Dr. Joel Fodrie has been named the new director of Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort.

Most recently director of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, Fodrie will succeed outgoing director Andy Read, who was in the leadership role for 10 years and will remain on the faculty once Fodrie comes aboard, Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment said Wednesday.

“The Duke Marine Lab is a gold standard among centers of coastal and marine research, both in the social sciences and the natural sciences. Its coastal setting is ideal for exploring how humans and natural systems affect one another. I’m very excited about working with the faculty, staff and students to support, and even enhance, place-based research and teaching that has local and far-reaching impacts,” Fodrie said in a statement.

Fodrie will join later this summer the lab that “has centered on field-based discovery, immersive learning and close mentorship” for nearly nine decades, the university said.

“As director, Joel will build on Andy’s legacy and further strengthen strategic connections between Beaufort and Durham while guiding the Marine Lab’s next chapter as a world-class leader in marine science and research,” said Lori Bennear, Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School.

Fodrie earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and history from UNC Chapel Hill, and his doctorate in biological oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego.

His research focuses on coastal and estuarine ecosystems, fisheries ecology and the resilience of marine communities and his scholarship includes more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and extensive external grant support.

“Joel has the research, academic and leadership expertise we were looking for in a director. But beyond that, he brings a reputation as a trusted community partner deeply appreciative of and knowledgeable about North Carolina coastal ecosystems,” said Erika Weinthal, the Nicholas School’s John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor, who chaired the Marine Lab director search committee

Among various honors, Fodrie received recognition as an Early-Career Research Fellow with the Gulf Research Program, part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. In 2024, he was named one of five recipients of the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy, a five-year term professorship to recognize and honor outstanding teachers and scholars.

“On a personal level, I grew up in Beaufort, North Carolina, and have known about the significance of the Marine Lab essentially my whole life,” Fodrie said. “I certainly view this as a one-of-a-kind opportunity to help shape the direction and impact of the Lab to ensure wise and sustainable use of our coastal and marine ecosystems.”

Fittingly, it was a Carolina blue sky that greeted University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee H. Roberts as he joined Institute of Marine Sciences researchers for a boat ride Tuesday morning to Cape Lookout National Seashore’s undeveloped barrier islands, a stark contrast to the celebratory gridlock on Franklin Street that the Orange County city can expect after a big win.

Roberts was in Carteret County to meet with faculty and students and learn more about their research at the lab in Morehead City, one of the handful of stops for the chancellor’s second summer tour this year in eastern North Carolina.

The first summer tour in 2025 covered the western part of the state. The 2026 tour began May 29 with two days at Fort Bragg. After Carteret County, he stopped in New Bern, UNC Pembroke, UNC Wilmington and the USS Battleship North Carolina.

Roberts told Coastal Review Tuesday afternoon from inside the institute that these tours are the university’s connection to the state, and its people are “the source of our strength at Carolina.”

Because most of the state’s people do not live in Chapel Hill, Roberts explained that “it’s important to get out around the state and see people where they live and work and see as many communities across the state as we can.”

Roberts continued that most communities don’t have a facility like this one, “where we’ve made a large investment for a for a long time, and so this has been a particularly important part of Carolina’s history, having the physical outpost here, but the work Carolina scientists and researchers are doing is in every nook and cranny of the state, trying to help move the state forward.”

His visit Tuesday included a tour of the lab with a small group, including area media, led by Institute of Marine Sciences Director Dr. Joel Fodrie, a professor in the Earth, marine and environmental sciences department.

Fodrie said that the institute is approaching its 80th year, and the existing building was built about 25 years ago to house research for environmental processes, like water quality, biogeochemistry and geology.

Throughout the tour, Roberts was able to observe research as it was happening and speak to the scientists as they analyzed microbiomes on the coast’s shark species, collected data on how much sediment flows downstream from inland waterbodies, and harvested seagrass seeds for large-scale seagrass restoration. Fodrie also made a point of introducing Roberts to the facilities and administration staff as well, highlighting their important role in keeping the the lab running smoothly.

