Park Service May Scoop up Beach Houses

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001
By JERRY ALLEGOOD The News & Observer

CAPE LOOKOUT, N.C. (AP) _ After each cold northeaster and every blustery hurricane, Wilson Davis looks toward Core Banks and wonders whether his family's small wooden cottage is still standing on the remote seaside island in Carteret County.

Except for countless shredded roofs and other weather-related infirmities, the house has fared well for more than 70 years in the harsh coastal environment. Lately, though, Davis is more worried that Uncle Sam, not Mother Nature, may finally dislodge the place.

``We can live with nature,'' said Davis, whose family has maintained the house since the 1950s.

The Davis property, known as the Coca-Cola house because the original owners held a soft drink franchise, is part of a contentious legal dispute with the National Park Service, the federal agency that manages the Cape Lookout National Seashore where the house and a few others are located.

Currently, no one _ not even seashore personnel _ live year-round on the 55-mile-long seashore that occupies the barrier islands between Ocracoke and Beaufort Inlets. Unlike Cape Hatteras National Seashore to the north, which is linked to the mainland by a highway, Cape Lookout is accessible only by private boat and several small ferries.

The only high-rise on Core Banks is the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, its black and white diamond sides and blinking light a comfort for a nearly a century and a half. The long, low island, distinguished by a hook shape jutting into the Atlantic, once supported small fishing villages, but storms and changing times forced permanent residents to the mainland years ago. Only day visitors and those with links to the land venture here now.

When land along the barrier island was purchased for the seashore in the 1970s, about two dozen property owners who did not want to sell and had deeds that the government disputed were given 25-year leases that allowed them to continue using their houses.

Now the time is up for several leaseholders, and other leases will expire in the next few years, so the federal agency is preparing to take over.

But some leaseholders say that they were pressured into accepting the arrangements and that they want to retain some rights. Davis and five others recently filed a lawsuit in federal court asking a federal judge to order the park service to let them continue using the property.

Hugh R. Overholt, a New Bern attorney who prepared the lawsuit, said the previous property owners have been good stewards who have invested time, money and emotion in the houses. The structures may not be fancy, he said, but they are special to people who have used them for generations.

Without the maintenance the private owners provided, the lawsuit said, the houses would rapidly deteriorate. ``The cape, while beautiful at times, can be extremely inhospitable to man-made structures,'' the lawsuit said.

And the group is particularly worried that the park service will demolish some of the houses or simply halt maintenance and let the harsh conditions obliterate them.

Karren C. Brown, the seashore superintendent, said the agency has no plans to raze the structures. Instead, she said, plans call for a preservation specialist to examine them and determine the best use and what maintenance would be required.

She said the houses might be suitable for a historic-property leasing program that allows private individuals to lease structures in exchange for maintaining them. Six buildings in the abandoned village of Portsmouth are included in that program.

``We can have all of that here,'' Brown said. ``I'm not trying to rob people of their heritage.''

The catch, as far as current users are concerned, is that leases would be offered for bids nationwide, not just to previous property owners or area residents.

About 15 people already have asked about leasing structures when the 25-year leases are up, Brown said.

She said the park service is not authorized to grant special-use permits in the seashore. The permits can be approved in federal lands for original property owners who have primary residences, she said, but at Cape Lookout, the ownership is disputed and the structures are used on weekends or during vacations.

She said she understands the families' attachment to the sandy land and the laid-back way of life at the cape. But many other families that were moved off without leases felt the same, she said.

In this case, the park service couldn't appease locals even if leases were granted. Many of those who were forced to give up cottages vigorously oppose giving the current leaseholders continued privileges.

The issue has revived smoldering resentment against the park service in the close-knit fishing communities where locals derisively refer to outsiders as ``dingbatters.'' Ill will was pegged as the motive for a series of suspicious fires that destroyed abandoned cottages on nearby Shackleford Banks when that island became part of the national seashore several years ago.

The disputed properties are a mile or two from the lighthouse, scattered among the low grasses on the sound side or nearly hidden in thickets of pine, cedar and myrtle. The Coca-Cola house used to be painted red but now it is a weathered brown with a wraparound porch.

Davis and others who have held onto the properties also hope to maintain a kind of recreation that is markedly different from the resorts of Atlantic Beach to the south or Nags Head to the north.

``It's hard to explain why people here love going to the cape so much,'' said Davis, a retired newspaper printing employee who lives in the mainland community of Straits. ``There's nothing over there but sand, beach and the hook.''

Samuel L. and Sara Daniels of Morehead City come almost every weekend during the summer to the house they bought in 1969, a two-story wood-frame structure originally built for the U.S. Lifesaving Service in 1888. The roof has bare spots like a balding old-timer, and white asbestos shingles nailed over the original wooden siding by a previous owner look out of place, but the house is solid and comfortable.

The couple, who observed their 56th wedding anniversary recently, said they have passed up trips to exotic locales including Hawaii to spend quiet time talking with each other, visiting the few neighbors and watching the wildlife at the cape.

``It's like being in another world,'' Sara Daniels said.