Pine Knoll Shores was once called ‘Isle of Pines’

Pine Knoll Shores, N.C., became a town 50 years ago in 1973…but its history goes back much farther in time and involves a mysterious woman who was regarded as the “Queen of Bogue Banks.”

Alice Green Hoffman

 

To set the stage: In 1915, almost all the land on Bogue Banks between Hoop Pole Creek (now in Atlantic Beach) and the western tip at Bogue Inlet (now in Emerald Isle) – about 8,000 acres – was owned by John Allen Crosskeys Royall. 

Royall amassed a fortune in Boston, Mass., as an oil company executive. He began buying parcels of land on Bogue Banks in 1910 and built a hunting lodge on the banks of Bogue Sound (in present-day Pine Knoll Shores). Royall named his estate “Isle of Pines.” 

He met Alice Green Hoffman in 1915. She was a wealthy New York City socialite who was living in Paris, France. She wanted out; a war was engulfing Europe. 

She believed that North Carolina’s Bogue Banks offered a completely safe haven. “It is too remote to attract gas bombs,” Hoffman exclaimed.

 

When she visited Royall’s property, Hoffman instantly fell in love with the land, remarked Phyllis Makuck of the Pine Knoll Shores History Committee. 

Hoffman found a “divine spot – a knoll from which one could see the ocean,” Makuck wrote. The location “was concealed by the magnificent semi-tropical forest of pines, oaks, sassafras, holly, cedar and dogwood trees. I was simply carried away,” Hoffman said. 

Royall agreed to sell Hoffman a 2,000-acre tract in 1917 for $45,000. She didn’t give a hoot about the hunting lodge. Rather, she was attracted to a smaller guest cabin. She enlarged and embellished it, naming it “Shore House.” (The hunting lodge eventually became housing for one of Hoffman’s farm workers.)

 

Carteret County newcomer Alice Green Hoffman was viewed as a celebrity. She was a member of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s extended family. Hoffman had no children of her own, but her niece, Eleanor Butler Alexander, married Gen. Theodore “Ted” Roosevelt III, son of the president. 

Local folks referred to Hoffman as the “Queen of Bogue Banks,” because of her regal demeanor and her eccentric nature. By and large, she declined opportunities to socialize with her neighbors in the fishing village at Salter Path, preferring to maintain her privacy. Her druthers were to soak up nature’s bounties. 

Pine Knoll Shores historian Walt Zaenker said that Hoffman “was described in many ways, but at the core, she was a strong-willed, independent, free-spirited woman who followed the beat of her own drummer.” 

The “queen” was her own driver. Alice operated a motorboat named “Fred” to carry her over to Morehead City or Beaufort, which wasn’t very often. 

While in New York City in 1933, during the depths of the Great Depression, Hoffman purchased a 1929 Indian Motorcycle with sidecar. She decided to drive her new motorcycle back to Bogue Banks, forgoing the normal train ride or trip by automobile. 

Zaenker said that Hoffman was 71 years old in 1933 and “walked with the help of a cane.” A long-distance motorcycle ride was “a journey only for the hardy. In 1933, the road system was quite different from what we have today.” 

Hoffman’s real estate holdings on Bogue Banks came under management of the Roosevelt family trust in 1944. 

When the queen died at age 91 in 1953, Hoffman’s property was ripe for residential development…but not at the expense of the trees.

 

Pine Knolls Shore was, is and always will be “all about the trees.”