By retreating from wave attacks and rolling over, barrier islands protect themselves from these hazards and, in general, they manage quite well. However, much like the islands in New Jersey, these hazards are exacerbated by humans trying to manipulate and change the island rather than allow it to carry on with its natural processes. These human changes include construction of homes and communities, jetties, and bulkheads, dredging of channels and inlets, flattening dunes and unwise siting of roads and buildings. And in the balance of this chapter we review some of these human changes and how they impact the Outer Bank islands of North Carolina.
The northernmost Outer Bank island, Bodie (pronounced, "body" as in the human “body”,) is not an island at all! To be sure, Bodie Island at one time was a true island completely separated from the northern beaches of Currituck Banks. However, as storms passed through over the centuries, historic inlets closed and new inlets opened. In 1811, Roanoke Inlet, which separated Bodie Island from Currituck Banks, to the north, was closed permanently by a massive storm.
Without constant dredging and stabilization efforts, barrier island inlets invariably shoal up and close and that was the case for the Currituck Inlet, separating Currituck Banks from the Virginia mainland to the north. The final blow to the this inlet came in 1819 when the US Congress voted to eliminate funding for dredging Currituck Inlet. Six or seven years later, the inlet was completely closed. Consequently, the Currituck Banks and Bodie Island are now one contiguous barrier peninsula instead of small island pearls winding down the North Carolina coastline Beginning at its southern tip at Oregon Inlet, the peninsula stretches largely northwest out of North Carolina and into Virginia to join the mainland at Sandbridge. The entire peninsula is approximately 72 miles in length, with Currituck Sound to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. The towns and villages on Bodie Island include Corolla, Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, and Nags Head. The island is home to two famous lighthouses, the Bodie Island Light and Currituck Light.
Hurricanes continued to ravage this barrier peninsula into the early 1900s hindering efforts to attract investors to buy up land and build hotels and restaurants. In order to protect the future development, however, the Outer Bankers needed an erosion-control protective system. They needed dunes. And, they got them.
In the 1930’s the Works Project Administration (WPA), in response to the outcry for dunes, constructed a huge artificial dune extending from the Virginia border to Ocracoke Island. Fifteen hundred WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps workers were employed to build fences. The fences stopped the blowing sands, allowing dunes to form and grow. The workers then planted grasses — beach grass, sea oats, cordgrass, and wire grass — along with shrubs and tree seedlings to fortify the dunes, which ranged from 10 to 25 feet in height. By the project’s end in 1940, the workers had erected 3 million feet of sand fencing, installed 142 million square feet of grasses, and planted more than 2.5 million shrubs and seedlings.
This dune, or erosion-control protective, system was designed to protect the island from flooding, which seems like a good thing. In Kitty Hawk, famous for the site of the first powered flight by the Wright brothers, however, despite the dune, erosion and flooding have continued and the ocean tide has inched closer to properties. Apparently, the dune served a reverse process. Indeed, the real end product of the artificial dune is an island cut off from its natural, elevation-increasing process of overwash. Overwash carries sand to the interior and back side of an island building its elevation or allowing it to migrate.
In the case of Kitty Hawk, and other Bodie Island communities, e.g. Duck, Kill Devil Hills, and Currituck, the artificially constructed dune that has blocked the naturally occurring overwash for nearly 100 years, has resulted in an island starved for sand, an island that is lower and narrower than it otherwise would be. Additionally, the artificial dune now has numerous gaps and lacks vegetation.
That being said, to learn more about life in Emerald Isle, NC, go to my website, www.EIHomesforSale.com and request my free Guide to Living Were You Vacation or text your email address to: 919-308-2292. Stay well and stay safe.
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