THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409240244
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BUXTON LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
In an effort to aid mariners around the treacherous Diamond Shoals, the original Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was built in 1803.
The current tower, which attracts more than 150,000 visitors annually, replaced the first structure in 1870.
It was constructed 600 feet north of the original lighthouse.
A 2,000-foot-wide beach then separated the tower from the sea.
Through the years, sand has both eroded from and accumulated around the lighthouse base - washing away far more than it has built up.
By the 1930s, surf was seething within 100 feet of the beacon's base. The United States Lighthouse Service abandoned it in 1935. They erected a 150-foot-tall steel tower one mile northwest.
The National Park Service acquired the lighthouse in 1936.
``We realized then that it was in trouble,'' Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Tom Hartman said last week. ``Water surrounded it.''
Over the next 15 years, nature rebuilt the beach.
The lighthouse reopened in 1950, again marking the Graveyard of the Atlantic. But erosion soon began eating away the sand. Park Service personnel decided it was time to try to save the historic structure.
In 1966, workers pumped about 312,000 cubic yards of sand from offshore onto the beach around the lighthouse. Four years later, three sheetpile groins were spaced 650 feet apart in the ocean, perpendicular to the shoreline around the lighthouse. Another 1.5 million cubic yards of sand - at a cost of almost $1 million - was added to the eroding beach by 1972.
Most of it washed away that same year.
``Without those three groins,'' a 1992 federal study committee concluded, ``the site of the lighthouse today would be at least 150 feet SEAWARD of the present shoreline.''
Along with the added sand and offshore groins, thousands of sandbags were stacked along the shoreline, around the elbow of beach which juts into the sea - and supports the tall tower's base.
``Those were the first sandbags ever used in this country - that I know of - for erosion control,'' said National Park Service engineer Charlie Snow. ``They were filled by hand and stitched with sewing machines. Some have since washed away. Others are still buried beneath new layers of sandbags.''
Park Service personnel also planted sea grass in the dunes around the lighthouse base in an effort to slow erosion. That didn't work either.
Finally in 1985, after dozens of studies, hundreds of committee meetings, and several public hearings, the Southeast Regional Director of the National Park Service decided to move the lighthouse before it was lost.
Federal officials just haven't been able to find the estimated $8.8 million.
``There is no date associated with the move right now,'' Hartman said last week from inside the lighthouse visitors' center. ``It has been restored. It will be painted this year. We will not let it go.
``A lot of people really love this lighthouse.''
KEYWORDS: LIGHTHOUSE NORTH CAROLINA EROSION by CNB