‘A state treasure.’ NC turns landmark historic lodge over to county for restoration.

Even if you’ve never set foot in Hyde County, you may recognize Lake Mattamuskeet Lodge from photographs. The white brick building with a red-tile roof and 120-foot observation tower is irresistible to photographers when it’s reflected in the canal at the south end of the lake.

Built as a pump station more than a century ago, the building was converted to a hunting lodge in the 1930s and hosted high school proms, weddings, reunions and other events for decades. It remains a focal point of the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, the 50,000-acre playground for migrating geese, ducks and swans 180 miles east of Raleigh.

But the lodge has been closed since 2000 because of structural problems, and efforts by the state to restore the historic building and find a new use for it have stalled.

Now Hyde County will give it a shot. The state has agreed to turn over control of the property and provide millions to help the county finish the restoration and reopen the building as an education and cultural center and event space.

It’s a big deal for a county of fewer than 5,000 residents, says Kim Noble, who grew up in Hyde and is now the county manager.

“Our community takes a great deal of pride in that building, as we should. It’s an icon,” Noble said in an interview. “We want to, as soon as possible, open the doors and allow people to come back in.”

A milestone in that effort took place last week when the Council of State — the 10 top statewide-elected officials led by the governor — approved a 30-year lease of the lodge to the county for $1.

The state, through the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, will continue to own the building and be a partner in its restoration. But commission member Kelly Davis, who lives about four miles from the lodge, said restoring the building and opening it to the public is outside the agency’s mission.

“The wildlife commission recognizes the value of the lodge as a historical structure,” Davis said in an interview. “And the commission recognizes that the county is very interested in having the lodge be the resource that it has the potential to be.”

A lake with a rich history and rich soil

At 40,000 acres, Mattamuskeet is North Carolina’s largest natural lake. It’s also shallow, averaging just two feet deep. People began thinking of draining that water to farm the rich lake bottom in the early 1800s. A series of canals dug in the 19th century lowered the water levels but not enough to farm.

Then in 1909, the General Assembly put the lake up for sale. The Southern Land Reclamation Company bought Mattamuskeet for just under $100,000 and set about draining it.

Central to that goal was the coal-fired pump station, completed around 1916, to force water through the canals into Pamlico Sound. For a time, the effort was successful, according to a report that helped put the building on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Some 12,000 acres of lake bottom were planted in corn, flax, sunflowers, rice, sweet potatoes and soybeans, according to the report; one potato crop yielded 900 bushels per acre, nine times the state average.

But pests, heavy rains and “pumping difficulties” ultimately forced the farm company to give up, and the water returned. The federal government bought Lake Mattamuskeet in 1934 for a wildlife refuge, and members of the Civilian Conservation Corps converted the building into a lodge where hunters could share a meal and sleep after a day of shooting ducks and geese.

The workers built a spiral staircase inside the pump station’s smokestack and turned it into an observation tower that’s easily mistaken for a lighthouse.

The lodge was busy until bird populations began to shrink. It closed in 1974, and the building began to decline. Various efforts by nonprofits and the building’s owner, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, kept the doors open for events and kept alive the hope for a full restoration.

Then in 2000, engineers discovered structural problems so severe that the building was declared unsafe. It’s been closed to the public ever since.

County starting with a ‘clean slate’

North Carolina politicians and the public pressed the federal government to repair the building and eventually persuaded Congress to turn it over to the state in 2006. The state spent more than $5 million fixing the structural problems but went no further after the Great Recession of 2008 forced state government to cut spending, said Noble, the county manager.

The state considered various schemes to reopen the lodge as a combination event space and hotel, going back to the model that had worked decades ago. But all the projections showed it would be a money-losing operation, Noble said.

Hyde County doesn’t plan to turn the lodge into a hotel. Instead, the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service will run education programs out of the building, while a new nonprofit, the Mattamuskeet Lodge Society, will manage events, a gift shop and museum, and raise money through donations.

Hyde County estimates it will take $17 million to fully restore the building. The state made the building structurally sound and restored the roof, but it needs new electrical, HVAC, sewage and fire suppression systems as well as work on all the interior woodwork and plaster.

“Basically I like to look at it as we are starting with a clean slate,” Noble said.

Lawmakers provided $6.5 million for the lodge in the most recent state budget. Noble said that should cover the cost of building plans and fixing the sewage, mechanical and electrical systems. As that work progresses, the county will ask for additional money for future phases, she said.

Contractors have already been hired to make the observation tower safe, using money previously allocated by the General Assembly, said Davis, the Wildlife Resources Commission member. There’s lead paint to remove and concrete walls to repair, and the steel platforms need replacing, she said. That may take a couple of years, she said, but once the tower is open to the public, “it’s one heck of a view from up there.”

Davis has also been in the lodge itself, and says many of the walls have been taken down to the studs and the old furniture piled up under sheets of plastic. Part of one of the steam pumps is still visible in the basement, she said, and will likely be incorporated into the museum.

Davis has lived in Hyde County for 44 years, since coming to work at the wildlife refuge right out of college. She says people are “enchanted by Hyde County” and love to visit her, because of the birds, the wide open spaces and beautiful dark skies.

Davis calls the lodge “a state treasure” that will help the county tell its story.

“The sincere interest of my neighbors and friends in the lodge is genuine,” she said. “They want to roll up their sleeves and make it work.”