The ferry from Southport to Bald Head Island was a passenger-only ferry. It is a private ferry and is expensive. That means no transportation on the island except expensive shuttles. It is 5 miles from the ferry landing to the Cape. Walkable, but a 10 mile roundtrip is quite an investment if the weather is iffy. Reluctantly, we decided not to go to Cape Fear.
Instead, we explored Southport. This grand old town had some of the coolest old mansions around. Founded in 1792 and originally named Smithville after Colonel Smith of the Continental Army during the Revolution, seemed to have potential as a port, a strategic military position, and a commercial seafood center, that it never quite realized.
During the Civil War, Southport gained some notoriety by being an important blockade running port. Blockade runners, like Thomas Mann Thompson, made a fortune sneaking past the Union blockade. Like all of North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the shoals were tricky and treacherous. Being skilled at avoiding maritime catastrophe was a marketable skill.
In 1887, Smthville was renamed Southport in an effort to promote the town as a shipping center. Seafood was always one of its principal commercial enterprises. In fact, for a time around the turn-of-the-century, it became a major shrimp canning center and was a major shrimp supplier to restaurants in New York City. The irony being that locals at that time never thought of shrimp as anything but fish bait. I bet it was quite the surprise when New Yorkers sought out shrimp as a delicacy.
At a current population of 4,000, it never did blossom into that mega-shipping port. This, in my estimation, is actually a good thing. Southport remains a small, but very pretty town right off Cape Fear where the Cape Fear River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Southport Market is one of the coolest combination general store/soda-fountain store/antique store I have seen. I love old signage and Southport Market has dozens of old commercial signs in excellent condition. When I was a kid, my dad had an old metal toy dump truck. It was pretty beat up and very scary. When you activated the dumping mechanism, it just about whacked the crap out of you if your head, hand, elbow, or any body part for that matter, was in the way. The metal toy vehicles at Southport Market were all in pristine shape and none looked to be as lethal as my dad’s old toy.
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