Lost Forests Of Hatteras Island

More than 150 years ago, children clambered across grapevines between the tops of ancient live oak trees and dropped into the ocean from vine swings. Forests covered large portions of Hatteras Island from surf to sound. It was a very different place.

''Fifty years ago on Hatteras Island, from inlet to inlet, a distance of over 40 miles, was completely covered with a prodigious growth of trees among which live-oak and cedar were chief in size and number,'' wrote John Spears, a Scribner's Magazine correspondent after an 1890 visit to Hatteras.

''Growing everywhere in this forest were grapevines of such great length and extent that the boys of that day -- the white-haired men of this -- were in the habit of climbing in the treetops and climbing from tree to tree, often for a distance of over 100 yards, on the webs the vines had woven.''

The trees are gone. The result of a fateful chain of events that has changed Hatteras Island forever.

By the early 1820s, islanders began to realize the value of the forests around them. The live oak and cedars were important commodities for ship builders. Some of the wood was shipped to New England and shipyards on the North Carolina mainland, but most was used by Kinnakeet (Avon) shipbuilders who were famous for their small, sturdy schooners.

Slowly at first, and then quickened by the lure of fast profits, logging began to thin the forest canopies. Small gaps appeared and gradually grew in size. For the Hatteras Island forests, the gaps spelled disaster. Maritime forest canopies shield undergrowth from the ocean's salt spray. The undergrowth in turn stabilizes the soil under the trees. Without the trees, the exposed plants quickly withered under the harsh sun and spray. As the plants died, wind scoured the roots, whisking away the thin soil and exposing the sandy foundation of the island. No one could have imagine what was to come next.