Lifesaving Station 1887-1916

The legislation that established the U. S. Life-Saving Service as a separate agency in June 1878 included authorization for a number of new life-saving stations, including one at Cape Lookout, but eight years passed before land for the Cape Lookout station was actually acquired.

On May 19, 1886, C.T. and Nettie Watson, David and Julia Bell, and Thomas and Mary Daniels conveyed to the United States government title to a tract at Cape Lookout for a lifesaving station. Located not far from the point of Cape Lookout and two and a quarter miles southwest of the lighthouse, the land was apparently found to be unsuitable for the station. In July 1887, another transaction with the Watsons, et. al., conveyed a larger parcel further north to the federal government. Located 1-3/8 miles southwest of the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, the property was 300’ wide and ran from the high water mark on the Atlantic to the high water mark on Cape Lookout Bight.

The site lay at the southern end of the so-called “Cape Hills,” which were a series of sparsely vegetated higher dunes offering a commanding view of the shoals to the southeast. With the tropical storms and "Nor'easters" that regularly swept the cape, the sparsely vegetated landscape was constantly shifting. As early as 1896, the Keeper was commenting that "the hills" north of the light house "have been washed away by the recent storms". Over the next century, Cape Lookout itself would continue to shift to the west, enlarging itself at the same time, so that the station’s original location is now more than twice as far from the Atlantic and considerably further from the Bight than it was in the 1890s.

Actual construction of the station at Cape Lookout apparently began in late spring or early summer 1887 and was complete by August of that year. On its original site, which is now occupied by the 1917 Coast Guard Station, the station was oriented toward the east and the Atlantic Ocean. Large double doors opened from the boat room at that end of the building, and there was a wooden ramp, twelve feet long, to facilitate moving the boat in and out of the building.

The main building was two stories with a wood-shingled, cross-gabled roof and exterior walls finished with shiplap siding at the first floor level and board-and-batten siding at the second. Nearly three quarters of the first floor of the building were taken up by the Boat Room, where the surfboat was stored when not in use. Maintenance of the boat, including periodic repainting, was a regular part of the station’s routine.

Separate kitchen buildings were initially not included in construction of the life-saving stations, but the Life-Saving Service soon found that they were a necessity in the hot and humid south. So, in September 1892, the crew began construction of a “cook house” for the station. Finished in November 1892 and measuring about 16’ by 18’, the building was located about twenty feet from the life-saving station.

There are a number of references to “the village” in the journals of the Cape Lookout Life-Saving Station in the 1890's, but these references should not be confused with the National Register district of Cape Lookout Village. While the life-saving station journals do not name “the village,” on more than one occasion, they do note the three-mile distance from the life-saving station, which confirms that “the village” at that time was Diamond City on Shackleford Banks.

Prior to World War I, the life-saving service crew was made up almost exclusively of men whose families had lived in Carteret County for generations. The surf men lived at the station while on duty, but during the inactive season returned to their permanent homes in Morehead City, Harkers Island, Marshallberg, and elsewhere.

Before 1916, the station keeper was the only one of the crew who lived year-round at the Cape. He had separate quarters in the life-saving station, but since his family could not be accommodated, he appears to have had a house near the station by 1893. It appears not to have been a full-time residence, however, and in the early twentieth century as motor boats began to make Cape Lookout more accessible, few if any chose to live there year-round.

By the 1890's, some fishermen began constructing more permanent “fish houses,” as they are referred to locally, or “shanties,” as they were designated on the Life-Saving Service’s 1890 map of the cape. Almost certainly, all of these were occupied seasonally and not year-round.

Even with something more than thatched huts for shelter, the cape fishermen often sought shelter in the life-saving station when their camps and fish houses were threatened by high winds and tides. On more than one occasion, as many as fifty fishermen somehow crammed their way into the life-saving station to ride out a storm. The fact that there are only two references in the journals to women or children taking shelter in the station in the 1890s, suggests that the men did not usually expose their families to the harsh living conditions associated with fishing the waters around Cape Lookout.

