A-Frame House

Charles Reeves and Sam Bass

Story
Decoys
Credits

🟡 LARGE RESEARCH VOLUME

OWNERS

Charles Reeves
Sam Bass

1956 onward
1956 onward

OTHER ASSOCIATIONS

Tom Overton….purchased and moved it

Steve McGee….current owner

LOCATION
Cape Lookout Bight, Southern Core Banks

Story

do you know more? contact me.

Title

The “A-Frame House” built by Charles Reeves and Sam Bass (of Sanford) was a prominent fixture at the Cape.

Tom Overton purchased the structure at NPS takeover for a dollar and moved it and the side-structure to two sites on Harkers Island. Steve McGee currently owns the A-Frame and Ms. Pittman owns the side cottage…both now on the south Harkers Island shore.

“ Charles Reeves took his boys on a camping trip to Cape Lookout not long ago. Camp was set up about a mile from the ocean.

While Mr. Reeves and his sons were walking across country to the beach, 10-year old David asked, “When are they going to build a road down here, Daddy’

‘I don’t know,’ Mr. Reeves answered.

‘Well, I hope they don’t ever build one,’ David commented, ‘because if they build roads, women will come here and where there are women there’s always soap, and I haven’t seen a piece of soap since we left home.’”

(uncredited 1956 news clipping in Bass files)

About 1960, Charles Reeves, and his brother-in-law, Sam Bass built the A-Frame House…a Cape fixture of that period.

under construction, supervised by Sam Bass

each window on the slant roof was a functioning ship’s porthole.

beach facing side

The interior was well-appointed

surveying the Bight

This attached cottage was also floated to Harkers Island’s shore facing the Cape

An old Willis jeep served as transport for years. Charles would fly over to announce his arrival, causing a rapid rush in the jeep to the sand flats to meet his plane.

In the 1960s, Sam Bass, Tony Seamon helped Boy Scouts transform the Cape by planting hundreds of pine trees…creating the view-scape seen there today.

Reeves and Bass proposed a development of their property on Cape Lookout. It seems likely that this was a favorable negotiating ploy to strengthen his hand in negotiating land value with the government.

from the Cape Lookout Beach Club promotional brochure

structural layout

Filming of the 1966 Chevrolet commercial at the Cape–crew-members stayed in the A-Frame (search YouTube for the commercial and video of how it was produced)

The Reeves Lodge and guesthouse were purchased for one dollar in 1985 by Thomas Lane Overton, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel from Troy, N.C.. Moving the structures off and cleaning up the site were part of the deal. Humphrey Brothers Moving Company of Jacksonville were hired for the project.