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Southern Cultures 7.3 (2001) 9-26



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Essay

The Taking of the Hatteras Light

Jan DeBlieu
with photographs by Michael Halminski

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One mild Saturday morning in November 1998, my six-year-old son and I went to a party at the famous, black-and-white spiraled Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the North Carolina Outer Banks. It wasn't really a party; at least it wasn't being billed as one by the National Park Service, the guardian of the Hatteras Light. Still,

the occasion seemed a little festive. For once, residents of the Outer Banks would have a chance to visit the lighthouse during the slow season, when we wouldn't have to climb it in lockstep with dozens of tourists. We drove south across Oregon Inlet, known among fishermen for its treacherous, changing channel, and down the length of Hatteras Island. All the way there, we followed a two-lane highway that is routinely threatened by blowing sand and flooding from ocean storms.

The lighthouse is in the village of Buxton, in the crook of Hatteras Island. Bob Reynolds, the affable superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, greeted us at its base. It had been Reynolds's idea to let locals climb the lighthouse one last time. Reid and I went up the granite steps and entered the cold brick tower, smiling hellos at people we knew. A local surveyor and his family. A newspaper reporter. A schoolteacher. A fourth-grade boy, the son of dear friends. Everyone seemed delighted and intrigued.

We mounted the spiraling, terra-cotta-painted stairway, our footsteps clanging on the iron steps. At the first landing, Reid strained on tiptoes to look out the mullioned window. The view was south, toward the east-curling spit known as Cape Point. "We'll be able to see better as we get higher," I told him. But I was in no hurry. We ran our hands over the whitewashed brick walls; we admired the floor of the landing, made of black-and-white marble tiles, shipped in from somewhere up north.

On our way to the top, we paused at each landing to gaze out at the Atlantic Ocean or down toward two wood-sided buildings where the keepers of the light once lived. The ground seemed to diminish as we climbed higher. When we stepped out onto the iron balcony just below the lens, it was as if the land below hardly existed. What dominated was the sea, arching around us on three sides and pushing toward us from the west in the form of Pamlico Sound. From 165 feet up, even the widest part of Hatteras Island looked astoundingly fragile, a dribble of sand that had sprouted some houses and trees. "Wow," Reid said. "It's so thin."

"Yeah," I said. "I think it's one of the thinnest things I've ever seen."

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is in trouble even today because it stands on a low barrier island that is migrating quickly to the west. Four months after my son and I climbed it, a squadron of engineers and construction workers began cutting away its foundation so it could be raised by hydraulic jacks and rolled on metal rails 2,900 feet southwest, at a cost to federal taxpayers of $11.2 million. Instead of a mere 100 feet from the surf, it is now about 1,600 feet away, roughly the same [End Page 9] distance as in 1870 when it was first lit. Park service officials hope it will remain safe for another century. But because erosion rates vary wildly, no one really knows how long it will be before the Atlantic once again laps at its base.

Everyone who loves the Hatteras Light has strong feelings about what has been done to preserve it. There are those who fought for fifteen years to have it moved, and there are those who battled just as hard for it to be left in place, protected by a system of steel groins or a seawall. At times both camps have been...

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