Pleasure Island is a coastal barrier island in Southeastern North Carolina, United States, just south of the City of Wilmington. Pleasure Island is located within Federal Point Township, in New Hanover County. The coastal resort towns of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, as well as the annexed communities of Wilmington Beach and Hanby Beach are located on the island. The southern end of Pleasure Island was separated from Bald Head Island (Smith Island) by Corncake Inlet (New Inlet) until the inlet was shoaled and closed in 1998 by Hurricane Bonnie; thus Pleasure Island and Bald Head Island are no longer separate islands.
The combined island now stretches from Carolina Beach Inlet in the north, the Cape Fear River to the west, Onslow Bay (Atlantic Ocean) to the east and Long Bay (Atlantic Ocean) to the south. It is 17 miles long, 2 miles wide in the far north, 3 miles wide at the far south and about ½ mile wide in the middle. On the southeastern tip of the combined island lies "the point", or headland, known as Cape Fear. The shallow and treacherous Frying Pan Shoals jut 30 miles into the Atlantic Ocean southeasterly from the point. The shoal (or sandbar) is formed by the intersection of the longshore currents of Onslow Bay and Long Bay as well as the discharge from the Cape Fear River.
Pleasure Island refers to the northern half of the combined island (the portion in New Hanover County) and Bald Head Island refers to the southern half of the combined island (the portion in Brunswick County).
Prior to the 1931 completion of a man-made canal called Snows Cut, the land that now forms Pleasure Island was part of a peninsula known as Federal Point, a long narrow strip of sandy ground that stretched from Myrtle Grove to Fort Fisher. The Federal Point Light once stood at southern end of the peninsula at the edge of New Inlet.
U.S. Highway 421 provides the only bridge access to Pleasure Island. A ferry at the southern terminus of Route 421 at Fort Fisher connects Pleasure Island to Southport, NC at (North Carolina Highway 211). A separate ferry from Southport brings travelers and supplies to Bald Head Island to the south. There are no roads between the two halves of the combined island, but park ranger vehicles, fat-tire bike riders and pedestrians can traverse the beach strand to make the connection as needed.
Pleasure Island is home to an unusual 11-acre fresh water lake that was once the headwater of Myrtle Grove Sound. It is spring fed and less than 200 yards from the salty waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The lake was formerly known as "The Freshwater Lake" but is now called "Carolina Beach Lake".
The name "Pleasure Island" was the product of a marketing effort by the local Chambers of Commerce back in 1972. They thought Pleasure Island was a positive way to refer to the coastal resources of the area.
Pleasure Island is now part of a 20-mile, unbroken strand of sandy beach stretching from Carolina Beach Inlet, 7 miles south to New Hanover/Brunswick County line, 10 more miles south to the Cape and then 3 miles west to the mouth of the Cape Fear River.NOAA published a PDF chart of the area. http://www.charts.noaa.gov/PDFs/11539.pdf
History Geography The area that is now Pleasure Island has gone through a variety of changes over the last few hundred years to end up with its current shape, extending from the Carolina Beach Inlet to Cape Fear.
The "island" started out as the lower tip of the Federal Point Peninsula which was originally bounded in the south at a break in the barrier islands called New Inlet. This inlet was "new" in that it opened up as a result of a massive storm in September, 1761.https://files.nc.gov/dncr-qar/documents/files/QAR-R-08-01.pdf Page 9 For the decades that followed, New Inlet was actually the preferred entrance to the Cape Fear River for ships bound for the port of Wilmington, as it offered a deeper, shorter, and less treacherous route compared to the Bald Head/Old Inlet Channel, at the mouth of the Cape Fear. During the Civil War, blockade runners routinely took the New Inlet route, which led to the building of Confederate Fort Fisher at this location. There are still dozens of sunken blockade runners in this region of North Carolina.
After the Civil War, reduced water flow in the river (caused by water escaping through the New Inlet) threatened the main shipping channel that led up from the mouth of the Cape Fear River to Wilmington. To protect access to the port, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a 1-mile long stone dam, eventually known as "The Rocks", between Zeke's Island and the southern tip of Federal Point. The work took place between 1870 and 1881, and eventually closed off New Inlet's direct access to the Cape Fear River. The enclosed area behind the dam is now known as "The Basin". A second dam, known then as "The Swash Defense", extended "The Rocks" from Zeke's Island south for another 2 miles. These were massive rock moving and engineering efforts, costing over $1M in 1880's money. After the building of the two rock dams, only smaller boats and skiffs could travel from the ocean into the meandering creeks behind Smith Island to access the Cape Fear River. However, for all intents and purposes, the inlet was closed.
