, Avon, Buxton, Frisco, and Hatteras. |