Aycock Brown introduced tourism to the Outer Banks

North Carolina’s Outer Banks is a national treasure…because a 20th century press agent named Aycock Brown said so.

News and photo editors across the state and nation trusted him. Aycock Brown had an uncanny knack for getting his material published.

Thus, as “the father of coastal tourism,” he was “king of the dunes” in the Outer Banks for several decades, both before and after World War II. North Carolinians are forever grateful. Aycock Brown was still cranking out publicity when he died in 1984, at age 79.

April 13, 2024, marks the 40-year anniversary of his death, so it’s appropriate to pay tribute to the man and reflect on his good deeds.

 

Aycock Brown was gifted in several ways. One editor commented: “Give Aycock Brown sand and sea water, and he will make something newsworthy about it.”

He loved taking photos of vacationers. “Mind if I take your picture?” he would ask beachgoers. 

He was a charmer. They’d agree and Aycock would send the photos to the visitors’ hometown newspaper editors. Sure enough, the pictures would get published, gaining another bit of free publicity for the Outer Banks.

 

Stormy Gale Brown Ballance said her father developed his fine art of conversation on the porches of the villages of the Outer Banks. “That skill, honed with endless hours of leisurely jawing, made him successful in building relationships,” she said.

 Aycock Brown was nice to people. He gave holiday gifts to bank tellers and widows, and the trunk of his car was full of trinkets for journalists, children, tourists and politicians. His generosity was genuine, but it also won him friends,” a co-worker said.

 

When they saw or heard about “a story,” they would call him…and he would fly off to get the scoop.

 

Aycock Brown was born in 1904 in Happy Valley, N.C., a small community in Caldwell County about halfway up the mountain to Blowing Rock in Watauga County. His parents named him Charles Brantley Aycock Brown, after North Carolina’s sitting governor, Charles Brantley Aycock of Wayne County.

The Brown family moved to a farm at Occoneechee near Hillsborough in Orange County. Aycock Brown was introduced to journalism as a teenager, working as a printing apprentice at the Orange County Observer. 

In 1923, Aycock Brown was hired as a reporter at the Elizabeth City Independent. About six months later, he decided to enroll at Columbia University in New York City to take some journalism courses. Shortly thereafter, he took a job as a copy editor at the Durham Herald.

 “That lasted two days,” Brown said. “That’s how long it took them to find out I couldn’t spell and didn’t know where to put commas.”

Aycock Brown resurfaced in 1928 in Carteret County to work as a reporter at The Beaufort News. He also did some consulting work with local investors who built a toll bridge from Morehead City to Atlantic Beach and put up a dance pavilion near the surf. Aycock Brown named the resort “The Pagoda by the Sea.”

 

Aycock Brown moved on later in 1928 to join the political campaign of Alfred E. Smith, the Democrat who opposed Herbert Hoover in the U.S. presidential election. Smith lost, and so did Aycock Brown, because he wagered his pay on the wrong man. 

Broke, he took up bootlegging, and went to Ocracoke. Arriving in a small skiff loaded with bootleg liquor, he came face to face with a young woman who was standing on the dock. 

“I’ll tell you how pretty she was,” he said. “For several minutes, I completely forgot about all of those gallons of liquor in the boat. And it was good stuff.”

Capt. Bill Gaskill (shown below), owner of the Pamlico Inn at Ocracoke, offered Aycock Brown free lodging for two weeks in exchange for some public relations work to promote Ocracoke as a tourism destination.

 

Aycock Brown readily agreed…allowing him some time to get better acquainted with Miss Esther Styron. One thing led to another, causing Aycock Brown to nix his grand plan to sail on to Cuba to take a job as press agent for a carnival.

Instead, he opted to stay in Ocracoke and court Esther. They were married in 1929 and planned to make Ocracoke their home. 

Genealogist Ron Ragland wrote: “For the next few years, Aycock dreamed up odd Ocracoke promotions. He sold stories about Blackbeard and the beaches to big-city newspapers…he painted the Ocracoke Lighthouse on conch shells in India ink and sold them to tourists. He eventually sold an essay about Ocracoke Island, titled ‘Cape Stormy,’ to the Saturday Evening Post.” 

“Yet,” Ragland said, “the Great Depression made it harder to make a living pushing tourism.” 

Aycock Brown had a typewriter, and he could type, so he pitched his services in that regard as well. “If anyone had any legal work that needed to be typed up, I did it,” Brown told author David Stick. 

Aycock Brown and David Stick (right).

 

Life on Ocracoke was hard, but an opportunity knocked, causing the family to relocate to Beaufort in 1935. 

Aycock Brown was hired “as a temporary press agent for an organization attempting to save the town’s railroad, which was in danger of being decommissioned,” according to his biographer. 

“When the railroad was saved, largely due to Brown’s promotional efforts, Brown was soon asked to run The Beaufort News temporarily, while its publisher, William Giles Mebane, was ill. He retained the position when Mebane eventually died of his illness in 1935.” 

Aycock Brown connected with his readers and introduced new regular features, including “Covering the Waterfront” and “Fishing and All Outdoors.” It was all rather humorous, because he neither fished nor swam in the ocean. But he didn’t let that stop him from hooking new readers.

He preceded the fish house liars group of storytellers, but they may have taken their cue from Aycock Brown. 

Always the opportunist, Aycock Brown was keen on promoting new events such as a bow and arrow “goggle fishing tournament” that suggested spearfishing was the next great sport. It brought in a slew of news media coverage for Carteret County…and two entrants. 

As a community service, Aycock Brown would read capsules of the national news from behind the curtain during the motion picture shows at Beaufort’s downtown cinema, known as the Sea Breeze. 

Aycock Brown also served as a visionary leader of the Beaufort Chamber of Commerce in its pursuit of tourism as a key to foster regional economic development.