The low-lying marshlands bordered by fresh tidal water rivers of the Carolinas and Georgia proved to be ideal for rice production. The soils were rich, reasonably flat and highly fertile. They also were so soft a man could hardly stand on them, with twice a day tides pushing fresh river waters onto the flood plains, nothing else could be grown there. By 1700, rice was established as a major crop for the colonists. That year 300 tons of American rice, referred to as “Carolina Gold Rice,” was shipped to England. Colonists were producing more rice than there were ships to carry it.

Rice Plantations Of North Carolina: Rice farming’s extremely high hand-labor requirements are credited with having started the plantation era of the Southern States. Even with ox and mule-drawn equipment of those years, rice “farms” or plantations of only a few hundred acres required from 100 to 300 laborers to prepare the soil, plant, harvest and thresh their production-all by hand.

Technological improvements have evolved over the years to make American rice production the most efficient and advanced in the world. New mechanization and techniques have helped the American rice farmer reduce the costly time spent in the field to only seven man-hours per acre. Some Asian countries continue to require 300 man-hours per acre.

From its meager beginnings in South Carolina, rice has become a major U.S. agricultural product. Nearly 90 percent of the rice consumed in the United States today is produced within its borders. Presently, the United States is the world’s most advanced and innovative rice producer. The United States is also one of the largest exporters of rice in the world, and is respected worldwide for its abundant production of high-quality rice.

Courtesy of USA Rice Federation

Map Courtesy of the Plantations Cape Fear Map – COPYRIGHT © 2003. All rights reserved. Presented by the North Carolina Office of Archives & History, in association with the University of North Carolina Press.

Courtesy of the NC Office of Archives and History, The Colonial Records Project
Golden Grains of White: Rice Planting on the Lower Cape Fear, by James M. Clifton
With the permanent settlement of the Lower Cape Fear in the 1720s by a group of wealthy South Carolina planters, a new agricultural staple was introduced into North Carolina—rice. Rice by this time had proved to be the “golden grain” of South Carolina as tobacco had earlier become Virginia’s “golden leaf.” These planters, from the St. James Goose Creek Parish about twenty miles up the Cooper River from Charleston, brought numerous slaves with them to the Cape Fear and acquired extensive holdings along the main river (about thirty miles in length) and for some distance up both the Northeast and Northwest branches of the Cape Fear. While much of this land was retained by the planters for their own development, a sizable portion of it was cut up into smaller sections and sold, and a number of plantations were developed shortly along both sides of the river. Thus was the Cape Fear settlement a land of large plantations from the beginning—the very opposite of most colonial settlements—an extension of the South Carolina plantation system and in a larger sense that of the West Indies, especially Barbados.

Naval stores—tar, pitch, and turpentine—brought the planters to the Cape Fear and remained their principal economic interest throughout the colonial period because of the enormous immediate returns these commodities brought on the planters’ investment. Rice, however, seems to have occupied a strong secondary position in the economy there from the beginning. Travelers in the area reported seeing rice growing as early as 1731; in the same year the Assembly established it as one of the official “commodities” of the colony, indicating its having reached some status as a crop. Marshlands suitable for rice culture—those of “a wet, deep, miry Soil; such as is generally to be found in Cypress Swamps; or a black greasy Mould with a Clay Foundation”—abounded along the Cape Fear river and its branches for a considerable distance inland.

No plantation records—planters’ journals, business papers, or correspondence with overseer or factor—have survived to shed any light on individual experiences or profits among the rice planters on the Lower Cape Fear. Only a few scattered bits of information give any idea as to the facilities on any of the plantations. It is known that Orton Plantation, southernmost of the plantations and historic home of “King” Roger Moore before his death in 1750 and later home of Governor Benjamin Smith in the early l800s, located in Brunswick County about midway between Wilmington and the mouth of the river, had a water-powered “rice machine” and mill as early as 1825. Clarendon Plantation, five miles below Wilmington in Brunswick, was advertised in 1834 as having a “brick barn with a framed mill house attached and two [water-powered] threshing mills.” Belvedere Plantation, immediately west of Wilmington in Brunswick and home of two governors, Benjamin Smith in the late eighteenth century before his purchase of Orton in 1796 and Daniel L. Russell in the late nineteenth century, had by 1831 “a threshing machine and other machinery” in “a barn, 110 feet long, 40 feet wide,… of brick, put up in the most substantial manner.”

The Civil War caused no disruption of rice planting on the Lower Cape Fear. Except for deteriorating facilities and badly worn or broken tools and implements, the rice crops continued to be produced as usual. The end of the war, however, brought almost total chaos to the rice industry there for the immediate moment. The rice planters found themselves suddenly dispossessed of several thousand slaves, and some even of their land. Orton, Kendall, Lilliput, and Pleasant Oaks, the four southernmost plantations and collectively making up a stretch of more than five miles along the river, were wrested from their owners by the Union military command in Wilmington and “set apart for the use of freedmen, and the destitute and refugee colored people,” a situation which continued from April until September, 1865, when a decree from President Andrew Johnson returned the plantations to their original owners. Undoubtedly the invading army had taken from the rice plantations what it needed in the way of livestock and supplies; however, it seems to have inflicted no sizable destruction on them as had occurred on some of those in South Carolina and Georgia.