During a pause by the office of Dr. Rick Luettich, former institute director, the alumni distinguished professor out of his office to talk about an ongoing flood data collection initiative called the Sunny Day Flooding Project.

Luettich said they’ve been working with people on campus, in city and regional planning, and with N.C. State University on the project that uses sensors installed in storm drains and ditches to record water levels.

Luettich pointed to the neighboring office where research specialist in physical oceanography Tony Whipple was building the sensors that measure in real time how “frequently flooding is occurring now, not when a big storm comes, but just when it’s a King Tide, or with sea level rise.”

Luettich said there are sensors in New Bern, Beaufort, Carolina Beach and Down East Carteret County, and there’s a website that shows in real time what the water levels are in these understudied areas.

“We haven’t been really paying attention to whether they flood, but we’re seeing that they flood very frequently, and more and more often as sea level’s rising. So really interesting collaborative project that we’re kind of right at ground zero for,” Luettich said.

On the second floor, UNC Institute for the Environment Director Dr. Michael Piehler paused working on what he called a “really cool experiment” looking at salinity intrusion in farms to chat with Roberts.

Piehler said the “experiment is working on a farm where salinity is coming in and seeing how that affects both the way that the farmers experience the soil and the way we see it as a processor of nutrients, so it’s just another great case of IMS being a beautiful thing.”

When Fodrie directed the group outside of the facility, he gestured to what looked like abstract sculptures with concrete-saturated rope as the medium.

He said these were different types of structures used to build living shorelines, and the university is collaborating with the companies that make these alternatives for hardened bulkheads and seawalls for shoreline restoration.

“We get to play a valuable role,” Fodrie said. “We’re engaging a lot of companies that are doing that to help them refine their projects and protect shorelines better, and in more environmentally friendly ways” he said about what he called the bourgeoning industry.

Fodrie also used the tour to show the chancellor existing needs at the research lab.

The outdoor experimental tanks are high on Fodrie’s list to be modernized and be more accessible to all students for experiments and research, and they’re looking to expand the 2,100-square-foot dormitory that sleeps about 20.

“We would love to have students here,” for the semester, Fodrie said from inside the cramped living space beside the lab, and want to expand the dorm to accommodate about 32 beds. “We have the footprint. We have the space” and plans have been drawn.

“Our grad students have had an increasingly hard time finding a place to live,” Fodrie said. They used to rent beachfront homes and “that game is over. So, we have a real housing crunch.”

In the past, students could pool their resources and together rent the larger beach houses for a reasonable amount, but the by-owner vacation business has priced the students out.  

In the shorter term, Fodrie said IMS is going to invest in turning the existing dorm into four apartments that sleep four each.

“We’re going to actually reduce capacity to 16,” and the apartments will be small, but they’ll be perhaps livable for a whole semester. That only gets us to 16 and we’re trying to get to 32. It’s a good short-term fix, but not a long-term solution,” Fodrie said.

Roberts told Coastal Review after his tour of the lab that the university has had a presence on the coast for 80 years, and “when you spend time here, you realize why. How important it is to undertake the kind of research that our scientists and faculty are pursuing.”

The coast is crucial to the state and to its future, from standpoint of fisheries and the environment, the research into sustainability, oyster farms, and dozens of other areas of research everywhere you look.

“We have 75 people here year-round. It’s a remarkable effort supported by the people of North Carolina, and, and for a good reason, because what’s happening here is integral to North Carolina’s future,” he said.

In a follow-up interview, Fodrie told Coastal Review that the facility serves as UNC’s vanguard for meeting challenges facing the coast, as well as for discovering solutions in focal areas that include coastal resilience, water quality, human health, and fisheries.

