The Kitty Hawk Bath House closes for the season on Thursday, October 29. The closing notice covers the building, with its public restroom and showers. The Town's newest landmark at that beach access is a 13-foot replica surfboat set beside a memorial to the men of the United States Life-Saving Service. Both stand outside, and the town dedicated them in September.
The Bath House is at 3840 N. Virginia Dare Trail. The Kitty Hawk Life-Saving Station, the building the memorial commemorates, still stands at 3848 Virginia Dare Trail North, at Milepost 4, restored as part of the Black Pelican. The new memorial and the station it honors share the same short stretch of the Beach Road. With the summer crowds gone, that stretch works as a two-stop walk through the town's maritime history.
A Monument Placed Next to the Original
When the Town of Kitty Hawk announced the dedication, it described the memorial as honoring "the men of the United States Life-Saving Service who served the Kitty Hawk community and worked to protect mariners along the Outer Banks." The site includes educational elements about the service, about the men who served at the Kitty Hawk station, and about lifesaving history on the Outer Banks, along with the replica surfboat.
The ceremony was set for 3 p.m. on Friday, September 18. The program called for a presentation of the colors by the United States Coast Guard and historical remarks about the Kitty Hawk station. In the town's announcement, published by The Outer Banks Voice, Town Manager Melody Clopton described the memorial this way:
"This memorial is an opportunity to connect Kitty Hawk's past with its present."
In the same announcement, Mayor Charlotte Walker called the Life-Saving Service "an important part of Kitty Hawk's history and the history of the Outer Banks." The town credited a long list of contributors, including the Town Council, the Recreation Committee, Dare County, the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau, the North Carolina Maritime Museum, historical researchers, and the builders of the replica surfboat.
A boat like the replica was central to the station's work. Once the bathhouse closes, the surfboat and the building those crews worked from are the two main things to see on this stretch.
One of Three Left Standing
According to Outer Banks This Week, Kitty Hawk was one of seven original Outer Banks stations, and only three of those seven still stand. For a building that guarded this beach in the 1870s, Kitty Hawk's station survives in an unusual way. It is part of a working restaurant on the Beach Road rather than a museum.
| Original station | What stands today |
|---|---|
| Kitty Hawk | Restored as part of the Black Pelican, Kitty Hawk |
| Chicamacomico | Museum and historic site in Rodanthe |
| Little Kinnakeet | Within Cape Hatteras National Seashore |
| Caffeys Inlet | The 1897 replacement station is the Lifesaving Station Restaurant at Sanderling Resort |
| Bodie Island, later Oregon Inlet | The 1898 replacement station is south of the Basnight Bridge, where a preservation group is working to save it |
The records disagree on the founding date. The National Park Service dates the first seven Outer Banks stations to 1874, and Outer Banks This Week includes Kitty Hawk among them. The U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office gives 1878 as the build date. It lists Kitty Hawk as Life-Saving Station No. 12 in the Sixth District, later Coast Guard Station No. 172, and records that the station passed to the General Services Administration in 1964. All of these sources agree that the station dates to the 1870s and served Kitty Hawk for nearly ninety years.
The same Coast Guard record names the station's keepers. W.D. Tate was appointed in September 1875. Samuel J. Payne served from January 1892 until January 1902, and Avery B.L. Tillett took over that same month and was still in charge in 1915. That was the year the federal government merged the Life-Saving Service with the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service to create the Coast Guard. Outer Banks This Week reports that over the service's 44 years nationwide, its crews responded to 28,121 wrecks involving 178,741 people.
The Telegraph That Carried the News
The Kitty Hawk station also had a role in aviation history. As Coastal Review recounts, the station doubled as a weather bureau and telegraph office. When Wilbur and Orville Wright arrived in 1900 to test gliders, they used it to send messages home and to get weather information.
Coastal Review's account continues past December 17, 1903. After four successful flights that day, the brothers ate lunch and walked to the Kitty Hawk station, where they gave the telegraph operator a note announcing that powered flight had been achieved. The station on today's Beach Road is the building the news was sent from.
The flights themselves had help from a different station. Surfmen from the Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station, including John T. Daniels, W.S. Dough and Adam D. Etheridge, assisted on the morning of the first flight, according to an account published by the Ocracoke Observer. Daniels operated the camera that took the well-known photograph. The National Park Service places Kill Devil Hills in the 1878 group of stations and names it as the one that assisted the Wrights. So two neighboring stations played a part in December 1903. Kill Devil Hills crews helped on the sand, and the Kitty Hawk station carried the news out. The new memorial honors the Kitty Hawk crews.
The Off-Season Route, North to South
The walk is short.
- Start at the Bath House Beach Access, 3840 N. Virginia Dare Trail. The Town lists 50 parking spaces here, two of them accessible. The memorial, its educational elements, and the 13-foot replica surfboat are at the access. The bathhouse, with its restroom and showers, is scheduled to close for the season on October 29.
- Continue to 3848 Virginia Dare Trail North, Milepost 4. The restored Kitty Hawk Life-Saving Station is part of the Black Pelican. This is the building the keepers in the Coast Guard roster ran, and where the 1903 message was handed to the telegraph operator.
- For a newer stop, cross over to 3701 N. Croatan Highway. Longtime locals Fran and Lance Marler opened Black Flag Galley there this summer, as The Outer Banks Voice reported in August. The scratch kitchen serves bowls, salads, seafood and handhelds for dine-in or takeout.
From late fall into winter, the route is short and quiet. It starts with a monument the town dedicated this September and ends at a station that has stood on the Beach Road since the 1870s.
If you'd like to talk about Kitty Hawk's oceanside history, or about owning a home within walking distance of it, Sarah Collier is happy to walk the Beach Road with you and share what she knows about this stretch of town. Let's Connect.
