The mysterious castle in the dune

By Maggie Miles | Outer Banks Voice on September 1, 2023

The Castle in its heyday. (Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Some features of the Jockey’s Ridge Mini Golf. (Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Some features of the Jockey’s Ridge Mini Golf. (Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

(Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Some features of the Jockey’s Ridge Mini Golf. (Credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Aerial of Jockey's Ridge Mini Golf. (Courtesy Katie Thibault)

 

Remnant at Jockey’s Ridge harkens back to mini golf and a different era

For decades, the tip of a mysterious castle poking out from beneath the sand dunes of Jockey’s Ridge State Park has piqued the curiosity of locals and vacationers alike. Visible from U.S. 158 (The Bypass), the castle plays an ongoing game of peekaboo with those driving by and those who come to climb the highest sand dunes on the East Coast, as it alternates between being buried and revealed, depending which way the wind blows.

Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head, which consists of more than 400 acres of sand that is said to have begun forming around 4,000 years ago, has a history and ecology that is discussed and written about extensively in research studies, books, museums, and classrooms.  But the fortress buried beneath the sands has a story all its own—the story of an eclectic miniature golf course called Jockey’s Ridge Mini Golf, or as the owners fondly referred to it as, “Miniature Golf on the Hill.”

The course opened in 1975, the same year that the dunes officially became a state park and two years after Carolista Baum famously laid down in front of bulldozers to save the park. The course was closed and sold to the state in 1988, after shifting sand dunes began to envelope it.

The castle, added to the course in 1979, is the only feature that can been seen still today, and it has its own Facebook fan page called Jockey’s Ridge Sand Castle with almost 2,000 members.

Located on a three-acre lot at the south end of the park atop a sand dune that took two flights of stairs to reach, Jockey’s Ridge Mini Golf was started by Marian “Miki” Meekins. After divorcing her first husband, she met her second husband, Alton Meekins later in life, when she began working real estate in the early ‘60s.

“She was a very strong woman and very smart. But she would give you the shirt off her back if you asked her. She pretty much led our family. She was like the matriarch of this family. She was a wonderful woman. She was before her time,” said her granddaughter Katie Kidd, who spent her summers working at the course.

You can tell by taking one look at a photo that she was glamorous as well, “and she stayed that way till the day she died.” Kidd added. “Always had to be dressed, always had to have her hair done.”

Marian and Alton Meekins opened their own real estate firm together in Nags Head in the 1960s called Meekins Realty, but the mini golf course was her special passion project. The castle was just one installation of many on the course. It also featured a giant yellow octopus with big googly eyes, a green dragon whose long neck wove in and out of the sand, a giant seashell, and a giant snake.

The course’s pirate ship was a real boat with a drawbridge powered by a big wheel inside the ship. It was made by an actual boat builder and was so large that employees lived in it. Kidd says many of Meekins’ ideas were inspired by the mini golf courses she would admire around the East Coast on her travels that spurred her to start one herself.

Featured in the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive in the Library of Congress, the course has become a favorite topic of many social media users and bloggers who have fond memories of playing the 18 holes every summer.

It is a constant topic in the “Outer Banks Vintage Scrapbook,” a group of almost 60,000 Facebook users who share and discuss photos and memories of the way the Outer Banks used to be. But there are many mini golf courses in the Outer Banks’ history, so what is it about this one?

“Because of the hill it was on,” said Kidd. “I mean, when you went up there, I’m telling you at nighttime, you could sit up there and there was a beautiful breeze and we had music playing up there and it was pretty, and you could see the ocean and the sound. There were fireworks on the Fourth of July and hang gliders flying over. It was just a phenomenal spot for mini golf.”

Michele Shoener, who frequented the course in the 70s and 80s, remembers the hang gliders flying over.

“One day, after a round, Pop-pop and I walked up to the big ridge in the back of Jockey’s Ridge where all the hang gliders would take off from, to cheer on the guy who was attempting the world record continuous flight,” she told the Voice. “He was on day two or three if I remember correctly, and I put my winning golf ball in his pouch for him to pull up for good luck.”

“A sweet and handsome fair-haired young man from Elizabeth City taught me how to shag in front of the castle one beautiful summer evening,” wrote one Facebook user in an Outer Banks Vintage Scrapbook thread. “’Twas a lovely night indeed. Will never let go of that memory.”

But maintaining the business became more difficult as the sand began to overtake more of the course every year. Kidd describes tall dunes of sand in the middle of the course that the family would have to clear out before the season started. John Harris, owner of Kitty Hawk Kites, had a lot adjacent to the Meekins’ where he would stage his hang gliders for the school. He got to know the Meekins family over the years and remembers watching mother nature take over.

“The Meekins were very good people, very community-oriented people,” recalled Harris. “Where they built the golf course there were some small dunes, but fairly flat. The main dune was way to the north, probably 100-150 feet north of where they built the golf course. And each year it migrated farther south and eventually got to the point where they had to dig themselves out every spring.”

According to family members, eventually the Meekins didn’t know how to get rid of all the sand. A construction company called Norfleet Construction offered to clear out the sand and take it out in trucks for free if they could keep the sand to use on their various job sites. Marian Meekins agreed.

When North Carolina officials heard of this, they declared the sand at Jockey’s Ridge to be environmentally vulnerable, family members recounted. They told Meekins that if she didn’t sell the property to them, North Carolina would take it eminent domain. Reluctantly, Meekins sold the property to the state in 1988. The features were sold to another mini golf course, and the ship was sold to the Ark International Church in Nags Head to be used as its youth center.

The castle is the only feature that remains. And over the years, sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. But Jockey’s Ridge Park Ranger Justin Barnes says that’s to be expected.

“There are 400 acres of sand here and it can do what it wants,” he said. “The dunes have always shifted around depending on storms and wind. That’s just mother nature working its magic.”

In fact, when the castle is visible, it serves as kind of a time capsule, recalling an era when the bypass was a two-lane road and when kids could walk over from the surrounding neighborhoods, play a round of golf and go get a burger at That’s A Burger or head across the street to the ice cream parlor.

“It makes me feel really good that so many people have such fond memories of something my family did,” said Kidd, who says her grandmother used much of the money she made from the course to put her grandchildren through college.

“As a little girl, it’s just a golf course,” she added.  “I saw people coming through and you know, occasionally I would handle money and stuff. And it’s just it wasn’t that big a deal. But now that I see all the things people have said, it really makes me feel good.”

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