The fishing village of Salter Path was the first section of Bogue Banks to be inhabited by American settlers. Beginning shortly after the Civil War, they came to fish, farm and work odd jobs just to make ends meet. These first Salter Pathers came from Hunting Quarter, now known as Atlantic and Sea Level, and Straits and other Down East locations in Carteret County. As the local whaling industry declined, many people from the Cape Lookout area and Shackleford Banks moved whole houses by boat to Salter Path. Others disassembled their houses and floated them board-by-board. The first Salter Path houses were nestled among the trees on the sound side of the island. Cattle roamed freely on the banks, grazing and drinking water at the various fresh water creeks. Hogs ate the wild grapes, roots and acorns as well as corn given to them by their owners. Settlers cultivated a variety of vegetables and supplemented their seafood, pork and beef with the meat of wildlife on the banks. They baked opossum and raccoon and stewed loons and various ducks.
A trail ran by Riley Salter’s house, connecting the sound to the ocean beach, which became known as 'Salter’s path.' Some believe the path was actually named for another Salter with the given name Owen. Whoever its namesake, that path gave the community its name and provided a way for Salter Pathers to access the beach when the mullet ran in big black schools out in the ocean. Salter Pathers have always lived for the 'Mullet Blow.' Upon sensing the first blast of northeast wind, the finger mullet and hardhead mullet know when it’s time to head south for their winter spawn. The massive migration of mullet out of our creeks and sounds rings the dinner bell for fall to begin. The fishermen encircled the mullet with their long nets, nets which had been knit so patiently by their women. The mullet, harvested for its oil also provided good eats. Some people pickle or can the finger mullet like herring or sardines, and of course, the striped mullet is famed for its succulent roe, while the whole fish is often butterflied and grilled or smoked.
A village that lay quiet and peaceful, nestled among the live oak trees almost like a quilt pieced together with an old hand, Salter Path is where you will find the soul of Bogue Banks. Lillian Smith Golden, born here in 1901, once wrote: “If there was ever a heaven on Earth, it was here. There was wild country on each side of us. We had a church. We had a school. We had a feeling for each other, a love for one another.”With people came progress and 1915 saw the first U.S. post office on Bogue Banks open here in 1915 and a name change from Salter Path to Gillikin. These occurrences also opened a new chapter in Carteret County history. For the first time, the county had two communities, Bettie and Gillikin, named in honor of the same person – a woman named Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” Gillikin Adams.
Records show that Bettie Gillikin was born in 1881, the daughter of Chewe Pigott Gillikin and Caldonia Goulding Gillikin in Otway, a community located in the Down East section of the county. Chewe operated a small general store and he was the first and only postmaster in Otway. Bettie served as her father’s assistant to her father in Otway, and she helped him establish a new post office at a nearby settlement on the North River. In appreciation of her assistance,” that new post office as well as its community was named, simply, “Bettie.” Bettie Gillikin attended the public high school in Atlantic and then enrolled at Graham Academy in Marshallberg, were she earned a teaching certificate. Bettie Gillikin took a job as a school teacher, first at Diamond City near Cape Lookout and then in Otway. In 1910, she married “M.C.” Adams of North River and the couple made their home in Salter Path. Bettie Gillikin Adams became the teacher at the Salter Path one-room school house. The name of the town was changed to Gillikin in honor of ‘Miss Bettie Gillikin’ when the post office opened in September 1915. In 1918, when Bettie and M.C. moved to Morehead City, the name to the post office and the village on Bogue Banks was changed back to Salter Path. When the Salter Path post office was closed in 2011, its assigned zip code of 28575 was combined into 28512 at the Atlantic Beach post office. Indian Beach and Pine Knoll Shores are also within the 28512 zip.
The 1930s brought more progress in the form of a paved road. The Works Progress Administration, an American “New Deal” agency, partnered with the North Carolina State Highway Commission to build a roadway west from Atlantic Beach, extending about nine miles to Salter Path. Completed in 1940, the road was surfaced with a packed sand-clay mixture, which was guaranteed to prevent the road from rutting and becoming sticky in wet weather. The new road was wide enough for one vehicle, giving new meaning to the phrase, “share the road.” In 1953, the road was surfaced with macadam and widened to two lanes. Today, this nine mile section of N.C. Hwy. 58, is designated the “George W. Smith Highway”. George Smith was Salter Path’s revered mail boat captain. Capt. George used his own vessel, the Florabell, to travel back and forth to Morehead City with incoming and outgoing mail. Capt. George also served as Salter Path’s justice of the peace, was head of the elections board and was a member of the school committee.
Another individual who left a significant mark on Salter Path was Alice Green Hoffman. Widely regarded as the “queen” of Bogue Banks, Hoffman lived in a large house lit with electric bulbs. To run her household, she employed many residents from the village of Salter Path, including the legendary “Aunt Charity” who worked as her cook. Hoffman didn’t seem to mind that most of the 35 Salter Path families were living in houses built on land she owned. But then one day, she found Salter Path cows in her strawberry patch. She sued the residents over the trespassing cattle in 1923. Many of the Salter Pathers had been living there for more than 40 years, arguing that they had received “permission” to build on the land from a landowner who preceded Ms. Hoffman. The Solomon’s Choice court ruling upheld Hoffman’s land ownership claim but allowed the current Salter Path inhabitants and their descendants to occupy the village land under three conditions: their cattle did not roam east of the village into what is now Pine Knoll Shores. They did not build outside the village boundaries or on the oceanfront. And, third, they did not cut live trees. Some 50 odd years later, in the late 1970s, these squatters were given deeds to their land. Development followed in the form of Summer Winds and Grand Villas condominium complexes but to this day, Salter Path remains the only unincorporated community on Bogue Banks – 81 acres that form an island on an island.
To learn more about the towns and communities that make up the Crystal Coast and Carteret County, go to my website, www.EmeraldIsleHomesforSaleNC.com and sign up for my blog. Ready to buy or sell? Call me at 919-308-2292. Explore the video tab for my weekly uploads to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and receive free donuts at my Flip Flops Donut shop. Text your email address to 919-308-2292 and subscribe to my newsletter. My book, "Live Where You Vacation" is available on Amazon.com.
Comments