history banks
Salter Path:
An Island Within an Island
Salter Path Develops as First Village on Bogue Banks The fishing village of Salter Path was the first section of Bogue Banks to be inhabited by American settlers. They began to come in the mid-1880s, to fish, farm and work odd jobs just to make ends meet. Kay Holt Roberts Stephens, who has compiled “Salter Path – A Brief History,” said these first Salter Pathers came from “Shackleford Banks, Hunting Quarter (Atlantic and Sea Level), Straits and other Down East locations in Carteret County.” As the local whaling industry declined, many people from the Cape Lookout area and Shackleford Banks moved whole houses by boat to Salter Path. Others disassembled their houses and floated them board-by-board. “The first Salter Path houses were nestled among the trees on the sound side of the island,” Stephens wrote. She said: “Families brought their livestock; cattle roamed freely on the banks, grazing and drinking water at the various fresh water creeks. Hogs ate the wild grapes, roots and acorns as well as corn given to them by their owners.” “Settlers cultivated a variety of vegetables and supplemented their seafood, pork and beef with the meat of wildlife on the banks.” They baked opossum and raccoon and stewed loons and various ducks. Stephens said a trail ran by Riley Salter’s house, connecting the sound to the ocean beach, which became known as “Salter’s path.” Whatever happened to Riley Salter is uncertain. Other sources believe the path was actually named for Owen Salter. A portion of that path is still visible, Stephens said. Salter Pathers have always lived for the “Mullet Blow,” the official start of autumn fishing season. “When the mullet ran in big black schools out in the ocean,” the entire Salter Path community once came to the beach, Stephens said. The fishermen “would encircle the mullet with the long nets, which had been knit so patiently by their women. Hundreds of pounds of mullet would be brought to shore.” Richard Ehrenkaufer of Emerald Isle is a fishing instructor whose “stage name” is Dr. Bogus. He tells us: “Sensing a blast of northeast wind, the finger mullet and hardhead mullet know when it’s time to head south for their winter spawn.” “The mullet themselves provide good eats. Some people pickle or can the finger mullet like herring or sardines, and of course, the striped mullet is famed for its succulent roe, while the whole fish is often butterflied and grilled or smoked.” “The massive migration of mullet out of our creeks and sounds rings the dinner bell for fall to begin, and drum, flounder and speckled trout” are in hot pursuit, Dr. Bogus says.
Salter Path: ‘An Island on an Island’ Salter Path was once a village that “lay quiet and peaceful, nestled in trees … almost like paradise,” reported Rodney Kemp, Carteret County historian extraordinaire. “It seemed like an old quilt pieced together with an old hand.” He shared these thoughts with Ann Green, a contributor to the Coastwatch publication of the North Carolina Sea Grant program. 50
ISLAND REVIEW • July 2021
In a sense, Salter Path is the heart of the Bogue Banks. The late Lillian Smith Golden (1901-85), a native Salter Pather, once wrote: “If there was ever a heaven on Earth, it was here. There was wild country on each side of us. We had a church. We had a school. We had a feeling for each other, a love for one another....” Development has encroached on Salter Path. Today, it is the only unincorporated community on Bogue Banks – 81 acres that form an island on an island. Green found Salter Path’s Kathleen McMillan Guthrie to be a willing and able tour guide. It used to be that men gathered at Irvin Smith’s store and exchanged fishing stories. “Most of these men were competitive,” Guthrie said. “The competition was not for money. The competition was for who caught the prettiest scallops and shrimp.” After Irvin’s store closed down in the 1980s, the gathering place became the Save-A-Stop convenience store. Local men – from retired ferry captains to commercial fishermen – start arriving around 6:45am to sit on stools and share news.
Postal Service Delivers the Mail to ‘Gillikin’ The first U.S. post office on Bogue Banks opened in 1915, which in effect, changed the name of the unincorporated village of Salter Path to “Gillikin.” This occurrence also opened a new chapter in Carteret County history. Now, the county had two communities named in honor of the same person – a young woman named Sarah Elizabeth “Bettie” Gillikin Adams. That is quite a rarity. Records show that Bettie Gillikin was born in 1881, the daughter of Chewe Pigott Gillikin and Caldonia Goulding Gillikin of Otway, a community located in the Down East section of the county. Chewe operated a small general store next to his home in Otway. He was the first and only postmaster at Otway. (Otway’s post office was established in 1902 and discontinued in 1924.) Bettie had served as an assistant to her father in Otway, and she was credited with helping him establish a new post office in 1903 at a nearby settlement on the North River. “In appreciation of her assistance,” that new post office as well as its community was named, simply, “Bettie.” Bettie Gillikin attended the public high school in Atlantic and then enrolled at Graham Academy in Marshallberg, were she earned a teaching certificate. The Graham Academy was founded in 1888 by Methodist Rev. William Quincy Adams Graham to provide religious and moral training to the youth of the county. It was open to boys and girls and attended by day students as well as boarders. The pastor considered Marshallberg to be an ideal location, as “the nearest saloon was 40 miles away.” Bettie Gillikin took a job as a school teacher, first at Diamond City near Cape Lookout and then in Otway. In 1910, she married Macajah C. “M.C.” Adams of North River. He was “a fisherman and a boatman.” The couple made their home at Salter Path. Bettie Gillikin Adams became the teacher at the Salter Path one-room school house. “The name of the town was changed to Gillikin in honor of ‘Miss
