The time in 1994 when Dennis Anderson and the Grave Digger crossed a body of water.
At precisely 10:28 a.m on July 4, 1994, Dennis Anderson drove up to the Poplar Branch Landing boat ramp in Currituck County to attempt something that hadn’t been tried before or since. With a rev of the engine, he drove Grave Digger—a monster truck with five-and-a-half-foot-tall tires—down into the water. It began to float.
Thus began a seven hour journey across the Currituck Sound. It was a legendary voyage that was thrown together on a whim, and it’s somehow never been properly memorialized in the 30 years since.
To get the real story behind the greatest North Carolina stunt that most people have never heard of, I talked to Anderson, Grave Digger’s creator and the man behind the wheel on that day. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
RABBIT HOLE: How did this come about?
DENNIS ANDERSON, DRIVER/OWNER OF GRAVE DIGGER: We were talking with someone from the county. I think his name might have been Larry. He was talking about something at the Whalehead Club in Corolla where they were gonna have vendors all set up [for July 4th]. He said it’d be cool to have a truck over there. I said, Yeah, I can get it over there. I can drive it right across the Currituck Sound. He said, Drive it across the sound? Are you joking? I said, No, it’ll actually float. And really, I was joking with him, but he goes, ‘God, that would be awesome.’
RABBIT HOLE: I obviously don’t understand the physics of driving a monster truck like you do. How do you know it’s gonna float? Or that it’s not gonna tip over?
ANDERSON: Well, we really didn’t know it would float until I was in Puerto Rico one time, and I just backed it in a lagoon, and it was floating around. But it will tip over.
RABBIT HOLE: How quickly did this all come about?
ANDERSON: It was like 10 days. Two days after I talked with the guy from the county, I hadn’t even gotten started. Then reality started setting in and I was like, oh my God. This is gonna be a lot, man. It’s a big chore. Plus, what if I get out there and this thing sinks or I lose one of my trucks in the Currituck Sound? That might not be good.
RABBIT HOLE: So on July 4th, 1994, you put in. What was that like? I have this image of some guy that’s going out there to put his boat in to go fishing or something like that, and he’s looking over and there’s a monster truck coming down the ramp ahead of him.
ANDERSON: There were a lot of people coming by in boats that were startled. They didn’t know what was happening, because the only way you would hear about it was from word of mouth or from the radio. I just remember people coming by in a boat and circling back around and looking like, what the hell is that? It’s a 1950 Chevy panel truck with monster truck tires on it paddling across the Currituck Sound.
Well, eventually we end up getting into the marshy, mucky bottom and the truck actually gets stuck. So I just put the thing in reverse and I start sawing the steering wheel back and forth. Eventually we started moving, but I had to fight that thing for a good 45 minutes to get it out. After that, I stayed in deep water to keep it floating.
We get cruising along, and more boats were coming around. There were almost 60 out there at one point. Everybody was partying and having fun. I was just trying to keep a clear head and good composure on what I was doing. So I really wasn’t having fun.
I got probably about half-a-mile offshore, and I looked at the bank, and it was covered in people. I was like, oh my God man, there’s still a big, huge crowd here. We crawled up out of the water and we got all the seaweed hanging on the axles. Everybody kinda cheered us on and then we just had a big celebration for the rest of the night. Shot off fireworks. All that good stuff.
RABBIT HOLE: Have you ever thought about doing this again?
ANDERSON: We were going to do it again. My son Adam was just a little kid back then when we did it in 1994. So I think we need to do it again. But my kids need to do it now. Maybe in 20 years, I’ll be in a wheelchair, watching the grandkids do it.
Photo courtesy of Sam Walker, with special thanks to the Anderson family.
