Oak Island
is a barrier island on the Atlantic coast of southeastern
North Carolina in Brunswick County. The island contains
the towns of Oak Island and Caswell Beach as well
as the North Carolina Baptist Assembly and a U.S.
Coast Guard station, which is home to the Oak Island
Lighthouse. Although the area has been called Oak
Island since colonial times, it only became a true
island with the construction of the Intracoastal Waterway.
It is about 12 miles long and averages about one mile
wide; roughly 8000 people live on the island year-round,
which can balloon up to 40,000 during the summer.
History
It
is believed that Native American tribes used Oak Island
as fishing grounds before the arrival of Europeans.
The first permanent buildings on the island were at
Fort Caswell, which was built in the 1830s. The site
was occupied by Confederate troops in the Civil War,
and later by both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy until
the end of World War II; this property would later become
the N.C. Baptist Assembly. In the 1930s, the commercial
development of the rest of the island began; the towns
of Long Beach and Yaupon Beach were incorporated in
1955 (Caswell Beach incorporated 20 years later). One
year earlier, Hurricane Hazel struck the town with a
direct hit; most of the vacation homes along the beach
were destroyed. The island quickly recovered and tourism
remains the main industry; construction continues on
the island at a rapid rate, in spite of facing other
hardships such as hurricanes like Fran and Floyd, and
being cut off from the mainland for a short time after
a barge destroyed the island's original pontoon bridge.
|