[female voice] This place has a heartbeat of its own.

[male voice] You just get a vibe that you're here at home.

[female voice] It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

[female voice] It's a magic little place in the mountains.

[announcer] Made with the state fruit of North Carolina, Mighty Muscadine offers a line of superfruit supplements and juices made from the Muscadine grape, including the Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, Vinetastic.

More at mightymuscadine.com.

[♪♪♪] [Joshua Deel] The Outer Banks, a thin strip of land on the edge of the world, where the ocean meets the sky, and the line between history and legend gets blurry.

[♪♪♪] Jimmy Buffett once said this was a place where you could stand in the same spot where man first left Earth behind, and look up at the stars with the weight of everything we've been through hanging over your head.

[♪♪♪] It's a place that forces you to stop and ask yourself what it really means to soar beyond your limits, to escape.

But then again, I've heard some folks call the Outer Banks Southern Ohio, so maybe take that with a grain of salt.

In this episode of Hometowns, I find myself in Corolla, North Carolina, at the northern tip of the Outer Banks.

It's the kind of place where the road just stops.

Route 12 ends, and if you want to keep going, you better have a 4x4, because the beach becomes your highway.

There's something wild about that, where the convenience of paved roads give way to the untamed, and the ocean becomes your only constant.

Corolla is a place where time slows down.

The salt in the air tells stories older than this country, stories of shipwrecks, wild horses that have roamed these shores longer than we've been around, and a seafaring history that's shaped everything here.

You can feel it when you climb the old Corolla Lighthouse, when you walk the beach, or when you lock eyes with one of those wild Spanish Mustangs, who seem like they know something we don't.

I spent my time here wandering between landmarks everyone knows and the hidden corners most people miss.

And yeah, it left a mark.

It has that effect.

Whether you're kayaking through quiet coves as the sun sets behind you, or just sitting with a cold drink watching the light change over the water, this place gets in your head.

It pulls you into its rhythm.

Corolla's history is written in the tides, in the bones of old shipwrecks, and in the stories passed down through generations of people who've called this place home.

And like any great coastal town, it leaves you a little changed.

So come with me, take a dip into these still wild waters, and let's see what Corolla's all about.

This is a place where the locals, the natives, the transplants, all of them, take pride in calling it their hometown.

I've heard it said, "Where we are affects who we are."

Makes sense, right?

I've always believed you can't really understand yourself until you understand where you come from.

Hi, I'm Josh, and I'm hosting this series with PBS Appalachia to explore the places people still call home, their hometowns, and to uncover the stories that make them unique.

Hometowns is about exploring the communities that give America its character.

This season, we're going off the beaten path on a journey from Virginia to Wyoming.

Now, don't get me wrong, many of these places have their flaws, warts and all, but if that's all you focus on, you're missing the bigger picture, the raw, untamed beauty of the land, and the depth and complexity of its culture.

These are the things that speak to the heart of understanding what it really means to be an American.

It's a journey worth taking.

Trust me.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina, Corolla specifically, is a place where history runs deep and the past is never quite buried beneath the sand.

You can feel it in the salt air, in the way the ocean meets the shore with an untamed persistence, and in the landmarks that stand as silent witnesses to centuries of struggle, survival, and occasional grandeur.

Take the Corolla Lighthouse, for example.

It stands tall against the wide Carolina sky, more than just an old brick tower.

For over a century, its light has been a beacon for sailors navigating these treacherous waters, where the Atlantic Ocean doesn't play nice.

It's not hard to imagine the lives that depended on that light.

The sailors out there in the blackness, trusting in a flicker of hope to bring them safely to shore.

-I'm officially our site manager here, but there's two of us and our two kids who live here.

And so, we also get called the lighthouse keepers.

It is very unusual to continue to keep lighthouse keepers on site, but really, the definition of a lighthouse, as opposed to an aid to navigation, is that there's a house, and that there are people living at your aid to navigation.

The Currituck Beach Lighthouse is a public active aid to navigation still.

So in terms of lighthouse keepers living at lighthouses, no.

Like, there are very few left in the United States of America.

We are a backup plan.

-[Josh] Right.

Tell their instruments and everything.

[Meghan Agresto] Exactly, but we're not nothing, right?

We're sort of-- I think Coast Guard thinks of us almost as like third tier importance, because we're not hackable.

There's nothing Internet related to the fact that this light works.

