Currituck offers up ‘lessons’ in N.C. geography

Geographically, Currituck County is one of North Carolina’s most interesting…and challenging…counties. It sits in the extreme upper right corner of the state and abuts Virginia. 

The larger part of the county is on the mainland while a smaller portion is on North Carolina’s Northern Outer Banks. In between is the Currituck Sound.

 

To get across the sound from the mainland, motorists must travel on U.S. Route 158 and cross the Wright Memorial Bridge at Point Harbor. On the other side is Kitty Hawk in Dare County.

 

To return to Currituck County, motorists must turn north on N.C. Route 12 and journey on to pass through the Dare County communities of Southern Shores and Duck before re-entering Currituck County. A few miles up the road are Currituck Banks, Corolla and Corolla Beach. 

N.C. Route 12 ends just beyond the Currituck Beach Lighthouse at Corolla Beach. But keep going on North Beach Access Road to reach Carova Banks in upper Currituck County. The road basically dies at the North Carolina-Virginia border. 

When all is said and done, getting from west Currituck County to east Currituck County and vice versa is like “going around your arse to get to your elbow.” 

The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) has a plan to fix the problem – the Mid-Currituck Bridge.

 

The official “NCDOT overview” spells out that the new bridge would create a second crossing of the sound…to help alleviate congestion and improve the flow of evacuation traffic in the event of a hurricane or severe storm.” 

“It would also provide easier access between the Outer Banks and Virginia….” 

NCDOT said the project would connect Aydlett on the mainland to Corolla, spanning the Currituck Sound. A second two-lane bridge is included in the plans, in order to cross Maple Swamp and link Aydlett to U.S. Route 158. 

“The total project has an overall estimated cost of $500 million, which includes construction, anticipated right of way and utility relocation,” NCDOT reported. 

Aydlett is about 18 miles north of Point Harbor, so for drivers coming south from Virginia, the new bridge “would provide a 40-mile shortcut to Corolla,” according to NCDOT. 

The (Raleigh) News & Observer reported that construction may begin in 2025, at the earliest. Toll rates would not be set until the bridge is close to opening. NCDOT has not yet set an expected opening date. 

Not everyone is onboard, however. “The Mid-Currituck Bridge is an extraordinarily bad investment for North Carolina,” said Kym Hunter, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) in Chapel Hill. 

“The bridge would primarily serve out-of-state tourists and only for a few weekends in the summer,” she asserted. “When you factor in the limited use, the availability of cheaper and less damaging alternatives and that much of the bridge project area will soon begin to flood and become less reliable due to sea level rise, it is hard to think of a worse way for North Carolina to spend scarce transportation funds.” 

An SELC challenge was denied in 2021 by U.S. District Court Judge Louise W. Flanagan, who wrote that most of the alleged flaws raised by the SELC and other conservation groups “constitute flyspecking.” 

(Washington state Superior Court Judge Robert A. Lewis, an author of mock trial cases, explained: “Often used in legal parlance as a verb, to ‘flyspeck’ a legal document is to examine it in ridiculous detail, to scrutinize every minor phrase and comma as if it is loaded with major significance.”) 

As expected, SELC appealed the court’s ruling, causing further delay.

Knotts Island clings to its North Carolina heritage

Zip code 27950 is basically defined as Knotts Island, a community that is found within the friendly confines of upper Currituck County, N.C. 

This small section of land nearly defies description. What words can accurately explain a strangely weird appendage in North Carolina that hangs down below Virginia? 

Currituck County historian W. K. Ansell once wrote that Knotts Island looks like it was “belched forth from Virginia.”

 

Knotts Island is actually a peninsula…and a very pastoral one at that. It’s connected to Virginia but surrounded in North Carolina by Currituck Sound and North Landing River as well as Knotts Island Bay. 

To get to Knotts Island from the North Carolina mainland, it’s best to ride the Currituck-Knotts Island Ferry. It’s a free trip in and out provided by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) Ferry Service. It’s a 5-mile ride, and it takes about 45 minutes to cross over. 

The state initiated the ferry service between Currituck and Knotts Island in 1962. Currituck is the seat of the Currituck County government, so Knotts Islanders occasionally need to travel to the mainland to conduct “official business” at the courthouse.

 

The only road into Knotts Island is Virginia’s Princess Anne Road. It becomes N.C. Route 615 at the North Carolina state line. Most Knotts Island residents go to work and do their shopping in Virginia Beach and other communities within the Tidewater region. 

Knotts Island has its own K-5 elementary school, but buses transport middle schoolers and high school students from Knotts Island to the North Carolina mainland by way of the ferry. The middle schoolers go to Moyock. The county high school is in Barco.

 

Knotts Island has had a post office since 1819, and about 2,100 people reside in the town today. Writing for Our State magazine, Jeremy Markovich said: “Most people, it seems, grew up here, or came to be left alone.” 

Some who came in 1933 were from Wash Woods, a village that once stood on Virginia’s outer banks. Records indicate that a British steamship beached there in 1895, and the survivors became the first settlers. 

As many as 300 people once lived at Wash Woods. They fished, hunted, farmed and retrieved logs and lumber from shipwrecks off the coast, until a great hurricane put them out of business. Their village was destroyed by the storm. A number of families floated their belongings across Back Bay to reach Knotts Island where they took refuge. 

The Wash Woods crowd had no trouble becoming adopted Tar Heel sons and daughters. They said they never felt like Virginians in the first place. 

Today, there are more birds than people living on Knotts Island. All sorts of waterfowl and birds inhabit and migrate through the “great marsh” – the Mackay Island National Wildlife Reserve on Knotts Island. 

It’s pronounced “Mackie” and named after one of the original owners, John Mackie, according to a spokesperson from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). “Over the years the name somehow was changed from ‘Mackie’ to ‘Mackay.’ How this happened is unknown.”

 

The most influential owner of Mackay Island was the late Joseph Palmer Knapp, a wealthy New York City printing magnate, conservationist and philanthropist, who purchased the island in 1918. He formed the Ducks Unlimited organization in 1936. 

The USFWS was able to acquire the island in 1960 and create the 8,138-acre refuge.