Southern Shores, North Carolina

Southern Shores sits between Duck and Kitty Hawk on the northern Outer Banks, a quiet, mostly residential town that visitors often drive straight through on the way to flashier neighbors. At 4.2 square miles with roughly 3,000 year-round residents, it has no hotels or motels at all — just single-family homes and vacation rentals, by design.

The Outer Banks' First Planned Community

Southern Shores was developed starting in 1947 by Chicago sportsman and outdoorsman Frank Stick, who bought up the sparsely populated land — used by the U.S. Navy for bombing practice during World War II — and platted it as the Outer Banks' first planned residential community, incorporated as a town in 1979. Stick's plan deliberately preserved stands of maritime forest and live oak between home sites rather than clearing them.

Flat Tops and Canals

The town's most distinctive architecture is the "flat top" — low, blocky, flat-roofed houses built in the 1960s and 70s that residents compare to midcentury Palm Springs design, clustered mostly in the Chicahauk and Cul de Sac neighborhoods. Southern Shores' interior is also threaded with man-made canals off the sound, giving many homes private boat docks a short paddle from open water.

A Quiet Base Between Bigger Towns

With no commercial strip to speak of, Southern Shores works best as a quiet home base within a few minutes' drive of Duck's shops to the north and Kitty Hawk's beach access and dining to the south.