For every minimal one-sided shift space X over a finite alphabet, left special elements are those points in X having at least two preimages under the shift operation. In this paper, we show that the Cuntz–Pimsner $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal {O}_X$ has nuclear dimension $1$ when X is minimal and the number of left special elements in X is finite. This is done by describing concretely the cover of X, which also recovers an exact sequence, discovered before by Carlsen and Eilers.

We show that the dynamic asymptotic dimension of an action of an infinite virtually cyclic group on a compact Hausdorff space is always one if the action has the marker property. This in particular covers a well-known result of Guentner, Willett, and Yu for minimal free actions of infinite cyclic groups. As a direct consequence, we substantially extend a famous result by Toms and Winter on the nuclear dimension of $C^{*}$-algebras arising from minimal free $\mathbb {Z}$-actions. Moreover, we also prove the marker property for all free actions of countable groups on finite-dimensional compact Hausdorff spaces, generalizing a result of Szabó in the metrisable setting.