In 2006, the United States Congress gave North Carolina a grand and historic gift in deeding to the state the Mattamuskeet Lodge, a nearly 75-year-old building treasured by hunters, birdwatchers and historians.
Since then, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the Department of Cultural Resources have been working to renovate the building, which previously had been declared unsuitable for occupancy.
Once a pump station, it became a hunting lodge in the 1930s. It was placed on the National Historic Register in 1980.
Now, workers are carefully reconstructing the pieces of the building, including the observation tower, rooms, kitchen and ballroom, restoring it to its former glory.
It is slated to reopen as a lodge, meeting site and museum, nestled, just as always, along the picturesque shore of Lake Mattamuskeet in Hyde County.