Shipwrecked Doritos – Hatteras, North Carolina - Gastro Obscura

Shipwrecked Doritos

The time thousands of bags of chips washed ashore in the Outer Banks is memorialized in a local museum. 

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In November of 2006, the tastiest disaster struck the waters around North Carolina’s Outer Banks. A shipment container stuffed full of Nacho Cheese, Spicy Nacho, and Cool Ranch Doritos tipped and fell overboard into the ocean.

The bags of chips washed up on Hatteras Island, where locals then salvaged—ate—the surplus of shipwrecked snacks. There was even a report of someone filling up a truck with the payload. 

The National Park Service, which owns the island, arrived around noon of that Thursday and located the beached shipping container. When they looked inside, there were still multiple bags of chips.

This incident will be forever remembered in the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, where a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is displayed among other less delicious victims of the sea.

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