“Knowing how broad and diverse the chancellor’s responsibilities are, we are very gratified and appreciative that he would choose to visit the Institute to learn more about our ongoing efforts to serve North Carolina and also explore with us ways to expand our capacity in research and teaching/mentoring,” Fodrie said.

Roberts’ choice to visit the institute also highlights the unique and high-impact role that it has played in UNC’s mission over the last 80 years, since the institute was created, Fodrie continued.

“In this regard, one telling statistic we discussed related to the Impact Awards that UNC uses to recognize graduate students that conduct research focused on serving the needs of North Carolina,” Fodrie said, explaining that IMS-based graduate students represent less than 0.2% of all UNC graduate students during the last decade but represent about 14% of all award recipients over that same period.

“In turn, we also appreciated the chance to learn more about the chancellor’s broader goals and priorities for UNC during his team’s visit, and therefore how IMS might continue to grow our impact within and beyond the university.”  

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District is hosting a series of public meetings in June to discuss long-term strategies for maintaining North Carolina’s federal harbor channels.

The meetings, which will be held in-person and virtually, are an opportunity for the community to engage on the development of environmental impact statements for the Morehead City and Wilmington harbors.

Notices of intent for the Morehead City Harbor and Wilmington Harbor were published on Thursday.

The environmental impact statements will evaluate “reasonably foreseeable” environmental-related impacts to proposed updates to operation and maintenance, or O&M, dredging and associated activities, according to a Corps release.

Key topics include environmental compliance, navigational safety, and risk-based analysis.

The environmental impact statements will not evaluate or examine any changes in channel dimensions, dredged material volumes, or options where dredged material may be placed.

“Updates to O&M activities are expected to improve operational flexibility by updating avoidance and minimization measures, including adjusting the timing of dredging operations,” the release continues.

Morehead City Harbor meetings are scheduled as follows:

• In-person on Monday, June 8 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Morehead City Elementary School media room, 3316 Arendell St.
• Virtual, session 1, on Tuesday, June 9 from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Virtual, session 2, on Monday, June 15 from 5:30-7 p.m.

Meetings for the Wilmington Harbor will be held:

• In-person on Tuesday, June 9 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Edwin A. Alderman Elementary School cafeteria/multi-purpose room, 2025 Independence Boulevard.
• Virtual, session 1, on Monday, June 15 from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Virtual, session 2, on Tuesday, June 16 from 5:30 – 7 p.m.

The Corps will accept public comments at the meetings as well as by email to CESAW-WHOMEIS@usace.army.mil, online at https://sardn-eis-sardn.hub.arcgis.com/, or by mail: Attention: Teresa Young, Environmental Resources Section, USACE Wilmington District, 69 Darlington Avenue, Wilmington, NC 28403.

Comments will be accepted through June 29.

Matthew Godfrey, a sea turtle conservationist with extensive experience in several regions, is the the featured guest this month for the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s “Green Drinks” speaker series in Morehead City.

This month’s session is set for 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 28, on the third floor of Jack’s on the Waterfront at 513 Evans St.

The casual monthly gathering for people who care about the North Carolina coast is hosted by the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Whether you enjoy boating, beach days, or simply want to keep our waters clean and our communities strong, this is a relaxed space to connect with others, hear from local voices, and stay up to date on important coastal topics,” according to organizers.

Godfrey began working in North Carolina in 2002, after being hired by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission to coordinate the North Carolina Sea Turtle Project. Since then, he has played a key role in monitoring and protecting sea turtle populations along the state’s coast.

Godfrey will give an overview of sea turtle nesting and nest protection in the state, highlighting some of the joys and challenges associated with sea turtle conservation along North Carolina’s coast.

Grab a drink from the bar and join the conversation. These events are free and open to the public, however registration is strongly encouraged.

Carteret County is offering its residents a free drive-through service on Saturday to collect common household hazardous waste.

The waste collection is hosted by the Carteret County Solid Waste Division, in partnership with Coastal Environmental Partnership, and is set for 8 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Carteret County Health Department parking lot, 3820 Bridges St., Morehead City. Proof of residency will be required.