After the hurricane of 1899, a few residents from Diamond City relocated to Core Banks in the vicinity of the Cape Hills, but even before 1899 these sheltering hills were fast disappearing. Nevertheless, there were, according writer Fred A. Olds who visited the cape in the early 1900s, as many as 80 residents at Cape Lookout, enough to warrant establishment of one-room school house. A post office was also established in April 1910, with Amy Clifton, wife of the lighthouse keeper, as postmaster. Post office records locate the post office “two miles north of the cape, near the light house landing”, most likely in the 1907 Keeper’s Dwelling. However, the widespread use of gasoline-powered boats after about 1905 made travel to Harkers Island, Beaufort, and elsewhere far more convenient, and it was soon apparent that the post office was not worth maintaining. It was discontinued in June 1911, barely fourteen months after its inception.

Cape Lookout was, according to one visitor “a bustling place” in the early 1900's, especially after the Army Corps of Engineers announced in 1912 that a coaling station and “harbor of refuge” would be established at Cape Lookout Bight. Sand fences were installed in 1913 and 1914 to stabilize some of the dunes, and in 1915, work began on a rubble-stone breakwater or jetty to enlarge and protect the Bight.

The project’s most-ardent supporter was local Congressman John H. Small, who envisioned a railroad from the mainland that would help make Cape Lookout a significant port. Intending to capitalize on those plans, private developers organized the Cape Lookout Development Company in 1913 and laid out hundred of residential building lots and planned a hotel and club house to serve what they were sure would be a successful resort community. Unfortunately for all of those plans, there was less demand for a harbor of refuge than supporters had anticipated, and funding for the breakwater was suspended after about 1/2 nautical mile was placed. When plans for a railroad from Morehead City also failed to materialize, the development scheme was abandoned as well. But, the rock jetty has done its work well as the sand spit at the cape's western tip, often called "Power Squadron Spit", has been extended nearly 1 nautical mile westward.

The use of gasoline-powered boats around Cape Lookout was first recorded by the lifesaving station keeper in 1905, and this new mode of transportation rapidly transformed life at the cape. So many “power boats” were in use by 1911 that the station keeper began recording their appearance in the waters around the cape, with as many as thirty-five of them recorded in a single day. Even before the life-saving service got its first power boat in 1912, many if not most of the crew had their own boats and were using them to commute from homes in Morehead City, Beaufort, Marshallberg, and elsewhere.

The convenience of motor boats no doubt contributed to “a general exodus” of year-round resi-dents from the Cape in 1919 and 1920. The one-room school closed at the end of the 1919 school year, and some thirty or forty houses are reported to have been moved from the Cape to Harkers Island around the same time.

The same writer who had visited Cape Lookout in 1905, returned for a second visit in 1921, However, he now found Cape Lookout to be “one of the ‘lonesomest’ places in the country.” Only two or three families were living there by that time, he wrote, and “most of the houses are mere shacks, innocent of paint.” He also found the landscape littered with “thousands of rusted tin cans” and “grass or any green thing . . . conspicuous by its rarity.” The lighthouse and the Coast Guard station were, he thought, “the only two real places in it all.”

Most of the houses left at the Cape were used as “fishing shacks” and after World War I Cape Lookout became “an isolated haven for seasonal fishermen and hardy vacationers, most of them connected to the place by deep family roots.” In addition, a few of the Coast Guardsmen with family ties to Cape Lookout maintained private residences that their own families occupied for at least part of the year. Some housing was constructed near the life-saving station to house jetty workers in 1915, but this, too, was abandoned when the jetty project terminated.

Telephone service between Beaufort and the life-saving station was initiated in March 1898, but there were constant problems with the line, which ran across Shackleford Banks. In August 1917, a new telephone line was run on overhead poles from Beaufort across Shackleford Banks to Cape Lookout and then on to the Core Banks and Portsmouth stations. Phone service was also provided to the Lighthouse since the pole line passed right by it.

By 1909, the life-saving station was nearly twenty years old and, in spite of regular repairs and maintenance, was beginning to show its age. But, no real improvements had been made by 1915.

Part of the delay may have been due to the impending merger of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service to create the United States Coast Guard, which occurred in 1915. Once that happened, it appears that appropriations began to be made for much-needed repairs and maintenance. In the spring of 1916, major repairs to the station continued. In addition to repainting the interior, the crew laid new flooring in the kitchen and in the surfmen’s “loffing room,” and they replaced cords to the counterweights in the building’s double-hung windows.