History Repeated
An excerpt from the book, The Beginning and Development of Holden Beach 1756-2000, by John F. Holden.

In 1778 Benjamin Holden made his will and identified the island as "My Beach." He gave the eastern half of the beach to his son, Amos, and the western half to his son James.

Ownership of the island changed several times during the next one hundred and forty years. By the year 1905, two of Benjamin's great grandsons, George Washington Holden and John Holden, Jr., had become the owners of the island. Both of these brothers were interested in the beach fishing industry; this was a very profitable business during that period of time. The North Carolina General Assembly appointed the Legislative Fish Committee in 1909 to investigate the fishing industry along the coast. They realized the importance of fish and wanted to preserve the industry. This committee met in Southport, July 24, 1909; Washing Holden and John Holden, Jr. attended that meeting and both brothers were speakers. Officials asked Washington Holden how many fish they caught the year before and his reply was "We shipped 1,800 barrels and there were one hundred pounds of fish in each barrel. We have no record of fresh fish sold."

By the year 1916, Washington (local people called him "Wash" Holden) decided he wanted a beach fishery of his own. He sold his half interest in "Holden's Beach" to his brother, John Holden, Jr., and bough about a mile of the beach west of the "Big Hill" on the beach that is identified now as Oak Island. Wash Holden kept his beach fishery from 1916 to 1936 and sold his beach land to developers.

Take notice, about one hundred and forty years passed between the time Benjamin Holden owned the island he called "His Beach" and the time one of his great grandsons, John Holden, Jr., was the owner of "Holden's Beach."

John Holden, Jr. continued his beach fishery after he bought his brother's half interest and it was rated among the most productive along the North Carolina Coast.

A lot of his success could be attributed to the fact that he kept all his fishing equipment, such as boats, nets and oars etc. in excellent condition.

A big fish shed (or shack) that covered about 3,000 square feet, with north wall and half of each end enclosed, was necessary to store equipment and to process salt fish ready for market.

His home was about two miles from the beach and this desire was to know when fish were caught. He organized a community telephone system, which included ten or twelve families. I remember the phone at his home; it was in the hallway. The pone was on the left side of the hall and it was about the size of the old coffee grinder and had a little crank on the side. The phone at the fish shack on the beach was attached to one of the big posts that supported the roof. When the "Great Depression" started in the late 1920s, the people in the community could not afford to buy the necessary repair parts to keep the phones operating, so they were abandoned. About twenty-five years passed before Atlantic Telephone Corporation put a telephone system on the island.

Only those of us who were living and experienced the early years of the "Depression" really know how difficult it was for families to provide their needs, especially their food. Most people who went to the grocery store only had ten dollars or less in their pockets. However, all rural families had a garden and chickens; some families had a milk cow and two or three pigs.

Lockwood Folly River and beach fisheries like my Grandaddy's provided food for many families within a distance of seventy-five miles. People who had no money could go to the river and get oysters, clams, or fish. It was told in the community that one man in Varnamtown, who had four or five small children under the ten years of age, fed his children so many crabs, some of the children walked sideways like a crab (I doubt this story.)

Several times when I was a teen age boy, I saw men who came from Lumberton, Bladenboro, Fayetteville, Elizabethtown or Whiteville bring bushels of corn or sweet potatoes to Grandaddy's beach fishery and they would tell the fishermen they did not have any money but wanted to trade their produce for fish. One time, I witnessed a man from Bolton as he arrived with three pigs that weighed about sixty pounds each and wanted to trade them for fish.

My grandfather, John Holden, Jr., was a successful fisherman and businessman, but he had a vision of what the island might be in future years. In 1924 he had a subdivision plotted. The subdivision had sixty-four lots and was identified as "Holden Beach Resort," but he did not live to see its development. This was the first subdivision recorded of the beaches in Brunswick County.

The following year, 1925 he realized a bridge was needed across the creek so people could get over to the beach. He decided the bridge should be built where the fisherman had been crossing on their way to the beach fishery. That location is where Old Ferry Road is now. At that time the highest beach hill on the island was between where Old Ferry Road is today and Shrimp Street. Just to the east where Canal Drive is were two or three acres of low dark soil; the tide did not rise there, but this provided a perfect place for a green coastal grass to grow about on-foot tall.

