The s and s were marked by the arrival of lumber businesses who harvested the Kitty Hawk Woods area. Once the first Wright Memorial Bridge was constructed in the s, linking the off-shore beach town to the mainland, tourism began to steadily develop.
This would continue in the following decades, and coincide with multiple Wright Memorial Bridge renovations , until eventually Kitty Hawk would be in the national spotlight once again - this time as one of the premier vacation destinations along the Outer Banks.
Kitty Hawk's history dates back hundreds if not thousands of years, and the following timeline provides a brief overview of this small town's national claims to fame, or landscape-changing events. Kitty Hawk history buffs will want to discover these historic sites that are prominent attractions, little known, or even hidden in plain sight.
Also offering lactose-free sorbets made from the best fruits available. Old time favorites are sure to please! Choose from a delicious collection of milkshakes, sundaes and banana splits.
Savor the moment with our Homemade Chocolate! Chocolates are made daily in each location. We offer a large selection from Dark to Milk to White. Business was good, but something was missing. Pleva took a trip to Italy to study the gelaterias. She fell in love with the incredible flavors, and when she returned home to the Outer Banks, she began working tirelessly to perfect the flavors in her own ice cream.
It quickly became a tourist favorite. After having the same unsatisfactory experience with the readymade chocolates she was selling, she also took a trip to Brussels to learn more about making handmade chocolates. Pleva brought the chocolate-making experience right back with her, and the result was the finest quality of chocolates on the Outer Banks.
After her huge success in the Corolla shop, Pleva was able to open up three more shops—one in Kitty Hawk, one in Manteo and one in Duck. Best store on the beach! Everything you need for your vacation. Census as surfmen working 10 months annually for the lifesaving service, with the station keeper employed the entire year.
During the late s, Kitty Hawk Bay, along with the whole of the Currituck Sound, began to acquire a reputation among wealthy northerners as a "Mecca for Sportsmen," in the words of a headline in a Washington, DC newspaper a half century later.
After the Civil War, the number of private shooting clubs located along the water and marsh fronts of the sound increased to at least 25, with members arriving during the summers from New York, New England, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. They bought or leased beach fronts and islands, and acquired the exclusive right to hunt and fish in adjacent waters.
The Kitty Hawk Bay Sportsmen's Club, formed around , soon became "a monster affair," according to Forest and Stream magazine, spending "large sums of money to acquire "all the desirable points" in the vicinity. The club posted the lands and patrolled them, threatening arrest and rigorous prosecution of local hunters or other poachers. Forest and Stream, which praised the club as a model for its orderly endeavors, charged that during October , thousands of canvas back and redhead ducks had been slaughtered by "natives and market-shooters" only to decompose in barrels before they reached a commercial market.
The magazine viewed the onset of private hunting clubs "as a progressive and timely movement toward the preservation of our choicest varieties of wild fowl and the rarer species of game fish. The "shooting club system," as the newly organized way of hunting came to be known, was responsible for the employment of local residents as employees.
Although "plain, everyday sportsmen. In October , the Kitty Hawk Club hired about 30 local hunters as waiters and boatmen. In the U. Census, four heads of household living in the vicinity were identified by occupation as "Hunter of Wild Fowl. Despite the threats of arrest for poaching, Orville Wright indicated that the people living in Kitty Hawk "pay little respect to what few game laws they have.
William J. Tate, the Wright Brothers' most important contact in Kitty Hawk, believed that in some to people in Currituck County hunted for a living. The poet Robert Frost, as a year-old, joined a group of visiting wealthy hunters on a trip to the Outer Banks in , recalling years later that the "rough crowd of—of gentlemen who had invited him "were drinking all the time. Tourists with more moderate incomes did not flock to the Outer Banks until after , when the Wright Memorial Bridge connected Kitty Hawk with Point Harbor, and state highways were constructed south past Nag's Head leading to bridges that crossed Roanoke Sound and connected Roanoke Island with the mainland.
Even with these improvements, the population of Kitty Hawk remained "fairly static" in the decades that followed at around inhabitants. The U. Approximately 55 consisted of two-parent families.
Fifteen of the households had no children. For families with children, the median number of offspring then living with their parents was three. Fifty-two households consisted solely of nuclear family members, while 14 housed extended family members, boarders, and in one case, a servant.
Forty-four families shared a surname with at least one other family in the township. The last name of Perry was most common, with nine households and 49 residents, nearly one sixth of the township, sharing that name. Four households were headed by women, all of whom were widows. The median age of male heads of households was 36; the median age of wives or widows was Couples on average had been married 12 years. The population was overwhelmingly homogeneous in origin. Only six of the inhabitants had been born outside of North Carolina, three of whom were from neighboring Virginia.
Only one resident, a year-old woman from England, was an immigrant. Of the rest, only two had a parent who had been born outside the state. Only one head of a household rented. All were white. Roughly following the form of truncated obelisks, the entrance gateposts used ancient Egyptian motifs like the monument. Just west of the entrance, a small visitor contact station was constructed, with both being completed before the transfer to the National Park Service in In August , two Executive Orders transferred administrative authority over forty-eight areas under the War Department to the National Park Service.
Horace Dough, local boat builder and fishing guide, was appointed caretaker a few days before the transfer. As a result of President Franklin D.
World War II brought development to a halt. A lack of funding forced the National Park Service to cut staff and money was unavailable for the basics, including fertilizer.
In , with World War II ended, Superintendent Horace Dough asked for exhibits and other improvements to improve the visitor experience. In , the park drew up a master plan that emphasized interpretation and advocated thinning out brush and other vegetation in order to return to a more accurate historic setting. This master plan included the creation of an east-west entrance road and the removal of the existing north-south entrance road.
The Kill Devil Hills Memorial Society hoped to raise funds for land acquisition, a museum, reconstruction of the camp buildings, and eventually an airstrip. These plans marked a shift from commemoration to comprehensive interpretation in the landscape. With the money finally in hand for the needed land purchase, building the museum and new entrance road became the next priority. The General Development Plan, which included an airstrip east of West Hill, further articulated the implementation of a larger interpretive program for the site.
In October , National Park Service Director Conrad Wirth outlined Mission 66, a ten-year program to transform the American national park system to meet the conditions and demands of the postwar era.
The program included a new building type that centralized basic visitor services. The 9, square foot visitor center was dedicated in December At this time, the visitor center and camp buildings became the center of comprehensive interpretation, with the suggestion from Washington that the monument be closed to visitors.
Staffing was not adequate to man the monument, and there was also a concern about visitor safety. Definite plans for a 3,foot airstrip, to be located on the western edge of the park, were announced at the December anniversary ceremonies. The dedication of the First Flight airstrip occurred at the sixtieth anniversary celebration in In January , the visitor center was designated a National Historic Landmark as a nationally significant example of a Mission 66 visitor center and as one of the most important examples nationally of the Philadelphia School of modernist architecture.
December 17, marked the th anniversary of the first powered flights at Kitty Hawk. Over 30, people were in attendance at Wright Brothers National Memorial to commemorate the remarkable achievements of the two brothers from Dayton years before, when the Outer Banks had limited dirt and sand cart paths, a local population of only a few hundred residents, and was only accessible by boat.
Explore This Park. Commemorating the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk.
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