Outer Banks Beachcomber Museum

Welcome to the

Outer Banks Beachcomber's Museum

Home of the Nellie Myrtle Collection

MUSEUM OPEN HOUSE SCHEDULE UPDATE 12-28-2011

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No Open Houses are scheduled at this time.

Everyone here at the Nellie Myrtle Collection

would like to thank those that visited us

this year and we hope you were inspired

by your visit to go out and find great stuff.

Have a great winter and we will update the site

when the weather warms up!

Thanks again,

Museum Staff

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Feel free to email us with any questions:

beach@oldnagshead.org

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

From the Collection:

A large piece of cobalt bonfire glass, a variety of blue beach glass, one stunning lavender chunk

and background cameos by green make this sunset array by Dorothy Hope a classic!

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Little Kinnakeet Life Saving Station...Info

"Kinnakeet Prickly Pear with Bloom"

December at the Museum:

Saturday, December 17, 2011

108th Anniversary of the

Wright Brothers First Powered Flight

From Kill Devil Hill.

Nellie Myrtle's Family has an interesting connection to the

history of the Wright Brothers National Monument

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The museum's collection includes a recently displayed deed, dated September, 1926, which details the sale of a "certain piece, parcel or tract of land situate and lying in Nags Head Township" containing Kill Devil Hill, where the Wright Brothers conducted their aviation trials in the early 1900's. The tract contained 772.26 acres, ocean to sound, and sold for $10,000.

Nellie Myrtle's grandfather,Willie Twiford, had purchased a 300 acre tract containing Kill Devil Hill from fellow Kill Devil Hills Lifesaving Station surfman Robert, L Wescott in 1916. According to Mickey Shortt Jr, a National Park Service Guide at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, the Wright brothers paid Mr. Wescott a small fee for the use the land.

Twiford combined that parcel with several other pieces he had acquired and sold them to Frank Stick and his partner Alan Hueth, the grantees in the 1926 deed.

Wright Brothers photo of Kill Devil Hills Lifesaving Station crew members in front of the main building.

For more photos from East Carolina University go here... ~ full photo below ~

Full version of the photo enlargement above by the Wright Brothers.

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"Allen R. Hueth and Frank Stick, both from Asbury Park, came to the Outer banks on a hunting trip. Unlike other hunters who visited our barrier islands, these men fell in love with the place. As residents of the booming Jersey Shore they envisioned a time when the little resort community of Nags Head could spread from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras. They soon began buying up Outer Banks real estate. Among their earliest purchases was an ocean-to-bay tract they bought from Willie Otis and Nellie Twiford of Nags Head. " *

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Photos taken of original deed books in the Dare County Register of Deeds.

"Almost immediately, Hueth and Stick sold the 772.26 acre tract to Charles Baker and Susan Sutton, also residents of the Jersey Shore, to raise cash for other real estate activities.

A condition of the sale was that Baker and Sutton were required to donate Kill Devil Hill to the federal government if ongoing efforts to have a memorial erected were successful.

The oceanfront part of this tract, which extended north for nearly a mile from the Kill Devil Hills Coast Guard Station, was first developed as Carolina Shores, then changed to Kitty Hawk Shores.

The undeveloped back part is now the site of the Kill Devil Hills town hall, beach library, First Flight schools complex, and the Baum Bay subdivision." *

"Frank Stick was an ardent conservationist and he wanted to preserve both the natural beauty and the historical treasures of the Outer Banks.

He became the driving force behind the creation of the Cape Hatteras

National Seashore,
and had a hand in establishing the
Wright Brothers Memorial and Fort
Raleigh Historic Site."
*

On August 17, 1937, Congress authorized the establishment of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the park was not officially opened until 1953. As planned, it includes 62,000 acres, stretching from the Virginia state line to Hatteras Inlet. The park preserves the area's "primitive wilderness" and provides recreational access to the public. MORE

United States Postal Service issued the 2-cent Cape Hatteras National Seashore stamps as a block of four on April 5, 1972, in Hatteras, North Carolina. They commemorated the centennial of the National Park Service and the establishment of Cape Hatteras National Seashore on North Carolina's Outer Banks. MORE...

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"Hueth and Stick went on to purchase another ocean-to-bay tract a mile or so north of Kill Devil Hill and began developing it early in 1927 under the name of Virginia Dare Shores. Associated with them in this venture was Captain Dan Hayman, a Kitty Hawk native, and the centerpiece of Virginia Dare Shores was a one hundred-foot wide avenue (as compared with the sixty foot-width of other streets in the development) named Hayman Boulevard. Virginia Dare Shores was laid out in blocks running 500 feet east to west and 200 feet north to south.Ocean Boulevard extended the length of the development, 250 feet back from the high water mark, and Bay Avenue paralleled the shoreline of Kitty Hawk Bay. In time a long dock was built as the south side end of Hayman Boulevard, with two large buildings over the water on the south side of the dock.

One of the buildings was used as an office, kitchen and dining room. The other, the pavilion, was designed for concerts and programs for excursions coming in by steamboat from Elizabeth City and tidewater Virginia, and for dances. There were two cement block cottages owned by the Virginia Dare Shores developers on the south side opposite the dock. In addition, one private summer cottage, also made of cement blocks using beach sand as the aggregate, was built adjacent to the proposed Ocean Boulevard. Known as the Weeks Cottage, it was the first summer cottage built north of the old Nags Head resort and is still there, on the northwestern corner of the intersection of Virginia Dare Trail and Walker Street." *

"*" : From David Stick's Real Estate History Of The Outer Banks - Installment Two

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