A historical highway marker was unveiled in Wrightsville Beach Oct. 18 recognizing the island as the birthplace of surfing in North Carolina and a pioneer of surfing on the East Coast.
The marker was installed on the corner of Waynick Boulevard and Bridgers Street because Burke Haywood Bridgers and a few of his friends were the first to ride waves at Wrightsville Beach in 1909. Bridgers’ grandchildren and great grandchildren, who attended the marker unveiling, still live and surf near where he rode waves more than a century ago.
J. Skipper Funderburg, whose extensive research helped the island earn the marker, said it took one and one-half years from the time of application to installation because submissions must earn the consent of 10 historians before being approved.
“Communities often think that things are important to the state, but it’s really just more of a community thing,” N.C. Historical Marker Program representative Ansley Wegner said. “But this is of statewide and maybe even national significance.”
Preparing the application was a five-year process for Funderburg, a quest for information that took him to private archives of 35-millimeter reels of microfilm in Hawaii.
There, in an April 2, 1910, edition of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, he found a letter Bridgers wrote to a friend in Hawaii asking for tips on wave riding, a sport he had tried for the first time at Wrightsville Beach the previous summer.
Funderburg’s research revealed Bridgers wrote the letter seeking advice on surfboard dimensions, surf forecasting and how to ride waves. That first summer, Bridgers and his friends weren’t overly successful in surfing because the wooden boards couldn’t support a full-grown man standing up.
Still, Bridgers’ efforts are the first documented surfing activities in North Carolina. Since that summer, the sport of surfing has earned Wrightsville Beach national recognition, not only because of the professional and amateur talent it has produced, but also through its inclusion on lists like National Geographic’s 20 Best Surf Towns in the World.
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