Freeman Park Carolina Beach, NC

"The North End" 

Writing about cold weather camping with my mom reminded me of another cold weather camping trip years ago. I spent New Year's Eve ringing in 2009 camping at Carolina Beach, Freeman Park. The cold chill was well below freezing. 

    

    It was cold. But when you are prepared for cold weather camping you can have a blast! My friend Stephanie was in grad school for geology so we were camping with a group of earth scientists which turned out to be great. I didn't have to do anything, not the tent, not the fire, not the food, I just dressed warm, cuddled with my dog Daisy, and hung out around the fire. It was in the teens that night. I wore thick leggings under wool pants, a tank top, a thermal, a hoodie, and a leather jacket. I slept good and woke in time to see the sunrise. 

    When I first went to college at UNCW in 1999, it was just called 'the north end', there was no fee or access pass, and it was a huge four wheel drive beach with vast stretches of dunes and low brush and bramble woods of wind strained cedar running right up to the muddy marsh. I still lived on campus the first time I camped out there with a group of friends from the dorms, their boyfriends had big four wheel drive trucks and thought they'd show off. The little guy driving a Z71 with huge 44 inch super swamper mud tires hauled off down the end of the beach toward the inlet. He thought the low tide revealed sand flats he could cut a doughnut on. He was wrong. It was marsh mud, apparently more than 44 inches of it because he quickly buried those tires, throwing up huge clods of mud into the air. He was good and stuck. The girl from the dorm in the truck was a pretty Italian girl, and definitely the most high maintenance of all the girls in the group. She was the only one that would be upset about some mud. At first she refused to get out of the cab. Then she climbed out her window and onto the roof. She inspected her surroundings. She decided she could jump to the sand. She was wrong, mud up to her knees, past the hem of her cute little capris, swallowing one rainbow flip-flop and a toe ring as she screamed and kerplunked her way out of the mud in giant strides. Needless to say over the years we all got better at navigating the ever changing terrain of the area around the inlet. There used to be a back road through the bushes by the marsh, but it got muddier and the marsh got closer and eventually there was water where the trail had been. The beach has changed a lot over the years, and has suffered from extensive erosion. Currently there are restrictions on camping and vehicle access due to erosion.

   

From Wikipedia

I've written about the Cape Fear River area and how meaningful it is to me, like a geographic connective tissue for my family. Mom is from High Point, where the Deep River begins, it and the Haw river come together as they leave the Piedmont to form the Cape Fear which then meanders through the swamps and Carolina Bays of southeastern NC as a black water river which empties into the Atlantic to help create the headland of Cape Fear. The town at the mouth of the river, Southport, is my father's hometown. The region's geography, a cape which sticks out into the warm waters of the gulf stream, has created an incredible ecosystem with vast beaches, large dune ridges, dense maritime forests, deep swamps, long leaf pine savannas, brackish creeks, and marshes. The area on the east side of the river, south of Wilmington all the way to Fort Fisher, was called Federal Point, Cape Fear being the lower Smith Island Complex. 

    For thousands of years native people flourished in this region. Artifacts show prehistoric big game hunters that eventually settled in the area so rich in flora and fauna. Prior to the European invasion the civilization that existed was hunting as well as farming vegetables and tobacco.  

   

     I've written about the early attempts at 'settlement' by the invading Spanish, and then the eventual successful invasion by the English, with their establishment of Lord Proprietors and the plantation system which was built around an inhuman mercantile system that monetized and objectified actual human beings, as if they were farm animals or equipment. We've talked about the tribes of the swamps taking in freed or run away slaves. I have also written about Jim Crow and the affects of racial segregation. I've mentioned the separate economy on the coast, driven by seafood. The disgusting beginnings of our country can't be ignored, they shaped who we are today. The 'north end' of Carolina Beach is now called Freeman Park, a name that tells us something about its history. 

  

The mythology around the area says that a freed slave took his 40 acres and a mule sold and invested and eventually purchased land from Myrtle Grove to the river, in what was called Federal Point, part of the Cape Fear peninsula. The truth is Alexander Freeman purchased the land in 1876. There was a lovely bluff over a sound, old growth hard woods, marsh, and salt flats, and 300 acres of beach front. Alexander was a 'Free Person of Color', which legend has conflated into him being a freed slave, though some of his ancestors may have been, his father Abraham is also listed as a 'FPOC' and was a land owner through grants from the Lord Proprietors. Alexander was black and American Indian and lived from 1788 to 1855. His current living decedents are members of the Waccamaw-Siouan and Lumbee tribes. 

    One of Alexander's sons, Archie, had a place at the beach where they served up fresh fried seafood. Alexander gave the land to Robert Bruce Freeman, who died in 1902, giving it to his children. It was that generation who built the first houses in Seabreeze and cleared a road through the woods to Myrtle Sound. In the 1900's  Ellis Freeman also had a seafood place. 

