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Wrightsville Beach
Friday, March 29, 2024

Big Dig lecture dishes ICWW history

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Wrightsville Beach residents and visitors admire, traverse and photograph the Intracoastal Waterway (ICWW) daily, but few know the 3,000-mile waterway’s complete history and function. Elaine Henson’s one-hour presentation, the Big Dig, explains how the completion of the ICWW, built from 1929-1932, impacted southeastern North Carolina.

Madeline Flagler, executive director of the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History, said Henson will have more than 100 historical images.

“She calls it illustrated lecturing,” Flagler said. “They illustrate the lecture she’s giving and the research she’s done. Elaine is a retired school teacher. … She has a real following, as far as her talks go, because they are so entertaining and so interesting.”

Flagler said Henson discusses how the completion of the ICWW transformed Wrightsville Beach.

“It’s fascinating. They turned what was then Wrightsville Sound, which no longer exists, into the Intracoastal Waterway,” Flagler said.

Henson said the surrounding areas of Wilmington and Carolina Beach were also impacted by the waterway’s creation.

“Of course those two municipalities were very impacted,” Henson said. “Especially Carolina Beach, because the Intracoastal was the only land cut at Snow’s Cut. The Federal Point Peninsula became an island. There was no bridge needed to get to Carolina Beach back in those days until that happened.”

Henson said she gave the lecture at the University of North Carolina Wilmington several years ago, although her presentation has changed since then. She recently added a photograph of a ship in the 1920s to her slideshow.

“New things from the ’20s don’t come along every day,” she said. “Madeline Flagler texted me about two months ago because somebody had donated a photograph of a survey crew that her mother — back in the ’20s — had known. … That was really exciting for me.”

Henson’s collection of images also contains photographs by environmentalist and photographer Hugh Morton.

“One is the swing bridge at Snow’s Cut. It’s a beautiful picture-postcard,” Henson said. “The Snow’s Cut one is an aerial photograph that he took from a plane. A boat is going through the bridge. …There is also a photograph of the bridge over Wrightsville Beach. It is a picture by John Hemmer. He was an award-winning photographer. Before coming to North Carolina, he worked for some of the New York newspapers.”

Henson used a variety of sources to collect her images, which include postcards, photographs, maps and images from the Wilmington Morning Star.

“I’ve done a lot of research,” she said.

The “Big Dig” presentation will take place downstairs at the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Fred and Alice Stanback Coastal Education Center Thursday, July 16 at 7 p.m.

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