Small quantities of household hazardous items, including cooking oil, automotive fluids such as gasoline, used motor oil and antifreeze, lawn and garden pesticides, batteries and paint will be accepted.

Trained staff who will be on-site to unload these materials from resident’s vehicles will not accept infectious waste, gas cylinders, commercial waste, radioactive materials, ammunition, or explosives.

“Proper disposal of household hazardous waste helps prevent contamination of water sources, reduces risks to sanitation workers, and protects the environment,” according to a county release.

Coastal Environmental Partnership, or CEP, which serves Carteret, Craven and Pamlico counties, provides a series of household hazardous waste collection events throughout the year.

For more information about this or future collection opportunities, visit carteretcountync.gov or contact the Carteret County Public Works Department at 252-648-7878.

Residents may also contact CEP Education and Outreach Coordinator Somer Peede at 252-633-1564 or somer@crswma.com.

Registration is open for the 2026 North Carolina Aquaculture Development Conference, a three-day event that focuses on the future of aquaculture in state.

The event, which will be held March 25-27 at they Crystal Coast Civic Center on the Carteret Community College campus in Morehead City, is to include keynote sessions, technical workshops, and interactive discussions on a range of aquaculture species and production systems relevant to the state.

The program is a time for the public, current and aspiring fish farmers, scientists, educators, researchers, students, and agency and regulatory professionals to come together to share ideas, advance best practices, and strengthen connections across the aquaculture community, organizers said.

The Got to Be NC Seafood Expo, which celebrates the state’s seafood industry, will take place during the event, and innovative equipment, technologies, and products will be showcased

There will be a career fair March 25 and attendees may join in at 6 p.m. for trivia night at Tight Lines Pub and Brewing Co. in downtown Morehead City.

Agendas for each day of the conference are available online. To register for the conference and the expo visit https://ncaquaculture.com/registration/.

Two coastal communities have been awarded grants from the state for stream restoration, water-based recreation and water management projects.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources awarded the grants totaling more than $1.5 million to nine local governments, including Morehead City in Carteret County and Windsor in Bertie County, the agency announced Wednesday.

“These grants will boost public waterfront access in unique places around the state, including rare forests along the coast and the Mayo River north of the Triad,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson stated in a release.

Morehead City has been awarded $200,000 for the Spooner Creek Conservation Nature Park. The project includes acquiring almost 23 acres of undeveloped land to create a publicly owned nature park that provides public waterfront access and conserve shoreline including rare, maritime forestland.

Windsor was awarded $200,000 to retrofit Hoggard’s Millpond. The project includes reconstruction of a breached mill dam, removal of damaged mill infrastructure and replacement of a naturalized fish passage structure to reconnect more than 50 miles of potential stream habitat and also to store stormwater.

A full list of the awards is online. More details are available on the Water Resources Development Grant program website.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review, is launching a leadership and professional development program focused on coastal issues.

The cohort-based Coastal Leadership Institute is designed for individuals who play leadership roles in coastal North Carolina communities, as well as leaders from across the state whose work influences the coast.

The institute is designed as a six-month program with two full-day sessions per month beginning in March. The cohort size is limited to about 20–25 participants. Registration is now open for the inaugural class.

“The Coastal Federation has established a strong reputation as a convener of people and organizations interested in protecting and restoring the coast,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis, “so the launch of this new Institute is a natural fit for us and will be important to advancing our mission.”

Through facilitated discussions, expert-led sessions, and site-based learning, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the forces shaping coastal communities, examined through economic, environmental, natural, and cultural history lenses, while building strong professional relationships that support effective leadership in complex coastal settings, institute organizers said.

“Coastal issues rarely have simple solutions,” said Coastal Federation Chief Community Engagement Officer Amanda Lyle. “By bringing together leaders from different communities and sectors, the Institute creates space for shared learning and helps build the capacity for informed decision-making.”

