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OBX Horses

Courtesy of Andrea Stuart, Andrea L. Stuart Photography

Courtesy of Andrea Stuart, Andrea L. Stuart Photography

Courtesy of Andrea Stuart, Andrea L. Stuart Photography

I’ve never vacationed in Nags Head, NC. I’ve never stayed in Kitty Hawk, slept over in Kill Devil Hills and only once, after a long drive, have I stepped foot on Hatteras Island.

Yet I’ve been vacationing in the Outer Banks for almost 25 years, exclusively in the village of Corolla.

As a child, it was a terrible place to visit. Getting there meant hours and hours of driving through the back roads of North Carolina; an hour-plus stop at the supermarket at the only-two-hours-to-go mark; another hour for dinner; and more bathroom breaks than I care to recall. All of this while crammed in the back of a conversion van with siblings, cousins, at least one dog and enough toilet paper to supply an army.

Once we got there, we – my siblings, cousins and I – suffered through a week of lonely walks on a deserted beach and afternoons spent working puzzles with our grandmother. Our only break was that one day when we made the 45-minute drive to Duck to pick through the handful of shops filled with T-shirts and shell necklaces.

This was the mid-‘80s, only a few years after the state officially opened a road with access to Corolla. My aunt and uncle had been some of the firsts to snap up a vacation home there.

We went back, year after year, and there was one highlight of every trip – the thing that made getting there worth it, whether I was an elementary school kid or bored teenager. The horses.

Enough Richmonders have been vacationing in OBX for enough years to know, Corolla is home to a population of beautiful wild horses, officially called Banker Horses. It has been for the last 500 years.

One of the reasons my childhood trips to Corolla took so long was the drive north along Route 12. Going over 10 mph was impossible. Horses lined the road, trotting back and forth, stopping in the street to stare down motorists before going back to graze on the hills. Every morning we woke up to horses lazily eating their way through the front yard and in the afternoon we watched them storm the beaches (there are some great pictures here).

It was like a dream come true for a kid: live horses right there on the front lawn. But we warned, you can look, but you don’t touch or approach these horses. Corolla was their home, we were just visitors.

We were tourists and, though we were among the first, we certainly weren’t the last. It wasn’t long before a handful of tourists gave way to hundreds and, in their rush to enjoy the serenity of Corolla and the beauty of its wild horses, tourists ended up mowing down these animals.

Throughout the ‘90s, Corolla continued to change. When my mother relocated there, in the mid-‘90s, Corolla had just opened its first supermarket. Within a few years it added a movie theater, surf shop, dozens of restaurants, an arcade, a boutique or two, a new shopping center, and then another, and another. Every new store meant new tourists and every new tourist meant fewer horses. Some were killed by cars, others got sick from being fed human food, or grazing on the fertilizer some investors used to coax green lawns from sand.

Today Corolla is home to a Burger King, a Dairy Queen, even a few pizza parlors … all the comforts of the suburbs, right there on your vacation. What Corolla is not home to is Wild Horses. At least not anywhere that you can easily see.

In the late ‘90s the remaining horses were gathered up and moved to a sanctuary in Carova, the northern part of the beach, just south of the Virginia line. It’s only accessible by 4-wheel-drive vehicle.

Tourists can visit the area and, if they’re able, catch a glimpse of a few of the 100 remaining wild horses.

I still go to Corolla, year after year, and it’s been over a decade since I’ve laid eyes on a wild horse.

Of course, that’s not the end of the story. The horses are still a draw for thousands of tourists each year and, as OBX-frequenters know, Carova has become an increasingly trendy destination.

Still, the horses face the threat of dwindling numbers and possible extinction. These days the wild horses are being mowed down in their adopted home; a stallion had to be euthanized last week, from a broken leg likely caused by an ATV.

So this summer, Richmonders, as you head to the Outer Banks, and possibly even plan to squeeze in a trip to see the wild horses, be careful. Drive slowly and don’t feed or approach the horses. It’s one of the last remaining beauties Corolla has left.  

Originally Published in "Discover Richmond"