By Steven M. Lepore, Dailymail.Com
Updated on 2024-07-04 07:01, 2024-07-04 07:01
- The castle appeared at Jockey's Ridge on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
- The dunes are thousands of years old and are thought to be the deepest on the East Coast.
- The castle was born out of an attempt to develop on the sand dunes in the 1970s.
A mysterious castle has appeared on the North Carolina coast after being covered by historic sand dunes for several years.
North Carolina's Outer Banks is a popular tourist destination every summer and is the subject of the Netflix series “Outer Banks,” which depicts a treasure hunt in the region.
The dunes at Jockey's Ridge are the largest on the East Coast, with much of it buried under over 400 acres of sand, and are a must-see destination that draws thousands of visitors each year for hang gliding and snowboarding.
As the dunes shift due to factors such as the sun and wind, it is common for objects to rise up from the sand, such as sand castles that will appear in the summer of 2024.
But this isn't exactly a royal garden, or even a sandy beach: it turns out to be the remains of a mini-golf course from decades ago.
The castle still stands, but it is crumbling, faded, and overgrown with dead vegetation due to erosion.
The stone, a marker indicating that it was erected in 1978, has survived for nearly 50 years in the sand dunes and still stands 8 to 10 feet tall.
So how did this castle and golf course end up here?
Developers tried to build on the dunes in the 1960s and 1970s, overcoming opposition from local residents and environmentalists, according to WRAL.
One such development was a mini-golf course to entice fun-seekers to linger on the dunes.
But nature took its course, and by the 1980s the course was completely covered in quicksand.
Eventually, the developers gave up and sold the course to the state of North Carolina.
The discovery of the Castle Hole this year has left many wondering what happened to the rest of the golf course.
Photographs from the Library of Congress show that holes were once built around giant sea monsters, ships, giant octopuses, and cobras.
It is reportedly unclear whether the structures have been demolished and their whereabouts remain a mystery.
The naturally shifting sands of the Jockey's Ridge dunes may one day allow them to be discovered, just like the castle.
The dunes are thought to be thousands of years old, and will likely determine what emerges from their depths in the future.