The folks over at My Outer Banks Home ran a neat feature on some of the awesome milestones that will be celebrated this year.

See below for the article, and be sure to visit their site and check out some of the other local businesses who are also being recognized for their history in the obx!

kitty hawk kites – 40 Years.

We defy you to write something about kite flying or hang gliding on Jockey's Ridge without mentioning kitty hawk kites or its owner, John Harris. They are inseparable images. The story of catching a lifting breeze ‘just so' inside a fabric airfoil has been told by as many different media outlets as there are flyers who have attempted their first jumps. TripAdvisor and Travel Channel are predictable sources to find Kitty Hawk Kites press. But when a business on the Outer Banks gets picked up by USA Today, National Geographic or the far-flung Denver Post, you begin to see how this local company has managed to stay put after forty years of business – that's forty years focused around a shifting sand dune, no less.

When asked to name a pivotal moment in their history, Harris says, “just getting started and finding a building [was a challenge]. I walked into one realtor's office during the winter of 1974 and stated that I wanted to start a hang-gliding school and sell gliders. He laughed me out of the office. I owe a lot to Stan White (who probably thought I was crazy) but helped me anyway.” What was once a laughable idea is now housed in 15 stores on the Carolina Coast and employs nearly 350 during peak summer months. Kitty Hawk Kite's mission statement, “To teach the world to fly!” bears out in the following numbers: the flight school has taught over 300,000 students how to fly since 1974 and boasts almost 20 different adventures, sports, tours and activities on land, sea, and air to choose from. Kitty Hawk Kites in Nags Head is located at Milepost 12.5 on the Bypass. 

Read more @ http://myouterbankshome.com/obx-milestones/.