BARRIER TALES: An OBX leader analyzes the coastal region's shifting tides.

• Author: Knaack, Audrey

Change is not new to the Outer Banks. Yet, throughout Clark Twiddy's career, the real-estate executive grew tired of learning about the region's history from obituaries. So he decided to describe the changes occurring at North Carolina's barrier islands through locals' experiences.

"I would just call people up and say, 'Hey, will you tell me a story or two?' Or, 'Hey, what'd you see here? And 'hey, can you remember this?' And so I would just talk with them."

Twiddy's hospitality-based career has provided an interesting perspective to look at how the Outer Banks' region has developed through key personalities. The result is his new book, "Outer Banks Visionaries: Building North Carolina's Oceanfront." It's his second release about the area's history.

Over the past 30 years, the quaint fishing villages have become neighbors to a booming visitor economy. Resistance to the change is futile, he notes.

"Change is a constant. It's a question of how we shape change and our ability to shape it rather than to resist it. If we describe ourselves as resistant to change, then we are doomed to fail."

The graduate of Virginia Military Institute, University of Tennessee, and Northwestern University's business school was raised in Duck, a small Dare County town. He oversees his family's Twiddy & Company, which was formed in 1978 and comprises more than 1,000 rental homes from Nags Head north to the Virginia state line.

The Outer Banks' status as a visitor economy accelerated during the '80s, Twiddy says, crediting how people gained purchasing power during the Reagan administration. Higher disposable income contributed to more demand for vacation homes and rentals. Today, North Carolina is the sixth-most visited state in America.

Dare County, home to Duck, Nags Head, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, has a median home value of about $548,000, the highest in the state. "It's indeed remarkable to consider that the Outer Banks has emerged as a capital of what is now a major asset class in America," namely luxury residential real estate.

In the book, Twiddy covers the journeys of various Outer Banks visionaries who took part in its transition from isolation to a thriving visitor economy. He cites the...