The tuition of $1,000 per participant covers program materials, meals, transportation for site visits, lodging, and alumni programming access. Scholarships are available.

The six sessions will convene in March, April, May, September, October, and November, with a summer break.

An orientation is set for March 9-10 in Beaufort. This session will also explore how the cultural, historical, and ecological context of coastal North Carolina factor into the region’s identity, challenges, and leadership needs.

Subsequent sessions will cover coastal and marine sciences, growth and economic development, coastal policy and management issues, and natural resource conservation and restoration. This year, sessions will primarily take place in Carteret County and the Wilmington area.

The program is intended to become an annual offering that brings together emerging and established leaders from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including business, local and regional government, military, education, nonprofit, and industry.

The Institute is geared to create a space for thoughtful dialogue, practical learning, and a trusted peer network that continues well beyond the program.

 “We really couldn’t do this without our partners and supporters – the many individuals and organizations who have committed to sharing their expertise, insights, resources and time with the participants and to helping create new professional connections for the betterment of our coast,” Davis added.

The inaugural Coastal Leadership Institute cohort is partially subsidized through the support of the Duke Energy Foundation, the Carlyle Adams Foundation, and the RBC Foundation.

More details and the application are online.

North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division has scheduled four career events along the coast to recruit temporary and seasonal employees to staff its ferries, terminals and shipyard.

Officials said that the seasonal employees are a key part of the ferry system’s service, and they are often the first considered for permanent roles.

“In fact, a majority of last year’s temporary hires transitioned into permanent roles,” Ferry Division Director Jed Dixon said in a statement.

The career events are all from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on the following dates:

• Jan. 14 at NC Works Career Center, 3813 Arendell St., Morehead City.
• Jan. 21 at Hatteras Ferry Operations Center, 59063 N.C. 12, Hatteras.
• Jan. 28 at Southport Ferry Operations Center, 1650 Ferry Road, Southport.
• Feb. 4 at Pamlico River Ferry Operations Center, 229 N.C. 306 North, Bath.

At the events, applications will be accepted for temporary, seasonal employment at all experience levels, from general utility worker to experienced boat captains.

Those looking for permanent employment can learn more about open positions and how to obtain a Transportation Worker Identification Card or a Merchant Mariner Credential for the application process. 

Benefits of year-round, full-time permanent employment with the division include competitive salaries, health insurance, retirement benefits, and paid vacation, holiday and sick leave.

For a list of the Ferry Division’s current job openings, visit the state jobs website​ to create a profile and apply for permanent positions. For more information, call 252-370-5573.

Carteret County announced Monday that Emerald Isle Fire Chief William Charles “Billy” Matthias II has been selected to serve as the county emergency services director, effective Jan. 26, 2026.

Matthias, who has been the Bogue Banks town’s fire chief since September 2023, began his firefighting career in 2003 as a volunteer at the Swansboro Fire Department, and later joined the Nags Head Fire Department. Matthias also served as a fire captain and firefighter-EMT with Wildwood Fire & Rescue, now part of the Morehead City department, where he led structural firefighting operations, extrication and marine rescue responses, while mentoring and training personnel in operational safety and accountability. He became a full-time member of the Emerald Isle department in November 2006.

In Emerald Isle, Matthias leads an emergency services operation that includes fire suppression, EMS and U.S. Life Saving Association-certified ocean rescue services.

County officials pointed to his experience overseeing a $3.9 million budget, managing a full-time and seasonal workforce, and responding to more than 1,600 calls annually as positioning him well to lead the county’s Emergency Services operations, county officials said in the announcement.

“William understands what it takes to lead emergency services in a coastal community,” said County Manager Sharon Griffin. “He has hands-on experience, a strong grasp of operations and a leadership style that fits well with our organization. We’re excited to welcome him and look forward to the experience he brings to the County.”

