Qualla: Coast Guard Station Cobb Island

Coast Guard Station Cobb Island: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ccospel, CC BY-SA 3.0. In early May 1998, a Virginia Beach house-moving crew lifted a three-story Colonial Revival Coast Guard station off the southern end of Cobb Island, set it on a barge, and floated it eight miles across Cobb Island Bay. On May 6 the barge reached a newly prepared site at Oyster, on the Eastern Shore mainland. On May 7 the building came off the barge. The Nature Conservancy had decided the only way to save the 1936 station was to take it with them, because Cobb Island, the place it had been built to guard, was disappearing under the Atlantic at a rate the sea would not negotiate.

Image: Ccospel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coast Guard Station Cobb Island: Hard-Time's Island

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ccospel, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nathan F. Cobb, Sr., a Cape Cod man, walked into Northampton County in October 1837 and opened a store on the seaside road. Two years later he bought an uninhabited barrier island just south of the Great Machipongo Inlet from a local fisherman called "Hard-Time" Fitchett. The pri...

Image: Ccospel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coast Guard Station Cobb Island: From Lifesavers to Coast Guard

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ccospel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cobbs and their neighbors saved enough drowning sailors that in 1875 the United States Life-Saving Service commissioned a lifesaving station on Cobb's Island, the first formal recognition of the rescue work the family had been doing for free. Two years later that first statio...

Image: Ccospel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coast Guard Station Cobb Island: Decommissioned and Abandoned

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ccospel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Coast Guard closed Station Cobb Island in 1964. With the rescue radio gone, the island had no permanent inhabitants at all. In 1973 the federal government turned the abandoned station over to The Nature Conservancy as part of the Virginia Coast Reserve. For two decades the co...

Image: Ccospel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coast Guard Station Cobb Island: Eight Miles by Barge

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ccospel, CC BY-SA 3.0. Expert Construction and House Movers, a Virginia Beach commercial firm, lifted the three-story Colonial Revival building onto a barge in early May 1998. The associated boathouse had already been moved to the new site by an earlier barge. On May 6 a tug pulled the barge with the s...

Image: Ccospel | CC BY-SA 3.0