Here’s breaking news that just crossed the editor’s desk at the Carteret County News-Times in Morehead City, N.C.:
An unidentified White House custodian, while vacuuming the Oval Office carpet late last night, discovered an Executive Order on the carpet behind the credenza that is positioned along the south wall of the office.
A quick check with the Office of the Federal Register revealed that U.S. President Donald J. Trump has signed 94 Executive Orders so far in 2025, and 93 have been published in the Federal Register.
The missing Executive Order
reassigns Ocracoke Island to Carteret County in North Carolina.
“We wondered why we hadn’t received any public feedback about this one,” remarked White House press secretary Caroline Clare Leavett.
“The president believes this action ‘rights a
serious wrong’ that occurred in 1845 when the North Carolina General Assembly
voted to ‘transfer’ Ocracoke from Carteret County to Hyde County.”
“That decision made absolutely no sense back then, nor does it now,” she asserted. “The state legislature should have left well enough alone. We’re just trying to shape North Carolina as it should be.”
Clearly, something was amiss back in 1770, when an astute member of the North Carolina colonial assembly blew the whistle on “those lawless bankers on Occacock Island who were not paying taxes anywhere.”
To fix that oversight, “Occacock was annexed to Carteret precinct.” This arrangement lasted for 75 years.
“It was never a problem while Gov. John Motley Morehead was in charge of things in North Carolina (from 1841-45),” Leavett commented.
“Gov. Morehead understood
that within Ocracoke Inlet, a natural kinship developed between the Carteret
County villages of Portsmouth and Ocracoke. The two Outer Banks communities
once combined to serve as North Carolina’s premier seaport, which, of course,
holds national historical significance and justifies presidential intervention.”
Local historians acknowledge:
“A common heritage and culture developed; travel and commerce between Ocracoke
and Portsmouth occurred regularly, as boats would ferry back and forth between
the two villages, barely 5 miles apart,” noted Karen Wallace Arnspacher of the
Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center.
“Today, travel between Ocracoke and the Carteret County mainland is no big deal,” she said. “The N.C. Department of Transportation already provides routine state ferry service between Ocracoke and Cedar Island.”
“If we need more vessels, we’ll just birth a
new motorized fleet from the DNA of the famous mailboat ‘Aleta’ to carry that Ocracoke
crowd hither and yon’.”
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Fewer than 660 people
reside on Ocracoke Island, but the real estate values are quite high. One
source says that the average Ocracoke home value is $551,722. Hyde County
officials in Swan Quarter, the county seat, are livid about ceding Ocracoke and
its tax base to Carteret County.
To partially address this
situation, state Sen. Norbert Sanderman, who represents much of coastal North
Carolina, is poised to introduce a bill in the General Assembly. It is somewhat
revolutionary, in that it proposes to couple mainland Hyde County with Tyrrell
County.
Conveniently, Tyrrell
sits atop Hyde, and they are joined much like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, connecting
the Albemarle and Pamlico sounds.
Sen. Sanderman’s bill
would name the “new” county Hyde-Tyrrell to retain a respectful connection to
the Lords Proprietors of Carolina – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, and Sir
John Tyrrell. Initially, Hyde-Tyrrell would operate with co-county seats, in Swan
Quarter and Columbia.
Surely, the Tyrrell County Chamber of Commerce’s tagline of “Unspoiled…Uncrowded…Uncomplicated!” could be a good place to start the “rebranding,” with Lake Mattamuskeet as the focal point for eco-tourism expeditions in all seasons. April Fool.
