THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 4, 1995 TAG: 9502040285
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OUTER BANKS LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
Summer visitors to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore can see how a 16th-century editor altered the first published drawings of North Carolina's Native Americans.
Travelers can view a century-old copper tank where whale oil was stored for lamps atop the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Browsers can understand how the Wright Brothers developed the world's first powered airplane.
Thanks to an $85,000 project that workers completed Friday, new exhibits at the five National Park Service visitor centers on North Carolina's Outer Banks will help everyone see history a little more clearly.
Last year, more than 3.8 million people toured the visitors centers at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
``We've changed the text on some displays, selected new materials to tell our historic stories, updated and rehabilitated all of the visitor centers in time for our summer season,''
National Park Service spokesman Bob Woody said from his Roanoke Island office this week. ``The last major overhaul on those visitor centers was in 1986. Some of the exhibits haven't been changed since the '60s.''
Rangers at all five visitor centers between Kill Devil Hills and Ocracoke Island said they wished more funds had been available to improve their exhibits. But all seemed pleased with the new materials and displays. Visitors really will notice a difference, Park Service employees said.
``Exhibits first went up here in 1965, when this place opened. Many haven't been replaced since then,'' said Andrew Kling, a ranger at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island.
``We've gotten new, much more modern displays this week. One new set of panels shows how John White's drawings of the Native Americans were changed before publication. The printer, Theodore Debry, altered his images so that the Indians would look more European. We've hung both versions, side by side, so people can see the differences.
``Anyone who's been here before certainly will notice the changes and appreciate the improvements,'' Kling said. ``These new exhibits really do a better job of telling the historic context of the first English colonists.''
In addition to the 400-year-old drawings, Fort Raleigh's visitor center added a display explaining the coats of arms of each English family that invested in Sir Walter Raleigh's voyages to the new world. Thirteen bright crimson, white and azure silk banners hang above the lobby. Now, people can read stylized panels explaining the significance of each symbol.
``The staff at each visitor center got together to decide what to do, how to re-tell the stories, what we needed in terms of displays,'' Kling said.
``We spent the last year planning for this project. I'm glad it's getting done in time for summer.''
Visitors centers at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton and on Ocracoke Island did not receive any new displays. Exhibits there were updated, old photographs were replaced, and workers ``really brightened up the interiors,'' said Joyce Morris, a National Park Service exhibit specialist from Harper's Ferry, Md., who helped coordinate the renovation for Cape Hatteras Seashore.
``Everything looks a whole lot nicer and cleaner now,'' Morris said, as contractors finished sawing a Formica panel on the front steps of the Fort Raleigh visitor center. ``Hopefully, these new displays will help pull people in.''
Of all the Outer Banks visitor centers, Bodie Island received the most benefit from the recent renovation project, Park Service employees said. There have been no exhibits in the visitors center - by the horizontally striped lighthouse - since the center was restored in 1992. . Now, its displays tell the story of the U.S. Lighthouse Service.
``We've got the old fuel storage tanks for the lighthouses that they used 90 years ago. We've got part of an 80-year-old lens from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse lamp. We've got a clock mechanism with weighted cables which the keepers used to use to rotate the lens,'' Park Service Ranger Chris Eckard said Friday.
``A good percentage of our visitors are people looking at lighthouses - and looking for information on lighthouses. Now, this visitor center is the only one in our park which concentrates solely on lighthouses.''
At the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, workers spruced up most of the existing displays and added one new exhibit. Other projects there were put on hold, said Ranger John Gillikin, because officials are planning a major overhaul of the visitors center before the 100th anniversary of flight celebration - in 2003.
``The addition we got explains the three problems of flight on 4-foot by 8-foot panels,'' Gillikin said Friday. ``Lift, control and power were the factors which the Wright Brothers knew they had to master before they could fly. Now, visitors will be able to see and understand those concepts much more clearly.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON/Staff
Greg Morrow, right, and Todd Clark, both of Southern Custom Exhibits
of Piedmont, Ala., place panels in the visitor center of the Fort
Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island.
SEEING THE EXHIBITS
On Friday, workers completed an $85,000 renovation of the five
National Park Service visitor centers on the Outer Banks. The
federally funded project allowed rangers to replace, repair and
update exhibits and displays along the Cape Hatteras National
Seashore in time for summer vacationers. New displays were added at
Bodie Island, the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kill Devil Hills and
at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island.
Currently, visitors centers are open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. at
the Wright Brothers Memorial, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
and Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Bodie Island and Ocracoke Island
visitor centers are closed until May.
For details, call the National Park Service Cape Hatteras
Seashore headquarters at (919) 473-2111.
by CNB