Building a bridge sixty feet long across the creek was a slow process. There were no power tools, and all materials were cut by manpower. Grandaddy employed men who lived in the community to help him build the bridge. Loading the fill dirt by hand and hauling it on two-wheel carts was a very slow process.

One day when the bridge was under construction, the workers had used all the material at the location before twelve o'clock; other materials, nails, etc. were at Grandaddy's home two miles away. The men decided to leave their tools there and go home to eat their lunch and return. This would give Grandaddy time to get more materials to the site. I remember my granddaddy telling how aggravated he was when the workers returned and discovered a thief had stolen all their tools while they were gone to lunch. The bridge was completed in 1925.

During the bridge construction across the creek, Grandaddy realized the little winding wagon trail from the bridge across the creek to Stanbury Road (identified today as Old Ferry Road) should be improved. He hired a land surveyor to stake out the right of way. Then he employed men to clear the right of way and remove all the stumps. All of this was done by manual labor; chain saws, backhoes or bulldozers had not been invented. Two of those men who helped to clear the road right of way lived in the Cedar Grove community and have been deceased since 1985.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation took over the maintenance of this road in 1934. Today, the road is identified as Old Ferry Road.

In 1926 Grandaddy embarked on another project on the island. He had the lumber cut from trees on his land and built a ten-room hotel. This was the first building built on the island for human occupancy and the first of its kind on the Brunswick County beaches. The hotel was built behind the frontal dunes on the west side of where Holden Street is now. The frontal dunes and the sand that was underneath the hotel have eroded away.

The hotel was built up on pilings ten feet above the sand level. The building faced the ocean; a hallway divided the second floor of the building, with five bedrooms on the east side and five on the west side. A covered porch eight feet wide was around the entire building. There were two sets of steps, one on the front side leading to the water, and the other steps were on the back side. A kitchen and dining area were on the first floor. In back of the building was an outdoor john equipped with two-hole accommodations.

The hotel was completed in 1926; however, there was very little activity on the beach that year. Only a few people could afford a vacation those days and tourism had not been created. In fact most people worked ten hours a day, five or six days each week.

J. Herbert Holden, a son of John Holden, Jr., operated a country store near his father's home on Stanbury Road. He decided he and his wife, Eva, would operate the Holden Beach Hotel during the months of July and August 1927 that was considered all of the beach season at that time). Even though the 1927 season was not profitable for them, they decided to try their luck again in 1928. The beach attracted a few more people, but the sandy trail from the bridge at the creek to the hotel was impassable for a T-model Ford during July and August when the sand was hot and dry.

The wagon trail around the east side of the big sand hill to the beach was the trail fishermen used. It became useful to transport materials for the construction of the hotel. Traffic made the ruts in the trail deeper and wider; this caused the ruts to collect more dry sand. Most areas of the country had some kind of material that could have been used to fill those ruts, such as rock, gravel or clay. However, none of these materials were available near the beach.

Grandaddy realized something had to be done immediately. Grandaddy realized something needed to be done immediately. He decided to tackle his horse and mule from his farm to pull the mowing machine an cut about one acre or more of the grass growing near the east side of the road. Filling the deep ruts with the tough grass did give temporary relief.

The horse's name was Molly. She was black with a white spot between her eyes, and she weighed about one thousand pounds.

Molly (the horse) was very useful at the beach fishery when the catch was 20,000 pounds or more. The fish shack was about seventy-five or one hundred feet behind the frontal dune; all fish had to be carried down to the ocean water to remove blood and sand before they were ready for market. When the catch was large enough, the fishermen would send to the farm and get Molly and a two-wheel cart. About one thousand pounds of fish was loaded on the cart at the fish shack, and Molly would take them down to the ocean water and stand in water about two-feet deep while the fishermen washed the fish. The horse amused me; she would stand there contented and switch her tail. Occasionally she looked around and her action indicated "Let me know when you finish."

The "Old Hotel" was never profitable for Grandaddy; there was very little traffic and the "Great Depression" made the condition worse. He used the hotel for promotional purposes; for example, he allowed church groups to use the building for their summer retreats or picnics.