In his new role, Matthias will oversee Carteret County’s emergency management, emergency medical services, emergency communications and the Office of the Fire Marshal. The Emergency Services Department coordinates countywide preparedness, response and recovery efforts for natural, technological and man-made disasters, including pandemic events. The department also provides 24-hour emergency medical response, manages the county’s 911 Emergency Communications Center as the primary public safety answering point, and administers fire prevention, inspections, investigations and life safety education programs throughout the county.

During his time in Emerald Isle, Matthias assisted in improving the department’s ISO rating to Class 3 in 2021, secured grants to enhance staffing levels and modernize self-contained breathing apparatus equipment. He also implemented data-driven deployment strategies that improved response outcomes across the primary service area and strengthened hazard mitigation and preparedness efforts in a coastal environment, according to the announcement.

“I’m thankful for the opportunity to serve Carteret County,” Matthias said in a statement. “Emergency services work depends on preparation, teamwork and trust. I’m looking forward to getting to know the team, listening, and building on the solid foundation already in place.”

Matthias holds a Master of Public Administration in emergency services management and a Bachelor of Science in fire administration from Columbia Southern University, as well as an associate’s degree in fire science. His credentials include North Carolina Fire Officer III, EMT certification, completion of the North Carolina Executive Fire Officer Program, extensive NIMS/ICS training, and U.S. Life Saving Association open water lifeguard instructor certification.

Editor’s note: The following is from historian David Cecelski’s “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” The Carteret County native introduced the nearly 20-part photo-essay series earlier this year on his website, explaining at the time that the images he selected from the N.C. Department of Conservation and Development Collection were taken in the late 1930s into the early 1950s of the state’s farms, industries, and working people.

In this photo-essay in my “Working Lives” series, I am looking at several photographs that feature workers on a railroad that old timers, when I was a boy, still called the “Old Mullet Road.”

The real name of the railroad was the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad (A&NC). First in business in 1858, it ran from the coastal port of Morehead City, west to New Bern, Kinston, and finally Goldsboro.

Owned by the state of North Carolina, the railroad was usually leased to private operators and it played a vital role in opening the economy and communities of the North Carolina coast to the outside world.

In Goldsboro, at the railroad’s western end, other lines connected the A&NC’s passengers and freight to Raleigh and to distant markets and cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

Local people referred to the A&NC as the “Old Mullet Road” because of the seemingly endless barrels of salt mullet that its freight cars carried out of Morehead City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

With the opening of the railroad in 1858, the local fishery for striped mullet — what we’ve always called “jumping mullet” — grew into the largest saltwater fishery anywhere in the American South.

Long a staple in local pantries, barrels of salt mullet were soon as common in the country stores of eastern North Carolina as pickled pigs feet and rounds of farmers cheese.

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The construction of the A&NC and the building of the coastal town of Morehead City went hand in hand.

The town’s resort trade, its famous charter fishing business, the state port, the local menhaden industry (one of the largest fisheries in the U.S.), and really the region’s entire wholesale seafood industry — none would have been imaginable without the “Old Mullet Road.”

The same could be said for the truck farming business throughout that whole central part of North Carolina’s coastal plain.

Over the years, the A&NC’s trains became part of daily life in the towns and crossroads through which it passed.

For people who lived along the tracks, the coming and going of the train, its whistle, and the sense of curiosity and wonder about what lost soul might be coming home, or what trouble might be arriving, became measures of time passing as much as the tides and the changing of the seasons.

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Taken in Morehead City or New Bern in 1942, this photograph introduces us to one of the railroad’s employees who was something of a legend in that part of eastern North Carolina.

His name was J. B. Davis, people called him “Captain Davis,” and he was a conductor on the railroad for close to half a century.

On Nov. 30, 1924, the Raleigh News & Observer referred to Capt. Davis and the railroad’s three other conductors as “the most popular quartet in this part of the State….”

