upfront soundcheck
FOX ON THE RUN getactive startingpoint roadmap gokite milepost graphiccontent
For more than two decades, a British sport served as local tradition.
Imagine a beautiful winter morning. The late-rising February sun peeks over the horizon, casting its rosy glow over a lessdeveloped Outer Banks. It is the 1950s, and suddenly the sound of a horn shatters the chilly air. The hunt is on. For 25 years from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, hunters and hounds assembled in Nags Head for the annual Valentine’s Day Fox Hunt. Headquartered at the Carolinian Hotel, the multi-day event often drew 100 hunters. Roanoke Island’s Lib Fearing, who moved to Dare County in 1947 — the same year the Carolinian opened for business — remembers the Valentine’s Day Fox Hunt as “the social event of the season” with hunt breakfasts, oyster roasts on the beach and gala balls with live music and dancing among the activities. “It was the center of social activity on the beach,” Fearing recollected. “Saturday night was a big night.”
Lucille Purser (later Winslow) and her sister and brother-in-law, Lima and Julian Oneto, who owned and ran the Carolinian, worked hard to promote the new hotel. The weekend’s chief organizers were Oxford, North Carolina, brothers Chandler and John Ray Watkins — who hunted the area several years before the official Carolinian affair. They had their own rough kennels back in Nags Head Woods and acted as hunt masters. And let’s not forget the fecundity of foxes. In a February 1950 article in the Gastonia Gazette, Dare County publicist/promoter Aycock Brown wrote, “Foxes are so numerous here at the present time that they are becoming a threat to wildfowl, birds and small game… Several have been seen along the ocean’s surf where the animals go apparently to catch sand crabs.” Hunts took place at Bodie Island, in Nags Head Woods and on Colington Island. After the sounding of the horn, groups released
Always Fresh • Always Special Always Open (364 nights a year)
gosurf outthere gohuntor rearview Offering Full Course Dining Tapas Style selections $4 - $14 in our Tavern Award Winning Desserts Nightly Entertainment Year Round Dining seated nightly 4:30 til 10 pm • kellysrestaurant.com • 252 - 441 - 4116 MP 10.5 • 158 bypass • 2316 South Croatan Highway • NagsHead, North Carolina 27959 milepost
8