Beach Development

By the end of the year 1950, the homeowners were enjoying two public benefits, electricity and a paved road to U.S. Highway 17 (Mt. Pisgah Road).

Local builders were busy and the public was becoming more interested in investing in beach property. The Corbett brothers, Johnny Corbett, Sr. and Walter Corbett, did the plumbing.

Dr. R.H. Holden reared his family in Durham, North Carolina and practiced dentistry there for many years. He built a vacation cottage at the beach for his family in the Spring of 1939. However, he became more interested in the beach in 1950 and moved his family to Shalotte. He practiced dentistry there until he died.

He had two rental cottages built a the beach after he moved to Shalotte. One of the cottages was named "Brunswick" and the other "Columbus."

Most commercial buildings those days were built with cement blocks; these blocks were much heavier than the cinder blocks used at present. When Dr. Holden made plans to build the Ocean View Tavern, his builder experienced the same problems as the rest of us who used the cement blocks for building. The North Carolina Highway Department would not allow the heavy loads to cross on the ferry and be delivered to the job site. As a result, the block company unloaded the blocks on the north side of the Intracoastal Waterway at the ferry. The builder who used the blocks had to reload the blocks by hand and take them across the ferry to their job; the front-end loader had not been invented.

The builder who built the Ocean View Tavern did have an alternative. When the Intracoastal Waterway was dug in 1930--1931, the dredge deposited a large pile of coarse sand and oyster shells in the area where the Holden Beach Town Hall is today. That builder had a machine to make blocks, and he made the blocks to build Ocean View Tavern. S. Edgar Holden built a beach house for his family in the early 1950s and several cottages, which he sold.