
DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709100445

SECTION: CAROLINA COAST          PAGE: 7    EDITION: FINAL 

DATELINE: KILL DEVIL HILLS                  LENGTH:   66 lines

MONUMENT BEACON SHOWN BRIGHTLY IN BYGONE YEARS

WHEN THE BEACON atop the Wright Brothers National Memorial monument is relit in October, it will be competing for visibility with a thousand other lights along the beach.

But back in the 1930s, that beacon was prominently visible for miles around. It was the only light along the 20-mile stretch of oceanfront from what is now Southern Shores to Whalebone Junction, where the road forks to Manteo and Hatteras.

In those days, the beach was lit by the moon and the stars. No street lights, no neon, not even porch lights competed with nature.

Even the most visionary citizens of the first decade of this century could not have imagined how far and how fast air travel would evolve from the tentative first flights of the Wright brothers off Kill Devil Hills.

Nor could they have fathomed the transformation of North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Even when the Wright Memorial monument was dedicated in 1932, it would have been difficult to imagine that within this century hundreds of thousands of people would be making treks to the beach every year.

Until post World War II times, the Outer Banks were mainly a playground for wealthy sportsmen who fished and hunted here and for local folks who came to escape the heat and humidity of nearby towns by sitting on their porches in the famous Nags Head breeze.

Until 1930, they came by boat, probably a happier way to travel in the days before cars were air-conditioned.

The area opened up when the bridge across the sound was built. The dedication of the new memorial atop Kill Devil Hill followed by the opening of The Lost Colony in 1937 began to attract more visitors.

A narrow two-lane road, now N.C. 12 or ``the beach road,'' was the only exit for play-goers. Their automobile lights could be seen after the show, winding for miles along the tiny asphalt path up the beach. The entire area was dark except for the Wright Memorial beacon.

Youngsters spending a week or a month or the summer on the beach were intrigued by the long line of car lights along the road. The first few nights it happened, they begged to stay up late to sit on wide porches in the dark to watch the pilgrimage.

Those were simpler times, no television and very little radio late at night. Folks would sit for a long time, enjoying the breeze, enthralled by the rhythmic sweep of the Wright Memorial beacon.

In the early years, most beach regulars - those who came every summer - saw ``The Lost Colony'' at least once a year. And everybody climbed to the top of the Wright Memorial. Visiting both historic sites was part of the summer ritual.

Today, with so many activities and distractions, the memorial and ``The Lost Colony'' are one more thing to do.

A half-century ago, they were about the only thing to do.

Ida Kay Jordan ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Many books about the Wright brothers and the first airplane

flight are available at the Visitor Center at the National Park

Service Wright Memorial site in Kill Devil Hills.

Material for this story came from several volumes including

``First in Flight'' by Stephen Kirk, published by John F. Blair;

``The Wright Brothers,'' a biography by Fred G. Kelly originally

published in 1943 and recently reissued by Dover Publications; and

``Triumph at Kitty Hawk'' by Thomas C. Parramore, published by the