Don’t think this means you’ll have a hard time shopping though because Kitty Hawk has a bevy of surf shops, beach stores, and places to pick up an OBX souvenir. This may be the most commercial of the Outer Banks towns, with a Wal-Mart and Home Depot adding to the mix of builders, specialty shops serving new home builds and renovation projects, and others catering to folks who want to move here or spruce up an existing place.
There are lots of hotels and motels in Kitty Hawk as well as RV-friendly campgrounds, so visitors won’t be left wanting for a place to stay. Kitty Hawk, bordered to the south by Kill Devil Hills and to the north by Southern Shores, is a mix of residential and rental homes, but the rentals here aren’t the mini-mansions or mega beach houses you’ll find elsewhere on the Outer Banks, but are more modest homes, closer to how the full-time Outer Bankers live than to oceanfront palaces.
So when the Wright Brothers sent the telegram announcing their success to the press in Ohio, the telegram came from Kitty Hawk and the reporters ran with it. That’s because Kitty Hawk was the largest town by population on the Outer Banks back when Orville and Wilbur were hanging out, and as such, Kitty Hawk had a telegram station. In fact, many of our visitors know the name Kitty Hawk in connection with the Wright Brothers, associating this town with the First in Flight stories they remember from history class (even though you know – or will know once you visit – that Kill Devil Hills was the sight of that historic first flight). Could it be that the chickahauk and this mystery goose are one in the same? Maybe, but regardless, Kitty Hawk has a great name and for many Outer Banks visitors, it’s the first town they reach when they arrive on our shores. Others say it’s an antiquated term for a type of goose popular with waterfowl hunters in the late 1800s and early 1900s and with bird netters before that. Some say it’s the Anglicization of the native word chickahauk, for which we have no translation. Of all the beach towns on the Northern Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk may have the most-lovely name but it’s one whose roots are lost to time.
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