I recently visited the new Elliott Coues Nature Trail at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach, NC. Located to the west of Fort Macon and the US Coast Guard Station, a portion of the trail winds over sound side marshes and through old growth maritime forests of stunted live oaks and red cedars.
The trail is named for Dr. Elliott Coues (September 9, 1842 – December 25, 1899), an American army surgeon, historian, author, naturalist, ornithologist, anatomist, taxonomist, and occultist who was stationed at Fort Macon in 1869. He was the author of the seminal Key to North American Birds in 1872 and the editor of Journals of Lewis and Clark in 1893. When he died in 1899 the journal Birds and All Nature published:
“...one of the few men who have become famous both in physical and psychical science. He had long been recognized as one of the leading naturalists of America, and of late years had acquired equal distinction as a philosopher.
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As an author he is chiefly known by his numerous works on ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, bibliography, lexicography, comparative anatomy, natural philosophy, and psychical research. He was one of the authors of the Century Dictionary of the English Language, in seven years contributing 40,000 words and definitions in general biology, comparative anatomy, and all branches of zoology. During the last few years he contributed several volumes on western history, in all twelve volumes, and by study and research was enabled to correct many errors. In 1877 he received the highest technical honor to be attained by the American scientist in his election to the Academy of National Science and was for some years the youngest academician.”
Trees, particularly mature trees, are of special interest on NC's barrier islands. Early ideas about the nature of the maritime fringe focused on an idyllic but inaccurate history of the environment as a stable landform covered with healthy, old growth trees. Scientists, politicians, and conservationists in the early 20th century believed that it was only due to the destructive acts of early human inhabitants that we have the sandy, shrubby, and unstable landscape we know today. With the blame placed on shortsighted logging practices and the uncontrolled grazing of livestock, administrators believed that through scientific management, conservation, and dune building the coastal landscape would return to an imagined reforested state. To this day, the project to stabilize the shifting sands is still underway. Current research paints a more dynamic picture of maritime ecology:
“While many aspects of the history of North Carolina’s maritime forests need further investigation, the preponderance of the evidence presented here supports the conclusion that human activity was not the primary cause of the live dunes in the region. At the end of the Little Ice Age, an increase in the rate of sea level rise and in storm frequency increased the number of overwash events; and the vegetation responded. The near constant pummeling left the island plants with little time to recover. Dunes were laid bare, and sand started moving across the Outer Banks. This emphasis on storm frequency leads to a more dynamic view of barrier island vegetation. As disturbance becomes less common, maritime forests expand outward from their refuges at the capes and other centers of stability. As disturbance becomes more common, they shrink, leaving behind ghost forests and wash woods. From this perspective, rather than a stable forest primeval, the vegetation of barrier islands is as dynamic a part of the island landscape as its human populations and geological structures.”
Panorama of old growth maritime forest seen along the Elliott Coues Nature Trail at Fort Macon State Park
Many of the policies that still shape the Outer Banks began with the trees. It was from this desire to reconfigure, reforest, and return to an imagined state that the massive worldbuilding project on NC's coast commenced. In his excellent thesis, Gabriel Francis Lee summarizes the results:
“By the 1970s, reactions in scientific circles against shoreline dunes and against presumptions of a stable natural system on the barrier islands mirrored local villagers’ reactions against eroding cultural practices that Hatteras Islanders sought to preserve in oral histories conducted by residents. Two decades after establishing the park, residents and developers alike were forced to come to terms with several ironies of the Outer Banks project: what was supposed to stabilize and restore the banks to a past equilibrium instead led to a transformed landscape that required constant maintenance; though conservation was supposed to be about scientific, rational management, it was instead political, inefficient, and out of step with later science...”