The paper went on to say, “They know more people than all the politicians in Wayne, Lenoir, Craven, and Carteret counties.”

A railroad conductor saw the best and worst of humanity. Capt. Davis came to know the high and mighty and the utterly defeated, those that were good, and those that were set on evil, people anxious to get back home, and those desperate to get away from home.

Along the railroad’s path, people often sought him out to get the latest news from other towns. Many a day, he was the first to bring word of births and marriages, shipwrecks, hurricanes and floods.

His own life on the railroad was far from uneventful: Capt. Davis was injured in a derailment in 1933, and he and the train’s brakeman were usually the first to reach the poor souls who were killed on the railroad tracks.

In 1939, when a new company, the Atlantic & East Carolina Railroad Co., took over the railroad’s lease, Capt. Davis was fired for allegedly not collecting fares from some of his passengers.

His discharge made headlines across eastern North Carolina, and he was eventually rehired, but there has to be story there.

Maybe he was just looking out for his friends. On the other hand, times were hard in the 1930s and I like to think that maybe now and then he looked the other way and let a penniless soul or two ride for free.

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I assume that this gentleman was one of the train’s firemen, whose job it was to maintain the fire in the engine’s boiler by shoveling coal and watching the boiler’s water levels as well.

A 1947 newspaper article concerning a derailment mentions an A&NC fireman named Henry Peterson. This may be him, but I cannot be sure.

Judging from the way he holds himself, I might have thought that he was the train’s engineer, but that was not possible in eastern North Carolina in the first half of the 20th century because he was African American.

At the turn of the 20th century, the A&NC’s president was a New Bern banker and real estate mogul named James A. Bryan.

Bryan was one of the leaders of the white supremacy movement that swept North Carolina in the period from 1898 to 1900. To attract New Bern’s white working class men to the white supremacy cause, he promised to discharge all of the railroad’s black employees and give their jobs to white workers.

After the Wilmington Massacre and the victory of the white supremacists in November 1898, Bryan lived up to his promise.

According to documents preserved in the Bryan Family Papers at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Southern Historical Collection, he discharged dozens of A&NC conductors, porters, brakemen, mechanics, blacksmiths, and other skilled railroad men in 1899 and 1900.

He also fired many of the company’s lowest level black employees, including the night watchman at the company’s rail yard.

In exchange for white workingmen’s support for a state constitutional amendment that took all voting rights from the state’s black citizens, Bryan also pledged to embed white supremacy in the railroad’s labor policies into the future.

In practice, that meant: the A&NC’s managers would hire and promote whites preferentially, regardless of qualifications or experience; would never pay a black worker as much as a white worker; would never employ a black individual in a management role; and would never hire or promote a black man or woman into a job–such as locomotive engineer– that gave them supervisory responsibilities over any white employee.

The railroad’s policies with respect to race were still in place in 1942.

You can learn more about James A. Bryan’s leadership in New Bern’s white supremacy campaign, and see some of the manuscripts related to his firing of the A&NC’s black workers, in my essay, “The Other Coup D’Etat: Remembering New Bern in 1898.”

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Only a few years before these photographs were taken, the railroad had seemed on its last legs.

The private railroad company that had leased the track from the State of North Carolina since 1904, the Norfolk & Southern, had defaulted in 1934, a victim of the Great Depression.

After the Norfolk & Southern’s default, state coffers could not keep up with the railroad’s maintenance and repair needs. Years of neglect began taking their toll: broken railroad ties abounded, embankments needed reinforcement, and much about the old railroad seemed frayed and worn out. Reports of derailments grew more common.

Things began to look up in 1939 however, when the state finally found a new private company to take over the railroad’s lease.

The new company, the Atlantic & Eastern North Carolina, invested in new engines and track repairs, updated at least some depots, and even repainted the cars a perky “Spanish blue” instead of the old dull black.

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Then the war came. Everybody was on the move. Soldiers, sailors, defense workers, and civilians of all kinds.

