Preserving the past and looking to the future at Wash Woods in Carova.
A remarkable past has become a part of the future as the Wash Woods Coast Guard station is restored and repurposed. Jeff Hampton writing for The Virginian-Pilot tells the story of who was involved and how it happened.
“Over the years, lives were saved by crewmen at the Wash Woods Coast Guard station set among the Currituck County dunes.
But the station itself has escaped some close calls, too.
This year, people who lived and worked in the building are celebrating its 100th anniversary. It’s now a real estate office for Doug and Sharon Twiddy, owners of Twiddy and Company. They restored the two-story station in 1990, raising it from the wind-blown sand that threatened to bury it for good and uncovering the hardwood floors and plaster walls from 1917.
“The past is a mystery,” said their son, Clark Twiddy. “Some of these old buildings help us to understand it.”
Coast Guard crews manned the station for nearly 30 years, looking out for ships in distress . It was named for a community just north of the Virginia line called Wash Woods for the remnants of maritime forest often inundated by the ocean. The station built there in the 1800s burned, and the Coast Guard built another one farther south on the North Carolina Outer Banks.”
[box type=”bio”] Read the rest of this story on The Virginian-Pilot’s Pilotonline. [/box]