Tour 28A, 1930s

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration published a series of books designed to document our country's history and culture. The Federal Writers’ Project collaborated to produce The WPA Guide to North Carolina: The Tar Heel State.  Part III includes more than three dozen Tours of North Carolina. This is the entry for Tour 28A:

"Atlantic-Cedar Island-Portsmouth-Ocracoke; mail or chartered passenger boat. 30m.

"Daily mail boat, 25 passengers, leaves Atlantic 1 p.m., stops at Cedar Island and Portsmouth, arrives at Ocracoke, 5 p.m.; return trip leaves Ocracoke 7 a.m., arrives Atlantic 11 a.m. One-way fare to Portsmouth, $1.25; to Ocracoke, $1.50. Limited accommodations.

"This boat trip proceeds north through parts of Core and Pamlico sounds. Boatmen hold to the channel to avoid shallow bars and fish weirs. Sharks sometimes invade the waters through the inlets, lured by the abundant game fish."

Mail Boat Aleta

Eighty years later visitors are still coming to Ocracoke via Cedar Island, but now by car ferry. The runs are more frequent, the fare is still reasonable, and game fish continue to be abundant.  Accommodations are definitely more numerous.

This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is my analysis of a sentence penned by surveyor Jonathan Price in 1795. The sentence reads, "Occacock was heretofore, and still retains the name of, an island. It is now a peninsula; a heap of sand having gradually filled up the space which divided it from the bank."  You can read my analysis here: https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/description-occacock-1795/.