Museum of the Albemarle: Old Nags Head lot more remote than today's resort town

It’s almost summertime in Elizabeth City once again, a time when we realize just how lucky we are to live so close to the beach. Summer weekends find many of us heading across the Camden bridge in search of sun, sand and sea.

But we’re not the first to seek nearby ocean breezes in the summertime. Nags Head began life as a resort in the 1830s, when a Perquimans County planter built the first summer residence there. Soon other planters in the region followed suit, and a summer resort sprang up on the soundside at Nags Head.

Getting to the beach was a lot harder back then than it is now. Families traveled to Nags Head by steamboat or schooner. They carried with them horses, cows, servants and articles of furniture — everything they would need to set up housekeeping for the summer.

The resort quickly grew in popularity. By 1838, there was a definite need for a public house at Nags Head to provide bed and board for visitors and nightly entertainment for all. The first hotel, containing 200 rooms, was built midway between the ocean and the sound.

The first summer denizens of Nags Head were the wealthiest and most sophisticated of the area’s planter class. According to David Stick, in his book “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” the hotel’s ballroom hosted “a company that would have done credit to any of the popular watering places in the country. … The ladies were as pretty, and as tastefully dressed as if they had just returned from the vendors of fashion in Paris.” Fox hunting among the sand hills was a favorite pastime, with horses and hounds brought over from the mainland.

In the 1860s, Dr. William G. Pool of Elizabeth City built the first summer cottage on the oceanfront at Nags Head. The other summer people considered that a foolish move; living on the ocean was unheard of at that time.

Dr. Pool purchased 13 lots on the oceanfront, gifting them to friends and family. Of the 13 original cottages built on these lots, eight remain today, forming Nags Head’s historic district. They are known collectively as The Unpainted Aristocracy.

Nags Head’s popularity has steadily grown over the years, reaching an all-time high today. It has long been a favorite destination of residents of Virginia, Washington, D.C, and other points north. How lucky we are to live a just short drive away.