National Seashore

When U. S. citizens think of their national parks they think of majestic mountains, forest-skirted lakes, sparkling glaciers, spouting hot springs, rushing rivers. But some U. S. citizens regard the U. S. shore lines, on the oceans, the Gulf and the Great Lakes, as equally picturesque. In 1934 a Federal survey was made of 20 shore areas for possible national preserves. Last week, Secretary of the Interior Ickes addressed a letter to Governor Hoey of North Carolina asking him to facilitate the transfer of lands in his State to the first such preserve thus far authorized by Congress. Name: Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Area: 100 square miles of the mid-Atlantic coast, where Cape Hatteras shoves a sandy elbow out toward the Gulf Stream, where the East's great storms--and some of its finest game fish--come in from sea, and where much American history has been made.

Through Ocracoke Inlet, where modern sportsmen go for coppery channel bass, in 1585 sailed Sir Walter Raleigh's English colonists, the first in North America. On Roanoke Island, where they settled and from which some of them were rescued by Sir Francis Drake, arrived the first American-born English child: Virginia Dare. Just north of Roanoke, behind the dunes at Kitty Hawk, N. C., the Wright Brothers made their historic First Flight in 1903. At Nags Head, where a horse wearing a lantern was used to decoy ships ashore, legends of old American pirates still persist.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore is designed to embrace portions of Chicamacomico, Ocracoke, Bodie, Roanoke, Collington and Hatteras Islands. Federal acquisition of the land must wait on gifts by individuals or the State of North Carolina, but already the CCC has built brush barriers and planted beach grasses to save the shores from wind and sea erosion. The Seashore will be closed to gunners, but bathers, sailors, and fishermen will retain their rights.

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