New Inlet was then allowed to fill in naturally and soon Gold Leaf Inlet just to the south, was the only major division between Federal Point and Smith Island. Maps from the time also show Corncake Inlet, an inlet that opened between the ocean and Buzzards Bay further to the south. In 1933 Corncake Inlet silted over and maps from 1944 began to show Gold Leaf Inlet renamed to the old name of Corncake Inlet. By the 1960s the inlet was once again renamed to New Inlet (or New Inlet II). Regardless of name, these shallower inlets could still be used by smaller vessels as a way to slip out from the creeks into the sea. This "new" New Inlet made up the southern boundary of Federal Point for many years.
In 1930, Snows Cut was dug out (roughly along the line of the lower portion of Telfair Creek) connecting the Cape Fear River to Myrtle Grove Sound and officially turning the tip of the Federal Point peninsula into a barrier island. The man-made canal, 1.75 miles long, and originally 100 feet wide and 12 feet deep, was named after Major William A. Snow. Snow was the district engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who supervised the $5 million dredging work. Snows Cut was, and still is, an important part of the Intracoastal Waterway as it allows boats to avoid the treacherous Frying Pan Shoals, which extend some 30 miles into the ocean off Cape Fear. Cars could originally cross over Snows Cut via a small wooden bridge until a swing bridge was added. This remained in use until the present-day concrete high-rise bridge opened in 1962.
Prior to the 1950s, the north end of Carolina Beach (today's Freeman Park) was connected to what is now the south end of Masonboro Island. This meant that the closest navigable inlet for boats moored at the Carolina Beach docks was Masonboro, some 10 miles to the north. In 1952, a group of influential local businessmen got together and hired a dredge to dig out what is now Carolina Beach Inlet. Local captain Skippy Winner piloted the first commercial vessel to pass through the inlet.
The shape of the island remained relatively constant for the next 45 years, with Corncake Inlet (the inlet that was later renamed New Inlet), in the south, slowly silting up. In 1998, Hurricane Bonnie pushed large quantities of sand into the inlet and finally closed it off. Pleasure Island and Smith Island (Bald Head Island) were combined as one and remain that way today.
The People of the Lower Cape Fear Federal Point was historically home to small groups of Native Americans, but much heavier concentrations, perhaps numbering into the thousands, lived on the west side of the river or upstream. History has forgotten the names of these tribes so they are generally referred to as the Cape Fear Indians. It was argued they spoke a Siouan language although their language is unattested. The tribes called the lower Cape Fear River, "Sapona" and they lived on the abundant forest, river and ocean resources. By the time Europeans arrived in the late fifteenth century, the Native Americans of the region had largely transitioned from hunter-gathering to small-scale agriculture. Various artifacts and oyster mounds have been found on and near Federal Point over the years. One village site was discovered about "1.5 miles south of the head of Myrtle Grove Sound, 3 miles north of Fort Fisher, and less than 100 yards from the beach. Sugar Loaf is less than one mile from this site in a northwesterly direction". This location would be very close to where Carolina Beach Lake sits today.
England laid its European claim to the area that is now the eastern United States (including Federal Point) in 1497 after the first voyage of Venetian John Cabot, who was in the service of King Henry VII.
It is reasonable to think that many Spanish sailors passed by the region as they headed north and east from St. Augustine (Florida) to reach the Gulf Stream. In the early 1520's, Pedro de Quexos wrote of passing through the area of the Cape in the service of his Spanish sponsor Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón who hailed from Santo Domingo on Hispaniola (in present day Dominican Republic).
In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the Frances I, King of France, wrote about reaching Cape Fear region on his ship La Dauphine. He talked about seeing smoke from a multitude of native campfires and went ashore to briefly meet with them.
Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón himself came to the Carolinas, and presumably up the Cape Fear River, in 1526 with several hundred settlers on six ships. The Spanish called the Cape Fear River the Jordan River (Rio Jordan) and the greater area "Cape San Romano". Shortly after arriving, Ayllón died of fever attempting to settle in what is now South Carolina. This was the end of any significant moves by Spain to protect their claims to North American lands above Florida.
Several attempts at English colonization in the areas North and South of the Cape Fear region were launched during the ensuing century, notably the failed colony of Roanoke. The Cape Fear area, however, did not see serious attempts at permanent colonization until the 1660s.
In 1650, an Englishman named Edward Bland briefly visited the Cape Fear area. He reported favorably on what he saw and likely encouraged the next wave of settlement.
In 1662, William Hilton Jr., an English captain raised in New England, sailed to the region on his ship Adventure in the service of Puritans from the "heavily-populated" Massachusetts Bay Colony. He spent three weeks exploring the lower reaches of the Cape Fear River, which he renamed the Charles River. Hilton's favorable reports of the area encouraged the adventurers from Massachusetts to quickly assemble and sail south with Hilton in early 1663 in an attempt to tame the area. They created a small settlement along the river, which was only to last a couple months. It was soon abandoned, presumably due to Indian problems or disease, and the colonists' livestock were left behind to roam freely along what is now Bald Head Island. Legend says the party left behind a sign on a tree near the bar at the mouth of the Cape Fear River warning others to not try to settle in the supposedly inhospitable area.