And that is important, because a lighthouse has to be-- you have to be able to depend on it, right?

And you triangulate with it, right?

And so, even using us as one of the instruments is good for everyone.

If you're out at sea and you're not moving at all, you would see coming at you, five seconds of a red flash.

And then, once it passed you, and it would move pretty slowly, I think, counterclockwise, then you would just see all the white light.

And then again, and then again, in two and a half minutes, there would have been three flash panels that would take them to rotate.

So that's how you know we're not Bodie Island Lighthouse, or Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

[Josh] It's like your road sign if I'm at sea.

[Meghan] That's exactly right.

1874, the Outer Banks have a major federal change, which is life-saving stations.

Initially, I think there are seven put up and down the Outer Banks, along with lighthouses.

That's essentially how these hamlets or villages get established.

It used to be that people would be like, hey, let's let all our cattle roam on the Outer Banks.

Let's go fishing, let's go hunting out there.

But we're not going to live permanently out there.

It's a crazy place to live.

-♪ On the water ♪ -How did you land in Corolla?

Let's start there.

-Well, I'm from here, but my dad came here from elsewhere.

-I was raised in Norfolk, Virginia.

[Josh] What year was that when you came to--?

-I was graduating from high school in '61, and I fished that fall in the Chesapeake Bay on Ocean View.

And we moved my operation down here.

-[Josh] Okay.

-So there's a couple of people around that will really, you know, and they've got great history and know a lot of history.

But the difference is their family owned property or they had family roots here, but they actually never lived here, their daily lives here.

Or maybe they came on weekends for 50 years.

Their family came every weekend or in the summer.

But I'm sorry, that's very different than doing this every day.

My dad's time, no one, people that came here, they wanted to get away.

Everyone was here because they wanted to get away from things.

I don't know that that's such the case anymore.

I was born in '84, which was the year that they were constructing the road up from Duck.

That's when they were doing that.

So I grew up during-- I probably grew up during the time of most change, for sure.

Because before, before you couldn't get here, you're not, no one's going to be here.

-And in some ways, the old, old families are the ones that come ashore and don't go back to wherever they needed to go.

Scotland, Italy, you know, wherever they came from.

That's almost how you get the families that were here generations after generations.

So it's really not until I, at least in my brain, the way I settled it is, before the Wright Brothers and after the Wright Brothers.

Once the Wright Brothers come, a lot of hotels go up, a lot of hunting.

We get on the map for hunting and fishing.

Corolla doesn't even start becoming a tourist destination until about the '90s.

-They built Food Lion right around 1992.

And my theory is that Food Lion, building a grocery store, was a huge catalyst for development.

-Corolla is home for me, right.

I'm a transplant in a transplant town.

I have actually lived in Corolla longer than I've lived anywhere in my whole life.

At this point, I'm so involved between the work I do at school and the work I do here and having the kids here.

I have three post office boxes.

So, Corolla is home.

[Josh] The lighthouse is just one chapter in Corolla's long maritime story.

To truly get this place, you've got to go deeper.

Into the shipwrecks, the life-saving stations, the people who lived and died by the sea.

Corolla wasn't just a sleepy village.

It was a tough, unforgiving place where survival meant mastering the water.

You feel that history at the Maritime Museum, where they've preserved the stories of those who faced the Atlantic's wild waters.

Back then, boating wasn't for fun.

It was life or death.

The roads here were waterways, and everything revolved around the water.

Hunting and fishing drew people to this strip of sand, and the museum gives you a glimpse of how vital that way of life was.

Even now, boating remains essential, tying the past to the present.

And the sea still whispers stories of those who came before.

-Never really thought I'd be running a boat museum, to be honest with you.

But my grandfather and another fella kind of had this idea of this boat museum because they were just, loved old boats, and they wanted to restore 'em and take care of 'em.

So they came up with this process of this being built like in 1994 or '95, I think.

We didn't open until 2021.

So it was a long process.

And somehow I just snuck my way in here and said, I'm going to run this place, and y'all are going to hire me.

And they said, yeah.

So here I am.

Basically, from the Currituck Lighthouse all the way to Dare County Line was given to family and kings land grants.

So, pretty much all the land that these major hunt clubs on the beach came from my family.

The beach was basically considered a wasteland.

There would be a little village like where the lifesaving stations were, or, you know, the hunt clubs, was really all that was over here.

