Travis Morris was born in Coinjock, North Carolina, in 1932 (in the same house his mother was born in on April 3, 1908). In 1970 he started Currituck Realty, a business he still owns forty years later. In 1971, he took people across Currituck Sound in an old gas boat and out to the beach in an old Corvair for which he paid fifty dollars. He'd written "Currituck Realty" on the side of the car with white shoe polish. He sold oceanfront lots for $12,000 that are now valued at over $1 million. In 1974, he operated Monkey Island Club and opened it to the public for the first time since its founding in 1876.