Circa 1903

Standing along the coast of today’s Outer Banks, it can be hard to envision the barrier island world at Kitty Hawk as it appeared to Wilbur and Orville Wright when they first arrived in 1900 to begin their famous experiments leading to the world’s first powered flight three years later. Around 1903, the islands and inland seas of North Carolina’s coast were distinctive maritime realms — seemingly at the ends of the earth. But as the Wrights soon recognized, the region was far more developed than