Saving the Outer Banks – Lessons from the Life of Frank Stick
Abstract
The joy of finding unspoiled beaches on the island of Ocracoke led to inquiring how
these areas escaped the rampant development prevalent in coastal North Carolina. This
project’s primary purpose was to investigate a mostly unknown person, named Frank
Stick, and to determine his role, if any, in helping to establish the Cape Hatteras
National Seashore, and second, to investigate present-day threats to the seashore.
The primary inquiry led to Roanoke Island, NC, and the Outer Banks History Center
to research from primary sources the life of Frank Stick and the formation of the
national seashore. I also interviewed residents of the Outer Banks and descendants
of landowners that had contributed to the national seashore. To research current threats,
I attended forums of the NC Coastal Federation, Duke’s Ocean Policy Working Group,
and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and toured the entire seashore.
My inquiry reveals that the formation of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore has a
very long and complicated history in which Frank Stick played a major role, and which
this paper examines through his life and times. I found that oil exploration and global
warming are major threats to the seashore, and that coastal residents prefer tourism
to an energy economy. This paper reveals who Frank Stick was and what we can learn
from his activism, conservationism and methods in order to counteract current environmental
threats to America’s first national seashore.
Type
Master's thesisDepartment
Graduate Liberal StudiesSubject
Cape Hatteras National SeashoreFrank Stick
Virgin Islands National Park
Environmental Conservation
Outer Banks
Illustrator and Artist
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14585Citation
Triulzi, Paul Eugene (2017). Saving the Outer Banks – Lessons from the Life of Frank Stick. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14585.Collections
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