And boats are a way of life here.

They were our mode of transportation back in the day.

We didn't get a road up here until '84.

[Samantha Payne] '84.

It wasn't paved, passed, dug until '84.

[Chandler] Yeah, so this development and all this stuff up here is brand new.

[Samantha] I'm the visitor relations specialist based out of Whalehead.

It's a historic house museum.

We opened in 2002.

In high school, it's a tradition that juniors and seniors get asked to come be interns and tour guides.

Came every single summer, came back to Whalehead until I made it through college.

And now, I'm in charge of the house.

My family came here.

They were one of the first groups of people that came here.

They don't really know what happened to them for a while, but they didn't get so lost.

So, my pop's grandpa was A.W.

Drinkwater.

He was a telegrapher here.

When the Wright Brothers flew, he was in the middle of trying to telegraph about a shipwreck.

He thought it was going to make him go big.

He was pretty mad he had to be interrupted to telegraph that the Wright Brothers flew.

He said they were crazy boys from Ohio.

And so, his telegraph was to the Wright Brothers' sister, Katharine.

And it said, "Flight successful.

We'll be home for Christmas."

[Chandler] Not many of us really exist anymore that can say we've got 12, 15 generations.

I feel like Currituck is more in me than I am in Currituck, if that makes sense.

There's a lot of people that don't know their family history and we're really lucky that we do.

And so, I think that's just one of my proudest things is just being and staying and living in an area, it just feels like it's a part of me.

Dad always said in Currituck, you either farmed, fished, hunted, or got out because that's all there was to do.

So, we all farmed, fished, and hunted, and stayed here.

-[Josh] You stayed.

-[Chandler] Yep.

-This Audubon Sanctuary, the Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary, is land that actually was settled in the 1700s by the Baum family, Outer Banks family.

-Okay.

-And they had this as a farm.

And they farmed it, mostly cattle, other livestock that just fed on the grasses in the marsh.

And then, in the winter, they'd be hunt guides.

And they sold the land to 12 hunters from Boston who built this building behind us, the Pine Island Hunt Club, which is the oldest standing hunt club in Currituck County, which is the oldest managed hunting ground in America.

Currituck actually means where the wild goose flies.

And the sound here used to be filled with 300 waterfowl every winter.

It would literally darken the sky how many birds were out here.

And so that, of course, was really valuable to hunt clubs.

They could come out here and hunt.

And it's really where Ducks Unlimited was born.

-[Josh] Okay.

-[Robert] Audubon had a presence here from the early 1900s.

And we're back now, working, trying to conserve the birds that are out here.

We have to recognize that humans are everywhere, right?

It doesn't matter where you are on the planet.

You're going to run into human impacts, right?

So we need to figure out how we interact with nature in a way that is beneficial and not harmful.

[Josh] With nests, with the turtles, all these measures that they're taking to ensure these turtles get down there.

You know, some might say, well, just nature does what it does.

They've been doing this for millennia.

They can just figure it out.

They'll get to the water.

But the reality is, because humans are now everywhere, we're in their space, we're having to take these measures to do these things to ensure that our presence doesn't endanger them further.

[Robert] We want to interact with the nature in a way that lifts up nature as opposed to pulls it down.

And I think that's something that humans are learning as a species, is how do we interact in a positive manner as opposed to always taking?

Because, you know, taking is how you survive.

It's all about the balance act to make the planet joyful and productive for humans and birds.

Sound itself, as I was saying, is mostly fresh, and because the inlet closed.

Unless the inlet closed, the closest salt water is way down at Oregon Inlet.

So this all became fresh, and the entire environment changed.

-[Josh] From the species-- -[Robert] From all the species, everything changed.

-[Josh] Wow!

[Robert] And so, it's a really unusual environment and very understudied, which is one of the reasons Audubon is here, is we are trying to understand this system and how we preserve it for the future.

Used to be, you would hunt for diving ducks, fish-eating ducks, right?

Like you get up on the Chesapeake, mergansers and stuff that eat fish.

Well, they're not as tasty, to most people, as the vegetarian ducks.

Once you've got fresh water and shallow water with grass in it, then the vegetarian ducks come in.

And they're tastier, and more people want to hunt them.

So that's really what drove the hunting to develop out here.

So just that little change, and now the salt water is coming back up with sea level rise.

So to me, the change is happening, no matter what, right, sea level's coming up.

