Historic Portsmouth offers glimpse of past

Portsmouth Village used to be a bustling, thriving seaboard pit stop.
By ANDREA SACHS
WASHINGTON POST
Portsmouth Island buzzes -- and not just with the mosquitoes that outnumber residents a million to one.
"Welcome to Portsmouth," said Bobby Pleasants, the affable National Park Service volunteer who, with his wife, Peggy, greeted visitors on the dock on a recent spring weekend. "Hope you loaded on the bug spray."
With that, the Pleasantses led the group into Portsmouth Village and around a trapezoid of weathered buildings that once made up the largest town in the Outer Banks.
"You're in for a treat," said Peggy. "You can still feel the spirit."
The village, on the northern end of the 22-mile North Core Banks, sits just five miles across Ocracoke Inlet, beyond the sleek sloops at rest, the crab pots and the duck blinds that rise out of the shallow water.
In its heyday
Back in the mid-1700s and 1800s, when the ladies of the island wore lace dresses up to their chins and Christmas gifts arrived by mail boat, Portsmouth Village was a thriving seaboard pit stop. It soon went the way of the mastodon, because of the opening of the Hatteras inlet, the railroad boom and the Civil War.
In 1971, the last male resident, Henry Piggot, died after a lifetime of delivering the mail by wheelbarrow. Soon after, the last two female inhabitants left, at their relatives' urgings. With no male -- or mail -- there was no reason to stay.
The 250-acre town, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is now populated by a rotating roster of Park Service volunteers and maintenance staff, critters such as nutrias and raccoons, a few lease-holders and those devilish skeeters.
Open to the public
Five structures are open to the public, including the post office/general store, a 19th-century version of "Cheers"; the Methodist church, with its still tolling bell; the U.S. Lifesaving Station; and the visitors center, a former private home that is rich with china pattern fragments and aging photos of Portsmouth Village life.
"You can just picture life going on in these homes," Peggy said as she walked over to the old graveyard to point out a stubby tombstone with a lamb carving that was ordered from Montgomery Ward and reordered after it arrived cracked.
After the tour, most visitors hike the path to the beach. Mosquitoes don't like dark places, Bobby said, nor water. Not that you'd need another reason to jump into the refreshingly cool surf.
To get details ...
For more details on Portsmouth Island and Village, call (252) 728-2250 or visit www.nps.gov/calo/pv.htm. Rudy and Donald Austin ([252] 928-4361) offer boat service and tours from Ocracoke's Community Store dock to Portsmouth for $20 per person for four hours; for walking tours and ATV rides, contact Portsmouth Island ATV Excursions ([252] 928-4484, www.portsmouthislandatvs.com); $75 per person for a four-hour tour.