They're maddeningly overcrowded in the summer, and development has been rampant over the last 20 years, but the Outer Banks of North Carolina are unlike anything else along the East Coast. The infamous pirate Blackbeard met his end here, and this is the place where the Lost Colony mysteriously disappeared. On these shores, Virginia Dare was born, and centuries later, Wilbur and Orville Wright learned to fly. The Outer Banks once enjoyed a dubious reputation as "the graveyard of the Atlantic," and to this day, you'll see the many lighthouses that stood vigil over centuries of shipwrecks. You can even see the actual shipwrecks -- at several places along the shore, the rusted bones of schooners and cargo ships are mired in the breakers. The East Coast's tallest lighthouse is at Cape Hatteras, and the oldest is at Ocracoke Island. Sand dunes tower over long stretches of undeveloped national seashore, and you can hop a ferry to explore islands where the residents (descended from the Elizabethans) say hoigh toids instead of high tides and call tourists "comers 'n' goers."
Both the size of fish and the diversity of species have put the Outer Banks on the map as one of the hottest fishing spots in the world. The 80-mile-long Pamlico Sound is a vast estuarine breeding ground for most of the fish caught off the coast, and the Gulf Stream lies just 12 miles offshore -- the closest that this fish-laden current comes to land this side of Florida. The water teems with tuna and such trophy fish as blue marlin, white marlin, and sailfish.
Constant winds -- the same ones that brought the Wright brothers here in the early 1900s -- blow across the Outer Banks, bringing with them invigorating sea air. The area is a recreational playground, with 800 square miles of accessible water. Wind, water, and temperature conditions are right for ideal sailing from early spring until late autumn. And, as any windsurfer can tell you, the best conditions for sailboarding on the East Coast are along the Banks -- in particular, at a place called Canadian Hole, on Hatteras Island.
The bony finger of land that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the sounds and estuaries of North Carolina's coast actually begins near the Virginia border. But much of the northern Banks is accessible only by four-wheel-drive, and residents need a permit to access the area from Virginia. Highway 12, which runs the length of the Outer Banks to Ocracoke, begins near the town of Corolla, not so long ago a sleepy little coastal village with little more than a lighthouse and wild horses. Today it's the Corolla of super-size beach "cottages," shops, and roads. And the number of wild horses, alas, is so greatly diminished that they have become an endangered species.
To the south of Corolla are the largely residential towns of Sanderling, Duck, and Southern Shores, oceanside communities that, like Corolla, have been utterly transformed by development in the last 20 years. Duck, in particular, has gone from a one-stoplight town to a manicured community with multimillion-dollar homes tucked discreetly into dense thickets of island shrub.
Indeed, development has been brisk in the other barrier-island communities, located south of Duck but north of Oregon Inlet -- Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Manteo, and Wanchese. But blessedly, there remain miles and miles of fine, sparkling beaches; good eats; plenty of family entertainment; and wonderful opportunities for water-based recreation.