It's an understanding that the menu is changing, right?

We're going to lose some of our freshwater ducks, but we're also going to gain oysters.

-Some new varieties.

-Okay, so the menu is changing.

We just need to make sure that the system can handle the change in the menu.

You know, all those little pieces of the web of life, the longer I can help those things, the more I can lift them up, but the more Audubon is doing its job here, and making sure that that continues for wildlife, but for the people in the community that depend upon all the services that wildlife provides us as well.

[Josh] For this trip, I stayed at a friend's incredible estate, the Mark Twain, right here on the beaches of Corolla.

And while here, I learned that Manish has a passion for writing one's own story and choosing your own adventure.

-When I came to this place, it was as if, like, does this really happen?

Because you drive on the beach, and you come to a beautiful house.

And every time I come here, I just love it more.

-When people are selecting to, you know, come here to rent one of these places, what are they looking for?

Like, what kind of experiences, or what do you see them doing to entertain themselves?

-You know, the more I think about it is the core experience, which is when you connect with yourself, when you connect with your loved ones.

And there's no distraction.

And, you know, you are in an environment which is just amazing.

Three authors there-- so the one we are sitting at is called the Mark Twain.

This is our signature property with 18 bedrooms.

And as you know, Mark Twain traveled, and there are so many different courts.

And the beauty is, like, maybe he was just writing earlier.

But that creativity element is not only in writing, I'm seeing it, whether it is creating social media, whether it is writing books, whether it is doing a show like this, right?

So there is so much connectivity to the creation part.

The Hemingway is the next house, next to Mark Twain.

It's again, a 14-bedroom estate.

And after that, it's The Fitzgerald.

So all these properties have their own character.

But between the sun, the sand, and beautiful pool here in a hot tub, there's so much to enjoy.

And then, you can write your own story here with, you know, getting the inspiration from the authors and get into the world of creativity.

That's beautiful to watch these communities to grow and, you know, be part of it.

These properties will continue to really inspire people to go to their true north and find opportunities, which people wanted to always do.

You know, we have a place now, actually.

We can all collaborate.

We can connect.

It's interesting, the chefs here and the people in the local area are very talented.

They will come to you and cook over here.

It's one of the neatest experiences because if you are staying in a house like Mark Twain, which can technically hold 40 people, good luck finding a restaurant which can actually seat 40 people, right?

[Josh] Sure.

-This is what the Boil Company is about, man.

So, we pride ourselves on Outer Banks Boil Company.

Our mission statement is, we're not a meal.

We're a memory, right?

So, it's about the experience.

It's amazing because the kids are hanging out by the pool.

You know, the people are doing this, but the Boil's happening.

I get to converse.

I get to hang out.

I get to meet people.

And especially in a place like this where-- this is a tradition for so many people, right?

Coming to the Outer Banks, in and of itself is a tradition.

People come, they show up, they come to the same house, or they go to the same town, but it's every year.

Or it's biannually, or whatever it is.

For us to kind of sneak in and take one dinner away from them having to cook, or them having to go out and deal with the chaos, and become this new tradition, like our customer retention is through the roof.

Because we do it once, and then they're hooked.

And it becomes a much easier option than trying to drag everyone out to eat.

I have such a connection to this beach specifically, like the four-wheel drive beach here in the Outer Banks, in Corolla, north of Corolla, Carova.

I started coming down here to the Outer Banks when I was six years old.

Year after year, the summer vacations started becoming not just one week, but two weeks.

And not just two families, but five families.

I remember as a teenager, probably like 15 or 16, we started doing these boils here on the beach as a group.

It was like two sawhorses, a sheet of plywood, newspaper.

Like, you know, the dads were all drinking Budweisers and cooking it, and sometimes, it fell in the sand.

But it was like this awesome experience, and like all the kids, and we'd all gather around and eat it.

So that was kind of my first, you know, I guess, intro to the boils itself.

The big reveal is dumping it on the table and then everyone gets to dig in and look.

Plates and silverware, we provide it.

And look, that's like the best thing.

It's like, one of my favorite parts is like when you kind of show up to someone that's, that's never done this before, and they're like, wait a minute, you're going to dump it on the table?

It's like, a lot of people don't get to eat like that, right.

And it's like, that's pretty damn cool in and of itself, right?

So, like it's a special way to eat.

It's a special way to cook and have fun.

It's the best job in the world, man.

