THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 8, 1995 TAG: 9507080308
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 24 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
When people ask me about living on the Outer Banks, my first thought is always Manteo.
Manteo has sidewalks, I tell them. In Manteo, you can walk or ride your bike to school, to church, to the library and the grocery store. You can walk to the old Pioneer movie theater where a dollar will still buy you a box of candy and a soda.
The sidewalks lead to the island's new 10-mile bike path. The landscaped path carries men and women pushing baby strollers and walking dogs, kids on bicycles, skaters, joggers - and a whole lot of folks who'd rather walk than drive - to Pirate's Cove, College of the Albemarle's Dare County campus, Fort Raleigh, the Elizabethan Gardens and the dozens of outlying neighborhoods.
Manteo has parks. At the waterfront, there are benches that give you ringside seats for watching boats and kamikaze pelicans. There's a small playground. There's grass.
Houses in Manteo have white picket fences and flower gardens. The town's streets are a changing canvas of color. In spring, there are the pastel greens of new leaves on old trees. Mid-summer sets the town ablaze with crape myrtle blooms. By year's end, the streets are lined with Christmas lights.
The official population of Manteo, the Dare County seat, is 1,002. The town is midway on Roanoke Island between the upper (north) end, where English explorers probably first camped in 1584, and the lower end, where the fishing wharves of Wanchese have been the mainstay of that village's economy for more than 50 years.
Manteo was incorporated in 1899, nearly 30 years after county commissioners picked the site for the Dare County courthouse and a post office was established. It's the only incorporated community on the island; an elected mayor and a board of commissioners set policies and play politics while a hired town manager administers.
Manteo is the only Outer Banks town that provides both sewer and water service to all its residents. Public utilities aren't glamorous amenities, but on the barrier islands, where potable water can be a precious commodity, most residents see the service as a definite plus.
The town's forefathers chose Manteo's location, in part, because of its accessibility by water. Shallowbag Bay, which the courthouse overlooked, provided a safe harbor at a time when all traffic to and from the island was by boat. The bridge system that connects Roanoke Island to the mainland and Nags Head wasn't complete until 1953.
But by the late 1970s, no one arrived in Manteo by boat anymore. Manteo's downtown waterfront, scarred over the years by devastating fires, was an eyesore. The town's movers and shakers banded together to reinvent downtown. By the mid-1980s, much of their work was done.
The town, with the help of private developers, created a four- block boardwalk with public boat docks and a private marina. There are restaurants, shops and bed-and-breakfast inns.
Today, those facilities draw boaters off the Intracoastal Waterway while the town and its merchants do their part to promote other tourism. Sailboats and motor yachts share the water with kayaks and canoes.
A stone's throw away, the Elizabeth II, the state's representative 16th century sailing ship, reflects her jaunty colors across Dough's Creek. She drew more than 110,000 visitors last year to tour the tiny quarters, set up like those that carried the first colonists across the ocean.
Dare Day held the first weekend every June, fireworks on the Fourth of July and the New World Festival of the Arts in mid-August all draw thousands to the town's waterfront. Even the annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony on a chilly December evening brings a crowd.
But Manteo has never been a tourist town. Close to 80 percent of the town's homes are owner-occupied and rentals are nearly 100 percent year-round, not seasonal. Most residents work behind desks or store counters, in local businesses, schools and government offices.
Manteo is a quiet town. Although the state's first mini-brewery, The Weeping Radish, opened here in 1986, alcoholic beverages are in short supply. It's semi-dry: No mixed drinks can be sold on Roanoke Island. The closest thing to a local bar, downtown's Green Dolphin Pub, closes early most nights and isn't open on Sundays.
That's not to say the town is without vice. It suffers with some of the same problems that plague other small towns, including drug-related arrests and a 1990 murder.
Most folks who moved to Manteo from other places will tell you, though, that they came here to get away from crime. Residents appreciate that the town's six-person police force concentrates on friendly, not adversarial, services.
Manteo policemen assist motorists who lock keys in their cars. They make nightly rounds checking for unlocked doors at local businesses. If the school crossing guard can't be at work, you'll probably see the chief of police shepherding small children across the highway.
It's with good cause that local real estate agents sell Manteo as a change of lifestyle. The town has curb appeal.
On Tuesday night, Independence Day, thousands of people lined Manteo's waterfront to watch a 30-minute show of fireworks. Some came and saw only the fireworks. Others saw the town and realized they'd come to a special place; they'll be back.
I sat on the balcony at Clara's restaurant overlooking Shallowbag Bay with a dozen other locals. Boats filled the bay and, across the watery reflections of sunset, lights twinkled on the causeway and in Nags Head.
When the fireworks were over, I walked home on Manteo sidewalks with my neighbors. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959. by CNB