Qualla: Oak Island (North Carolina)

Oak Island (North Carolina): Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Long from Oak Island, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. Oak Island did not exist as an island until the late 1930s. Before then it was a peninsula - a long sandy finger reaching out from the mainland near Southport, North Carolina, with marsh and shallow tidal creeks separating it from the rest of Brunswick County. When the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Intracoastal Waterway through the marshes in the 1930s, cutting a deep navigable channel from the Cape Fear River west toward Little River in South Carolina, they made the peninsula into a barrier island. Almost ninety years later it is thirteen miles long and roughly one mile wide, with 8,791 permanent residents and a summer population that pushes past 50,000. At the eastern end stands an unusual lighthouse - cylindrical, banded in white and gray and black - one of the last major lighthouses ever built in the United States.

Image: Tom Long from Oak Island, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oak Island (North Carolina): Fort Caswell and the East End

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brian, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first permanent settlement on Oak Island took place in the 1830s at the island's eastern tip, where the federal government began building a brick coast artillery fortification called Fort Caswell to guard the mouth of the Cape Fear River. The Cape Fear was, then and now, the ...

Image: Brian | CC BY-SA 2.0

Oak Island (North Carolina): The Lighthouse and the Shoals

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Dincher, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frying Pan Shoals run twenty-eight miles southeast from the mouth of the Cape Fear River, a long submerged ridge of sand that has been catching ships since colonial times. The combination of Frying Pan, Jay Bird Shoals, and Bald Head Shoals made the approach to Wilmington one of ...

Image: User:Dincher | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oak Island (North Carolina): Hurricane Hazel and What Came Back

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eack08, CC BY 4.0. On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel made landfall on the North Carolina-South Carolina line as a Category 4 storm at the height of the autumn high tide. Hazel was one of the most destructive hurricanes ever to strike the United States. On Oak Island - then partly developed with ...

Image: Eack08 | CC BY 4.0

Oak Island (North Carolina): The Island Today

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nebotheplacebo124, CC BY-SA 4.0. Oak Island is now divided politically into two towns. The Town of Oak Island covers most of the island, including the western portion that took the worst of Hazel in 1954 and is now densely built with vacation rentals and year-round homes. Caswell Beach, incorporated in 1975, occ...

Image: Nebotheplacebo124 | CC BY-SA 4.0