    At times segregation laws got so strict that only whites were allowed access to Carolina Beach from the main land and people of color that wished to enjoy the north end of the beach had to swim or wade across the Myrtle Sound. Banks were unregulated and often allowed to take advantage of people, obtaining land deeds under shady circumstances. Some of the Freeman family lost portions of their land to the banks during this time. Then the government used eminent domain to obtain the land they needed to connect Myrtle Sound and the Cape Fear River. After the construction of Snow's Cut, the current and depth increased so that the only way across was by boat. (Hundreds of acres of Freeman land were eroded by the new waterway.) Eventually people of color were allowed to cross the bridge, but only on Monday's. Then laws changed so that they could cross 'normally' as long as they wore clothes over their bathing attire and went straight to 'their beach'. The first hotel came in 1924. 

    During the segregated Jim Crow era, people of color came to Seabreeze, from all around to enjoy the shade of the trees, the breeze over the water, the big stretch of beach, and the seafood. They also came to dance. In 1951 Lula Freeman Hill and her husband Frank built a place for dancin' and then they built a hotel.

    Bop City and the Monte Carlo By the Sea became the center of a resort where people of color went to see and be seen. When black musicians would come to Wilmington to perform they would stay at the Monte Carlo. At it's peak there were over 30 places to dance. 

 

People in the Carolinas will often tell you that Carolina Beach and Myrtle Beach are where the dance 'the shag' originated. The truth, as with most history is a little more complicated. During Jim Crow segregation the communities of working class whites and people of color were often geographically close and despite the restrictive laws separating people in public spaces, some white people enjoyed going to dance clubs that were for people of color. In clubs along the Carolina coast, like Bop City, people were doing a dance called 'the Big Apple', and white people copied it, as best they could, and called it 'the little apple'. That dance became 'the shag'. (add to the list of things stolen from people of color)

    I grew up hearing horror stories about the worst storm to hit our coast, Hurricane Hazel hit on October 15, 1954, killing 95 Americans. Most everything directly on the coast was destroyed. I remember the islands in the area where I grew up had plaques on certain structures designating them as some of the handful that had survived. There were signs showing the high water mark of the 18 foot storm surge. 

    Seabreeze was a victim of the storm and the changing times. Many of the businesses, including Bop City and the Monte Carlo, were destroyed, those that weren't closed up because the destruction around them made the island much less appealing. The era of segregated public space was ending and Seabreeze went with it. 

    When I moved off of campus in 2000, I moved to Monkey Junction, near Myrtle Grove. I'd always remembered the story about Monkey Junction I'd been told as a kid. The area is nothing more than a large intersection in the northern part of Federal Point, where several main routes to travel down the Cape Fear Peninsula come together into one main road going down the middle straight to the bridge over Snow's Cut. If you were going to the island from downtown Wilmington you came up along the river on river road or Carolina Beach Road, and if you were coming from mid town or any town west of Wilmington you most likely came straight down the middle on College Rd, and if you lived somewhere along the coast and marshes towards Wrightsville, you road the winding path through Masonboro woods and Myrtle Grove. The two roads on either side keep going along the edges of the river and the waterway until they eventually turn in to the middle just before the bridge, but if you wanted to get food, or bait, or beer before the island Monkey Junction was the place. 

There was even a shady roadside zoo that started with just a handful of animals by a WWII vet in the '50s. Originally showcasing his collection of masks, shrunken heads, and spear points from the South Pacific. The zoo was the thing that always reminded me of the origin story. The area had long been a stop for people heading down the peninsula to the coast for pleasure or for military purposes. The locals, looking for ways to make an extra buck, sold seashells, turtles, sharks teeth, hermit crabs, gator skulls, and Venus flytraps at roadside souvenir stands. One stop that sold gifts as well as bait, seafood, gas, and groceries, decided to entertain their customers with the presence of a tamed monkey or two. The story I heard was that kids would stop and eat ice cream and squeal at the monkey dressed in a diaper and kept in a cage. 

  By my college years Seabreeze was a not much more than a sandy old road that looped around to the waterway where a dock and some old shrimp boats sat. There were no signs of any kind of flourishing hot spot, just a quiet place where folks fished. Myrtle Grove and the beautiful woods along the waterway still hid away the old bungalows, some were lived in, others camouflaged by the wilderness, mossy and covered in muscadine vines. The years after 9/11 were a developers dream, unregulated lending and government encouraged spending led to a real estate market that was booming. New Hanover County lost more and more unincorporated land to the city of Wilmington. Real estate interests developed planned communities on every last acre of dry land, and some that really wasn't so dry. 

    Today, there are just a few thousand acres of 'develop-able' land left in the county. Pollution from infrastructure and traffic problems has become a stain on the natural beauty that draws in the crowds. There are still beautiful natural areas, but they are fighting for their own survival. The rising sea and the encroaching population boom continue to alter this landscape.