BRAWLEY BY THE SEA: Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum

Today we visited the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, which we thought was just about sunken ships (definitely part of it), but also had a lot about Outer Banks history. Cool building!

The infamous Hatteras Lighthouse Fresnell lens that Tina has been telling me about for a long time! Hidden during the Civil War, recovered afterwards and sent to France for cleaning, returned and looted, and now the remaining known pieces have been reinstalled. It's HUGE and very cool.

So we're in the civil war exhibit, and after glancing to my left I wondered why there was a full bag of Cool Ranch Doritos attached to the wall. Turns out this exhibit was about recovered treasures from shipwrecks, and a few years back a ship full of Doritos crashed off the coast and thousands of full bags of tasty chips washed ashore! And thanks to modern methods of food production, this bag of chips will still be in this exhibit and ready for eating 50 years from now!

Yes, we're in our 40's.

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THE OUTER BANKS:

The Outer Banks (also known as OBX) is a 200-mile (320-km) long string of narrow barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina, beginning in the southeastern corner of Virginia Beach on the east coast of the United States. They cover approximately half the northern North Carolina coastline, separating the Currituck Sound, Albemarle Sound, and Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic Ocean.

The Outer Banks is a major tourist destination and is known for its temperate climate and wide expanse of open beachfront. The Cape Hatteras National Seashore has four campgrounds where visitors may camp.

The Wright brothers' first flight in a powered, heavier-than-air vehicle took place on the Outer Banks on December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near the seafront town of Kitty Hawk. The Wright Brothers National Monument commemorates the historic flights, and First Flight Airport is a small, general-aviation airfield located there.

The English Roanoke Colony—where the first person of English descent, Virginia Dare, was born on American soil—vanished from Roanoke Island in 1587. The Lost Colony, written and performed to commemorate the original colonists, is the longest running outdoor drama in the United States and its theater acts as a cultural focal point for much of the Outer Banks.

The treacherous seas off the Outer Banks and the large number of shipwrecks that have occurred there have given these seas the nickname Graveyard of the Atlantic. The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum is located in Hatteras Village near the United States Coast Guard facility and Hatteras ferry.