First-ever guided tours of Little Kinnakeet provide an inside look into Avon’s own 1874 Life-Saving Station

The summer of 2024 marks the first time that the public can explore the inner workings of the Little Kinnakeet Life-Saving Station, thanks to the launch of weekly Friday tours that are part of a year-long 150th anniversary celebration.

In 1874, the first seven Life-Saving Stations (LSS) were constructed along the North Carolina coastline, from Currituck Beach to just north of Avon where the Little Kinnakeet LSS resides.

To honor this milestone, the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station – the only original station that serves as a full-time museum – has spearheaded multiple initiatives, and one of its ventures is a collaboration with the National Park Service (NPS) to allow visitors to explore Little Kinnakeet LSS for the first time in history.

“It’s one of the original seven stations, so we thought it ought to be open during the 150th anniversary, and we were pushing to have tours available for visitors,” said Mel Poole, Chicamacomico LSS volunteer.

The new and unique guided tour program at Little Kinnakeet began on June 28, and just three weeks into the program, NPS tour guides Anne-Marie Mignone and Jaelene Weaver have already seen an uptick in interest.

“During our first two weeks, we had just a handful of visitors, but for this [latest third tour], we had 22 visitors,” said Weaver, “so word is definitely starting to spread.”

A typical crowd at a Friday afternoon tour consists of curious vacationers as well as longtime Avon residents who have family ties to the station, and who are taking advantage of the (perfectly legal) opportunity to breeze past the barbed wire fence and explore the grounds.

The story of the Little Kinnakeet LSS is long, and it’s dotted with hiccups that have prevented visitor access until now.

The original station was built on the oceanfront shoreline roughly 11 miles north of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and a separate cookhouse was added in 1892 to keep the heat and the smoke out of the small station’s interior.

After a few years of getting battered by the ocean on a regular basis, however, the station was moved to the soundside in 1900, and in 1904, a southern-pattern station house – one of only four stations ever built with such a distinctive design – was constructed to enable more elbow room for the Life-Saving Service personnel.

After the new station was built, the original 1874 station was simply repurposed as a boathouse, and a small “Little Kinnakeet” community popped up in the station’s shadow to save personnel and family members from trekking 3.5 miles to and from the larger village of “Big” Kinnakeet. (Kinnakeet was technically re-named  “Avon” by the U.S. Post Office in 1883, but its original name – an Algonquin term for “that which is mixed” – remained the preferred moniker for local residents.)

While the Little Kinnakeet community is long gone – with just a sprinkling of gravestones and foundations buried in soundside vegetation to mark its existence – the 1874 original station, 1892 cookhouse, and 1904 station all remain.

Little Kinnakeet LSS was operational for 80 years, transitioning to a U.S. Coast Guard Station when the Coast Guard replaced the Life-Saving Service in 1915.

The station was decommissioned in 1954 and fell under the stewardship of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Once N.C. Highway 12 and the Bonner Bridge across Oregon Inlet were built in the 1960s, and vacationers started to flock to the National Seashore, plans began to float around to restore the historic station as a bonified Hatteras Island landmark.

Drawings from the 1970s serve as evidence of these early intentions to transform Little Kinnakeet into a museum and visitors center, but the funding and the interest never quite came together at the time.

Decades later, around 2004, a restoration project did indeed begin and continued for three years, but eventually, the budget couldn’t keep up with the extensive work required.

You’ll see patches of this more recent restoration work during a Friday afternoon tour, starting with the peach-colored exteriors of the original station and cookhouse, and extending to repaired or replaced wooden boards that line the 1874 station’s walls and ceiling.

“We had three phases planned, and what you see is the completion of phase one,” explains Mignone. “In 2008 we had a recession, and lost funding, and the restoration work stopped.”

Not long after, a fence was constructed around the property, and the station remained isolated and inaccessible for the next 15 years or so.

This is why opening Little Kinnakeet LSS to the public is such a landmark event.

Certainly, during its operational heyday, family members of Life-Saving Service personnel could pop by the station to drop off a home-cooked meal or two, or to lend some clothing to the latest wave of shipwrecked victims who were saved by Little Kinnakeet crewmembers.

Even when the mid-2000s restoration work was occurring, visitors could swing by and see the progress, and chat with the folks who were bringing the station back to its former and burnt-orange-colored glory days.

But it wasn’t until June of 2024 that visitors were readily welcomed and even encouraged to visit the site, and experience a first-hand encounter with one of North Carolina’s original Life-Saving Stations through an in-depth tour that dives into the station’s story.

The tour starts on the porch of the 1904 station where Weaver and Mignone take turns telling stories about historic rescues that were linked to the station, and sharing background facts about the architecture and details that make Little Kinnakeet unique.

The interior of the 1904 station isn’t part of the exploration, but visitors are guided through the site’s oldest structures – the 1892 cookhouse and the 1874 station – with fascinating tidbits of information along the way.

The cookhouse is small and untouched, with the original chimney and cabinets revealing the squat building’s purpose, but the 1874 boathouse is a mixture of 150-year-old structural elements and slightly newer additions that were added over the years, and particularly during the mid-2000s renovation.

Unlike the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station, where the structures within the site have been transformed into authentic but renovated exhibit space, the interior of Little Kinnakeet’s structures is raw.

You might spot an old snakeskin in a corner of the station, or creeping vines encircling the ramp leading to the entrance, but this untouched quality adds to the appeal. Visitors who explore the Little Kinnakeet LSS this summer will be among the first folks to ever do so, and it definitely shows.

The tour concludes with a question and answer section, and an opportunity to explore a little deeper through on-display photos and graphics from Little Kinnakeet’s past.

There are a few spots that are off-limits, like the upstairs of the 1874 station that is accessed by a rickety and untested staircase, but the rest of the 17.5-acre site is wide open for plenty of great photos.

The guided tours are completely free to the public and are held every Friday at 3:30 p.m. through Labor Day. The Little Kinnakeet Life-Saving Station is located 3.5 miles north of Avon on the soundside of N.C. Highway 12.

The Friday tours last approximately 45 minutes, and sturdy shoes are recommended as the grounds are dotted with spiky vegetation and bits of glass and debris. (Visitors should also note that there are no restrooms at the site, so plan ahead on the bathroom front.)

Although it is still unknown whether the weekly Little Kinnakeet LSS tours will continue in the years to come as part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s summertime programs, for 2024 at least, the public can enjoy a rare opportunity to explore a historic Hatteras Island site that has been veritably closed off to the public for 150 years.

For more information on the 150th anniversary of North Carolina’s first Life-Saving Stations, click here.

For more information about the National Park Service’s weekly summertime programs, held at sites throughout the Cape Hatteras National Seashore on Bodie, Hatteras, and Ocracoke Islands, click here.