It's the best job in the world.

It's not just the meal that we're doing here.

It's the memory and the experience surrounding it and what we can create doing that sort of thing, so.

Here in the Outer Banks, like, even pre-COVID, the Outer Banks in and of itself, it's a very manic-depressive lifestyle, right?

Like, you work super hard in the summertime.

There's so many people here.

It's busy, it's kind of chaotic.

You've got stuff to do.

In the wintertime, this place goes to, you know, less than 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 people here in Corolla.

The super high highs of the summer and the super low lows of, oh, I'm not working.

There's not much to do.

There's not much going on.

And that's impactful.

-When you get, like, the three weeks in March or late February, early March, where it's dreary and spitty rain every day, it can get a little, like-- you've got to have a healthy hobby.

Not everyone does well with that.

And I feel for, like, younger folks like Matt.

I mean, I'm in the same, probably, age group.

I'm a little older, probably, than Matt, and I don't have near the stuff that he's got going on.

But, like, there's some other people.

I'm good friends with the guys that own the surf shop here.

You're going every day, all day, like, early morning till when it's getting dark.

And it's all the time.

And sometimes the hardest part of the year for me is, there's, like, a week in October where Monday hits and the report comes in.

You open it up.

6 AM Monday morning, for me, is when I open it up.

And all of a sudden, like, your workload has dropped by, like, 60 percent.

And you're like, what do I do today?

And it's a little-- it's a little-- I mean, some people might say, oh, that's great.

But, like, actually, you're sort of like, oh, wow, because you're just so used to going, going, going.

And we'll talk about the nature of the Outer Banks, like, there's a fine line between doing life okay, and crashing and burning pretty hard.

-I had several friends, several local guys, you know, folks that I looked up to and friends that were my age, peers, that either passed away from suicide or some sort of overdose or some sort of stress-related thing.

And it got to a point where I was tired of doing these paddle-outs, where we were basically sending off flowers and sending off these folks that had passed.

So ultimately, my mom and I, we decided to put together what is now our EPIC project, which is essentially the charitable arm of Outer Banks Boil Company.

And there's really three pillars, but one of those is supporting and strengthening mental health initiatives here in the Outer Banks, and really starting here in Corolla.

It's the idea of being proactive rather than reactive.

You know, mental health is this thing that's-- it needs to be, like, holistically approached.

And I think, you know, there's alternative ways, rather than pharmaceuticals or just talking to a therapist.

There's other things that you can do.

So, we're kind of wide open to it.

We do yoga classes.

We do surf adventures.

We do hikes.

We do all these things where we can get people together to be outside.

And just getting together is, I think, a big part of mental health.

-And the thing is, like, the place I live, for the last 20 years, I have less people who know me.

But when I come here, you know, it's just a very refreshing feeling and knowing that you know the locals, and they know you are coming.

And they will say, oh, when are you coming next time?

And, you know, it's just a little thing, but matters a lot, right?

-Absolutely.

-That's beautiful to watch these communities to grow and, you know, be part of it.

[Robert] You know, it's funny, we came out here, like, shortly after we started.

And I was feeling all full of myself at a new job, right?

And so, we're sitting here watching the sunset, and I'm going, I'm in charge of all of this.

And then I went, oh, my God, I'm in charge of all this!

Because it is, it's a big parcel.

But, you know, the real thing is that so many people care about it, people in the community, people from the mainland community who use the water.

So many people care about it that it's not a job you do yourself.

It's a job you bring lots of people together, and their love makes it what it is.

-[Josh] So it's a community... -[Robert] It's a community effort to make this place special.

-Corolla's home.

It's where you feel comfortable.

It's where you feel welcome.

It's where you feel love.

Corolla has a special sort of feel that is unlike anywhere else on the Outer Banks.

-Corolla is a fragile, resilient gem.

And people are what makes it resilient.

As long as we do that, then this gem survives.

[♪♪♪] [female voice] This place has a heartbeat of its own.

[male voice] You just get a vibe that you're here at home.

[female voice] It's given me opportunities that I never thought I'd have.

That atmosphere is infectious.

[female voice] It's a magic little place in the mountains.

[announcer] Made with the state fruit of North Carolina, Mighty Muscadine offers a line of superfruit supplements and juices made from the Muscadine grape, including the Cellular Health Antioxidant Beverage, Vinetastic.

More at mightymuscadine.com.