Friday, July 9, 2010

Stinson's Ranch

SOLD
16x20
This is one of my favorite places in Nags Head. Completely surrounded by the Roanoke Sound at the end of Soundside Rd is Stinson's Ranch. . Built in 1899, it is listed on the Historic Register as the Markham-Albertson-Stinson Cottage and is one of the few remaining original Nags Head vacation houses.  The Ash Wednesday Storm in 1962 washed out the tiny point of land the structure was built on, and it was then raised on pilings above the water where it sits today.
Billy Stinson, his family and their friends gather here every New Year's Eve, and at midnight everyone writes a short note and puts it in a tiny boat that is floated away, as he told me today, to symbolically sail the prior year's worries away.