The vacationers who were first to build cottages along the oceanfront lived in virtual isolation for nearly 100 years. They packed their bags for home on Labor Day and, because most structures among the Unpainted Aristocracy had no heat, they didn’t return until Memorial Day the following summer. Though pockets of cottages and mom and pop hotels sprang up along N.C. 12, there was little development around Nags Head until the 1960’s. Families who had grown up along the cottage line began to mushroom, some members building new cottages nearby. And early in the 1970’s, real estate developers from Ocean City, Maryland, began spreading the word about the pristine Outer Banks, both as a place to get away from it all and as a destination to explore the state’s history.
