According to the article in the New York Times, locals would buy old, cheap cars, put oversized tires on them, and drive them on the islands because transporting four-wheel-drive vehicles was difficult and expensive.
There were no cops, and so there was no registration needed, so the vehicles were simply left when they died, becoming part of the landscape.
I can verify from life experience that poor people do not pay to have dead cars taken to junkyards.
Karen Duggan, a park ranger assigned to Cape Lookout National Seashore. “I’ve even seen a picture of a Duesenberg out there. When the cars got stuck or no longer ran, they just left them there.”
the Historic Resource Study prepared in 2010 for the NPS confirms that a sizable tract of land near the lighthouse and the Cape was bought for speculative purposes by Charles Reeves, Jr., a local entrepreneur, who had plans for a marina, hotels and airfield
He laid out plans for a sizable second-home development and eventually sold his land for $6500 an acre, which doesn't sound like too bad a price but was probably pretty good for undeveloped rural property in this area. Before the park was created it probably was worth less than 1% of that price.
This rich landowner collected hundreds of junkyard cars, as a beach stabilizer (rip rap) to build up the dunes near his property.
A lot of locals thought he was just making a show of wanting to develop his property to jack up the purchase price when the government bought it for the new National Seashore.
In 1966 the Federal government established the Cape Lookout National Seashore, a fifty- fourmile stretch of the Outer Banks from Portsmouth Island to Cape Lookout.
A passenger ferry from Harker's Island visits Cape Lookout, but beyond that there are only a few small launches such as the one from Davis serving the area.
All food, ice, tanks of propane gas, gasoline for beach vehicles and the vehicles themselves must come over in those launches, which can handle only one car at a time. For this reason, an incredible series of automobile graveyards exists on the Core Banks.
Like nearly all national park areas in the eastern United States, CALO was carved out of privately owned lands rather than out of the comparatively trackless public domain on which most early western parks had been mapped. While most of the permanent residents of the islands had already left by the time the National Seashore was created, protracted land-acquisition conflicts with major property owners like the Core Banks Gun Club and with individuals who owned fishing or vacation cabins remind us that creating the national parks, especially in the east, superimposed Park Service-defined landscapes on vernacular ones.
This May 1971 article states that cars were abandoned here due to the 15 dollar each way fee by the ferry, and the car owners opted to abandon the cars and save 15 bucks
By 2013, the round trip ferry price was 80 dollars
https://boysontheedge.com/documents/
It's conjecture, but based on human nature, nothing out of the ordinary to say that the locally rich, making friends with the famous tourists, encouraged more rich out of towners to visit, and be guests (everyone loves to hang with a celebrity, Babe Ruth, Sam Snead, Bob Timberlake and many politicians were guests.)
Franklin Roosevelt visited the Lodge (where the Mott family found rest and refuge from their strenuous European travels and social obligations) owned by Jordan Mott, son of the inventor of the anthracite coal stove, (one time Mayor of NYC) friend of the Czar of Russia and the German Kaiser, as well as Roosevelt, a titan of industry. https://cabinculturesobx.com/jordan-l-mott-iii-177/ (image above, FDR getting into an ox cart at Mott's Lodge)
and here's one factual story of how that came to be part of the Outer Banks:
Due East of Shell Point of Harkers Island, Edwin Binney built his camp. Binney, the inventor of crayons, developer of effective black-wall tires, won medals at the World’s Fair and was an avid sportsman.
His daughter, Dorothy, flew with Amelia Earhart on several record-making flights. Their friendship severed as Earhart came to later marry Dorothy’s spouse.
Charles A. Seifert, owner of the Coca- Cola franchise in New Bern, N. C., bought two lots from the Cape Lookout Development Company in 1927 and is thought to have built the present house the following year. His brother David owned a Coca- Cola franchise in Roanoke, N. C., and he may also have had a role in the building’s development and use over the years. Historically, the house was painted red and white and almost from the beginning was given the moniker, “Coca- Cola House” or “Coca- Cola Building.”
So, that's how I spent my last 2 hours, unintentionally discovering more uber rich cabin culture, starting with a post on Rip Rap, the "Camp/Cabin culture" following recent posts on the Adirondack Cabins, and the Marquette private escape, and the Georgia quail hunting, ending with a 66 Impala commercial, and feeling like I made an episode of Connections with James Burke
Many years ago I was invited by my erstwhile in-laws to share in the use of a farmhouse on Tuckernuck Island in Massachusetts. For those unfamiliar with this setup, Tuckernuck is a small island near Nantucket, and is entirely privately owned, by a variety of small landowners, who probably once were small farmers. It has no roads and no utilities. Being pretty flat, and not too deeply sandy, it required nothing that special in the way of vehicles. I believe now that golf carts are the preferred local transportation, but in those days it was old cars. Since the climate was very harsh with salty fog most of the day, cars rusted terribly, and the fashion was to get an old but fairly runnable car, and just use it until something broke that was too rusty to undo. At the speeds in question, even brakes were pretty much optional. The residents would then drive or push it to a distant embankment and push it over. Some cars would simply stay where they had been. Walking around, I came to a long-collapsed garage, in the middle of which you could see the remains of an ancient brass-bound Buick - almost all the steel parts gone, but the shiny brass radiator and lights still shining. It looked a bit like one of those ancient middle eastern chariot burials we sometimes see reported. All transit to the island was also private, and to get a car in, it would be precariously propped onto a pair of boats, and then driven off on a home-made ramp. I don't know whether anything has been done in the intervening 47 years to mitigate the informal junkyard. Of course waste disposal of any kind is an issue on a little island, so I don't know where they would take the stuff anyway. Probably just let it rust.
ReplyDeleteoh wow.... I'd love to see a photo of that ancient Buick! Shoot, I doubt it's moved
DeleteFabulous information. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteExcellent reportage!
ReplyDeletethanks! It's not often I get to dive into a thing and go wherever the story takes me. This one went every where
DeleteAn interesting corollary to the stories of abandoned Ferrari's and Porsche's in Dubai and UAE that I think you've noted in more recent times. Rich kids be richin'...
ReplyDeletea very cool point! Highly astute!
Delete