The Cape Fear coast is believed to be littered with the remains of Blockaders and Blockade Runners.

Brent Garlington flew his drone high above the shipwreck at the east end of Holden Beach near Lockwood Folly Inlet and recently captured some amazing aerial views of it.

Experts believe the vessel is a large iron-hulled Civil War-era steamer. In the video, you can see the vessel is partially submerged in the ocean.

Researchers and archaeologists from the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology and the Institute of International Maritime Research made the underwater discovery in February 2016 during sonar operations.

According to NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, the vessel could be the remains of one of three blockade runners used to penetrate the wall of Union naval vessels blocking the port of Wilmington during the Civil War.

The vessel is believed to possibly be the remains of one of three blockade runners used to penetrate the wall of Union naval vessels blocking the port of Wilmington during the Civil War. The goal of the Union blockade was to keep supplies from reaching the Confederacy through one of its most important ports and to prevent the export of cotton and other marketable items by the Southerners. The wreck is located 27 miles downstream from Wilmington near Fort Caswell at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and is the first Civil War-era vessel discovered in the area in decades.

“A new runner is a really big deal,” said Billy Ray Morris, Deputy State Archaeologist-Underwater and Director of the Underwater Archaeology Branch. “The state of preservation on this wreck is among the best we’ve ever had.”

Researchers will continue working to positively identify the vessel. Three blockade runners are known to have been lost in the area, the Agnes E. Fry, Spunkie and Georgianna McCaw. These operations are part of a major project funded by the National Park Service through the American Battlefield Protection Program.

Historical, cartographic and archaeological resources have been examined for the past two years to better understand the maritime components of the Fort Fisher campaign. Fortifications protected both entrances to the Cape Fear River from the Atlantic and were critical in keeping open a lifeline to the Confederacy until Fort Fisher fell in January 1865.

Researchers aboard the Research Vessel Atlantic Surveyor recorded the complete hull of the vessel. Students from the East Carolina University Maritime Studies Program will join the team as they continue gathering data on the new site as the weather permits.

Civil War Blockade Runners: During the War between the States, the Confederate States of America possessed only a [Read more…]

Back in 1905 a brightly lit pavilion in south Wrightsville Beach known as the “Fun Spot of the South” opened for the first time.

It was referred to by many names, “The Pleasure Palace of the South,” “The Fun Spot of the South,” and “The Palace of Light.”

In June 1905, Hugh MacRae who owned Consolidated Railways Light & Power Company, Wilmington’s electric utility, opened Lumina in a location near the last stop of Wrightsville’s electric trolley line.

His motivation for creating Lumina was to promote beach tourism, encourage folks to ride on the trolleys and start to use electricity.

He lit up Lumina with over a thousand incandescent bulbs lighting up his three story, 25,000 square foot dance hall.

The Lumina building was bright enough for sailors to navigate their ships by it.

The ground floor of Lumina featured dressing rooms, a promenade, a bowling alley, refreshment stands, a movie theater and other amusements.

The second level had a ballroom/dance floor with a restaurant with a fireplace for cold nights and a balcony and band shell for orchestras and big bands, like Cab Calloway’s or Louis Armstrong’s.

On the third floor a 15-foot wide promenade overlooked the dance floor.

 

Right from its opening day, Lumina was enormously successful soon expanding to double the size of the ballroom and adding the movie screen. The movie screen itself was marvel rising from the surf 50 feet out to sea, so that audiences could watch films right on the beach!

It attracted huge crowds and Lumina’s dance floor became known as “The South Atlantic’s Finest.”

The Wilmington Star stated that “if a woman didn’t have a Saturday night date for the Lumina, she was in disgrace.”

Lumina was “a glowing beacon” that called out to anyone who could get on a trolley and wanted to have a little fun.

The beginning of the end for the trolley system came when North Carolina began constructing highways in the area in 1935.

In 1940 the last trolley car ran, and although Lumina maintained its popularity into the 1950s, its best days had comer and gone now that folks could access the beach in their could automobiles

Then Hurricane Hazel damaged Lumina in 1954, and by the time the 1970s rolled around Lumina had deteriorated to the point that officials condemned the iconic structure.

In May 1973 bulldozers began demolishing the building. Eventually condominiums were built in its place.

Now just a fond memory Wrightsville Beach’s “Pleasure Palace of the South” is commemorated with the annual Lumina Daze festival at Wrightsville Beach’s Blockade Runner Resort remembering Lumina Pavilion’s heyday with a fun evening of food, big band music, and dancing.