File:Coast watch (1979) (20633291036).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_8 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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sunglasses. No soundside docks beckon boaters to stop. Because of this lack of amenities, you might think Masonboro Island attracts little attention and few visitors. It's the lonely island of the southern coast. But on a hot summer day, Mason- boro is crawling with everyone from fishermen to flip-flopped explorers. Boats jam the Intracoastal Waterway, and the curious squint, looking for a rare loggerhead turtle or maybe an ordinary black skimmer. From the top of the biggest dune on the north end, you can see eight miles of coast, marsh and forest — from the prickly little cacti that stick to your socks to the graceful curve of the beaches. Masonboro Island is, well, nature in the nude. With all the development clogging other islands, it would be hard not to call Masonboro beautiful. Yet it's not like that last pitiful tree in Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, valued because it's all we have left. This island and the sound that borders it were majestic enough 200 years ago to stand out from the miles of untouched coast around it. Crockette Hewlett wrote that in 1735, five years before the budding city of Wilmington was incorporated, an Englishman stood at the mouth of Cabbage Inlet Creek and gazed at the sound and distant Masonboro Island. Like the Indian, Italian, Spanish and Barbadian explorers before him, Richard Mullington liked what he saw. Like those who followed, he wanted to lay founda- tions there. Later that year, Mullington pur- chased 640 acres from King George II and became the first property owner on the mainland along Masonboro Sound. Since that time, the mainland has been changing. Mullington sold his property long ago. Families such as the Hewletts moved in, along with farmers, craftsmen and fishermen. There have been pirates, salt mines and Civil War shipwrecks. Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach began to develop as resorts in the late 1800s, and they haven't stopped since. Continued
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COASTWATCH 5

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