THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507140214
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SOURCE: BY TONI WHITT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 144 lines
A DECADE AGO, a trip to the National Park Service campgrounds and beaches was different.
The scenery was the same: gorgeous sunsets, warm sand and pounding surf. But there were also park rangers who could point out the wildlife, tell you the history of the changing beaches or lead you on a swim through the sound.
In the last several years, the number of rangers has been shrinking, and tours once led by park service personnel have mostly become self-guided.
Beaches that were once watched over by lifeguards have become places where visitors can swim at their own risk. The number of campgrounds is shrinking, and the ones left are open only at the peak summer season.
And history is being fenced off until there's enough public money or private concern to pay for renovations and upkeep.
The Little Kinnakeet Lifesaving Station, one of the first such stations on the Outer Banks, has been slated for renovations for several years. The park service had hoped to restore the 1874 boathouse and the l904 station to their original condition and to conduct lifesaving programs at the station.
Funds had been designated for the project, and officials in 1992 had hoped to finish restoring the station by the end of this year. But since then, funds have been cut several times. Now, the money has run out, and the lifesaving station faces an uncertain future.
Little Kinnakeet stands behind a chain-link fence. The foundation to the boathouse has been shored up to keep the structure from falling down. Right now, it's sitting in mothballs.
What's next is anybody's guess.
Park officials said construction projects are usually the first to be cut.
``The budget for next year is still in the process of being developed,'' said Mary Collier, assistant superintendent of the Cape Hatteras Group for the National Park Service. ``There's nothing confirmed for us. Next year is still an unknown.''
Collier said the only certain thing is that the park service will continue to rely on volunteers and private donations to keep it afloat.
The park service does generate fees at the Wright Brothers Memorial and at the campgrounds, but the bulk of those fees goes back to the federal government. Congress decides how much, if any, of that money is returned to the park service.
If the money the campgrounds generated went back into the facilities, Collier said, they could stay open longer. But now, the park service has even had to cut back on manning the campgrounds, asking visitors to sign themselves in.
Collier said the service has also removed dumpsters from many of the campgrounds, requiring campers to take their trash to a central location. Both are efforts to keep costs down, so that the campgrounds continue to operate despite a tighter budget.
So far, the park service has been resourceful in keeping up services in the face of budget cuts.
Thirty volunteers staff the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. Folks on Hatteras Island have taken over preserving the Chicamacomico Lifesaving Station, under a lease with the park service. Ocracoke residents and merchants have contributed funds to open the campground on the tiny island at Easter - before peak season - and to keep it open until Sept. 30, after peak season.
The park service is even turning over the Wright Brothers visitors center to residents and state officials, so that it can be expanded for the 100th anniversary of the first flight in 2003.
``The reductions that we're seeing discussed in the Congress at this time tend to be in construction and land acquisition accounts,'' Collier said. ``Construction money would affect plans for the Wright Brothers visitors center.''
Collier said the 100th anniversary of powered flight is set as an international event. The park service expects between 750,000 and 1 million visitors that year, and Collier said they don't have the facilities to accommodate those numbers. Currently the Wright Brothers site draws 500,000 visitors annually. Collier said the center is ``overwhelmed'' in the summer.
``It's unlikely that funds will be available for construction,'' she said.
But Collier and North Carolina officials aren't waiting on federal money to plan this celebration.
State officials have formed a First Flight Commission, which is working to raise private money. The Department of Cultural Resources will also be involved in either restoring the facilities and expanding the visitors center, or building a new center.
The park service is now designing the blueprints for the project, which the First Flight Commission would review and then offer to the public for comment.
While Little Kinnakeet sits in mothballs for now, Collier says its best hope may be if a private group leased the station and contracted with the park service to restore it to its original condition - a deal similar to the one worked out with the Chicamacomico Historical Association to take care of the lifesaving station in Rodanthe.
George E. Perrot III, a historic preservation specialist with the park service in Cape Hatteras, said all the preliminary work is complete at Little Kinnakeet and that the station is still his No. 1 priority.
With the money available right now, Perrot said, the best he can do is the basics to preserve and protect the buildings. His biggest hope is that the descendants of those who worked at the lifesaving station may have some interest in restoring the facility.
Chris G. Eckard, a park historian, said Little Kinnakeet was an integral part of the community. Folks living in small settlements near the lifesaving station would gather there to trade gossip, view ships and watch their fathers, uncles and brothers train for the moment when they might have to launch into the rough seas of the Graveyard of the Atlantic to rescue seamen from a sinking ship.
The station was closed in 1938, Eckard said, but was used during World War II as a lookout post for the German U-boats that moved through the dark waters off the coast. At the end of the war, Eckard said, the islanders pushed to re-open the station. It stayed open until 1954, when the Coast Guard closed it and the park service took it over as housing.
The station also served as a school after the 1962 Ash Wednesday storm damaged the school on Hatteras.
Now the park service wants to restore the facility to its original condition, to better tell the story of the lifesaving stations.
``It's the perfect site for telling the stories,'' Eckard said. ``The 1874 style is relatively rare, and it was one of the first stations in the country. When telling the stories to the public about the lifesaving activities and the shipwrecks, the difference between standing on the visitors center porch and the lifesaving station is enormous.''
Perrot said the park service plans to keep the station as austere as it was in 1904. Officials plan to light it with electric candles, and there won't be any air conditioning. The park service will heat the station with a woodstove, but will cheat a little by using electricity rather than fire for the stove.
But without federal funds, the project may be delayed for years to come, unless a private group takes it over or donates heavily to the effort.
Collier said it is likely that more and more park properties will be turned over to private concessionaires and historical societies. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by DREW C. WILSON
The Little Kinnakeet Station, north of Avon, was in the middle of
renovation when the project was mothballed due to deep cuts in the
federal budget.
Fading letters over a window at the Little Kinnakeet Station show
how the station, a historic site, has deteriorated.
Karen Bayne, 29, of Bloomington, Ind., pushes her bike past the
Little Kinnakeet Lifesaving Station. The National Park Service is
looking for a partnership to lead the restoration of the station.
by CNB