FIVE FACTS

Historic Corolla Village

By Hannah Lee Leidy

WEDGED BETWEEN HIGHWAY 12 AND THE CURRITUCK SOUND lies a little nugget of island life that draws its roots from the early stirrings of the 19th century. But this picturesque town isn’t just for show: It’s a working community with shops, offices, museums and galleries operating from largely turn-of-the-century buildings. This living, breathing glimpse into local history is also entirely free to explore – and priceless to remember.

1Keeping the Lights On Lighthouses get all the attention, but what about the people who’ve made them tick – or rather, flash? The establishment of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in 1875 ushered in the area’s first substantial flurry of settlers and growth – and the lighthouse’s adjacent double keepers’ house has been home to numerous keepers, their families and other troubled souls at sea. In fact, a few years after the lighthouse began operating, the Metropolis famously shipwrecked off the nearby coast. While members of the Currituck Beach Lifesaving Station were able to rescue nearly half of the ship’s survivors – many of whom found a temporary safe haven in the modest keepers’ duplex – the wreck also became a pivotal event which spurred Congress to expand their construction of lifesaving stations along the Eastern Seaboard.

2Schoolhouse Rock Thanks to the new lighthouse and the local lifesaving station, the subsequent population boom on the northern Outer Banks brought not just strapping young men looking for work, but also a number of young families. The only catch was that there was no nearby public school, which meant that most of the area’s children initially attended informal learning groups. By the late 1800s, however, a small, chapel-like, schoolhouse opened in the heart of the village – which went on to become part of the unified Currituck County school system in 1905. Although the schoolhouse was closed in the late 1950s due to a lack of students, it reopened in 2012 as the Water’s Edge Village School, which continues to serve children from kindergarten through eighth grade. 3 If You Plant It, It Will Grow Lack of proper roads to many Outer Banks communities meant that outside food deliveries were often infrequent back in the day, so early northern area residents subsisted on what they could fish for, grow or hunt. Starting in the early 1800s, and presumably lasting well into the 1900s, almost every Corolla resident maintained a garden, where tomatoes, peppers, squash, herbs and indigenous flowers thrived in the sandy soil. Today, a re-created plot at the center of town known as “A Village Garden” pays homage to those historic backyard tracts with raised beds that host herbs, butterfly bushes, vibrant flowers and other vegetables – including a few heirloom varieties that likely thrived in northern residents’ individual plots during the early 20th century.

4Spirits of the Past Curtis and Blanche Gray, Corolla’s postmaster and schoolteacher built a charming, gabled bungalow sometime between 1896 and 1918, making it one of the oldest original properties remaining in the village. While Mrs. Gray tragically died of influenza during the couple’s first few years in residence, it’s said that a warm, comforting presence still remains in an upstairs room of the building, which now homes the Corolla Wild Horse Fund. The Lewark family historically inhabited the bungalow next, during which time they added a smokehouse and outbuilding. Currently the Juice Jar and Bruce Lorenz Fine Photography respectively, Mr. Lewark originally established a workshop and storage space in the outbuilding, and relied on the smokehouse as a place to cure fish and game.

5Back to the Beginning The Callie Parker General Store was a two-story mercantile on the main village road, which served as both a shop and as gathering grounds during Corolla’s heyday in the early 1900s. People relied on the store for various tools, clothes, pantry staples, candy and other knick-knacks, while the local menfolk held court on the generous front porch in the evenings. There, they reportedly whiled away long summer nights, swapping stories, discussing business and regaling each other with tales of earlier generations. Though the building later fell into some disrepair, Twiddy & Company purchased the site and constructed a replica of the store in its original footprint during the 1990s – which now functions as a popular retail spot known as Island Bookstore.

Scenes from around Historic Corolla Village, including the Corolla Wild Horse Fund (top), the Celebration Realty office (middle), and Corolla Village BBQ (bottom).

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