Corolla - Outer Banks - NC

Corolla originally known as Currituck - meaning "land of the wild goose" was known for its abundace of fish and fowl. In the late 1600s European settlers applied the name Currituck to the barrier island, the county, the sound, and two of its inlets. By the 1800's small hamlets were formed along the Outer Banks, including one call Currituck Beach - that became Corolla.

Early residents made a modest living hunting, fishing, farming, and salvage of wrecked ships that washed ashore. The locals also found work guiding and helping wealthy sportsmen from the north who hunted on the Currituck Sound.

As times got hard, many villages disappeared. The village of Corolla survived in part from the government jobs created when the construction of Currituck Lighthouse began in 1873. The red-brick lighthouse was finished on Dec 1, 1875 and continued to offer employment opportunities for villagers. In 1874 the US Life Saving Service established what became know as the Currituck Beach Life Saving station - one of the original seven life-saving stations on the Outer Banks. In 1895 the posal service changed the name of the village of Currituck Beach to Corolla (the inner part of a flower).

The Whalehead Club, an historic landmark, was started by Edward and Marie-Lousie Knight. This massive home on the sound, finally finished in 1925, provided a work opportunities for many locals. World War II had a strong impact on the village of Corolla. The U.S. Coast Guard leased the Whalehead Club to use as a training base, bringing hundreds of sailors to the village. The Coast Guard had barracks and support buildings around the village and out on the beach near the Coast Guard Station (formerly the Life Saving Station). After the war, the population of Corolla dwindled rapidly. Many residents left the banks to look for jobs on the mainland. The lighthouse, electrified in 1938, no longer required several keepers, just a caretaker. (The villagers, however, didn’t get electricity until 1955.) In the late 1950s Corolla’s population reached its lowest point. The school closed for lack of students, and there were only three families residing in the village. The church sat empty. The Whalehead Club was empty most of the year, though it was used as a boy’s school, Corolla Academy, in the summers. Later the Whalehead Club was converted into a most inappropriate use as the headquarters for Atlantic Research, a rocket fuel testing facility.

In the 1970s only about 15 people lived in the village. People who visited or lived there back then say that Corolla felt like the absolute end of the earth. The road leading to Corolla was just a clay trail along the soundside, with “truck-swallowing holes” and sugar-fine sand that was nearly impossible to drive through. The Whalehead Club and lighthouse buildings were in grave disrepair. Corolla was wild and rugged and overgrown. It was the last coastal getaway of the grandest kind, and anyone who ever went there fell in love with it just exactly like it was. In the 1970s alternative vacationers were beginning to discover the isolated beaches of the Currituck Banks. Since there were no paved roads leading into Corolla, people drove on the beach from Virginia or Duck. But in 1974, U.S. Fish and Wildlife blocked the Virginia border to prevent excessive traffic in its Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Corolla residents were given special passes to be able to go through the gate. The border is still closed today.

Meanwhile, developers were buying up sizeable chunks of the Currituck Outer Banks. Ocean Sands and Whalehead were the first large-scale developments on the banks north of Duck. To access these properties, in 1975, one of the developers built a private road from Duck almost all the way to Corolla. To keep people out of the private developments, the developers constructed a guard gate at the south end of the road. The guard was not allowed to let anyone but property owners past the gate. Sightseers were turned away, but many of them drove up on the beach anyway. The southern guard gate didn’t come down until October 1984, when the state took over the road and made it part of N.C. Highway 12. The state extended the road to pass thought Corolla, and it was the village’s first paved road. With the road open, interest in real estate jumped immediately, and the rest of the Currituck Banks story is quite apparent today.

Development came quickly. Former residents say the change was cataclysmic. Over the next decade, more than 1,500 homes were built on the Currituck Banks between the Dare County line and Corolla village. (In 1984 there were 422 homes, but by 1995 there were 1,966 homes.) By the year 2000, there were 2,750 homes in that same area. Almost all of these homes are second homes and vacation rentals, sitting empty for most of the year. More than 50 percent of the homes are greater than 5,000 square feet. All this development quickly filled the empty land on the Currituck Banks, the land that used to provide a nest of isolation to Corolla village. Miraculously, the tiny village has managed to keep its boundaries and to keep typical Outer Banks development out, though it is a much different place today than it used to be. Many of the historic buildings have been adapted to modern uses, but their character and the sense of village is still intact.

But don’t mistake what you see today for what Corolla village used to be. Many of the buildings you see today are new construction or have been moved to the village from other places. Down the road, the Currituck Beach Lighthouse and the Whalehead Club have developed modern appeal as tourist attractions. Even so, these attractions and old Corolla village buildings stand in marked contrast to the modern development of the Currituck Outer Banks, helping us to remember that Corolla does indeed have a past.