A new prosperity was in the air, heightening the demand for carrying passengers and hauling the region’s agricultural products and other freight.

Probably most importantly, the federal government began constructing two massive new military installations on the central part of the North Carolina coast in 1941 and ’42. To build the two bases, the railroad’s freight cars would carry enough lumber, brick, piping, and other construction materials to build two good-sized cities from scratch.

The railroad ran a short spur from Havelock Station into the construction site for the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station (originally called Cunningham Field). To the south, the railroad carried construction materials to Camp Lejeune via a track that ran from New Bern to Jacksonville, then along a short spur owned and operated by the Navy.

By the time these photographs were taken, the railroad was making a profit again for the first time in recent memory.

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The war changed the railroad and the North Carolina coast in a thousand ways, some easy to get used to, and some that probably haunted the workers that we have met here — Capt. Davis, the fireman, the mail clerk, the brakeman, and the porter in the photograph above — for their rest of their lives.

More than 25 years ago, I interviewed an elderly woman named Gretchen Brinson in Morehead City.

During the early part of World War II, Ms. Brinson had been a nurse in the burn unit of the town’s little hospital when German U-boats were sinking merchant vessels off that part of the North Carolina coast.

This is an excerpt from that interview:

“I married Bull Brinson in 1937. While my daughter was still an infant, I started working at the hospital. Very shortly, we began hearing depth charges and if they had a strike we could see the fires, the ships burning.

“The debris washed up on the ocean front, and there were several years we couldn’t swim up there because of the debris and the oil slicks.

“We could see the ships burning.

“When there was a strike out there at night, we knew this had happened and that next morning there would be casualties come in. Bodies, corpses did wash in on the beach. And they were brought into the hospital: burns, all manner of traumatic situations. The hospital was full. It was only a 30-bed hospital. They lay in the hall on cots. We were not prepared for the onslaught.”

She continued:

“Many of the young men who came here, son, did not live. When the 3 o’clock train left town, the baggage car doors were most always open, and you could see several coffins in their wooden boxes, being shipped to other places. There was seldom a day for months, maybe a year or more, when there were not one or two or three or possibly more that went out on that 3 o’clock train.”

-End-

My story “Gretchen Brinson: A Born Nurse” originally appeared in my “Listening to History” series in the Raleigh News & Observer on June 14, 1998. You can find a copy of the story here. 

A new bulk cement import terminal at the Port of Morehead City will be built to handle at least five times the volume of the port’s current cement operations.

Silvi Cement’s new terminal will include two 100,000-ton enclosed domes for Type I/II low-alkali cement and Grade 120 slag, complete with 24/7 truck loading capabilities and direct rail loadout, according to a North Carolina Ports release.

“The enclosed domes expand storage capacity and modernize the cement import system by providing a more environmentally friendly, contained operation,” the release states.

“Our expansion into Morehead City marks an exciting new chapter for Silvi Cement and represents a significant investment in the region,” Laurence J. Silvi II, Silvi Materials co-president, stated in the release. “We’re proud to collaborate with NC Ports on this important project and bring new jobs and economic opportunity to the community. The Morehead City terminal will increase the reliability and reach of our cement supply throughout the Southeast, and we look forward to supporting the continued growth of this rapidly developing market.”

Silvi Cement, a division of concrete supplier Silvi Materials based in Pennsylvania, will use a now fully operational temporary cement rail loadout facility supplied by the company’s flagship terminal in Bristol, Pennsylvania, until the new terminal is completed.

The terminal is expected to open in 2027.

“This significant investment underscores Silvi’s commitment to our growing region and market,” North Carolina Ports Executive Director Brian E. Clark stated in the release. “Once complete, the new import terminal will enhance the supply chain for construction materials throughout the Southeast while supporting job creation and overall economic vitality in Morehead City and beyond.”

People in the charter or for-hire business are invited to share their perspectives on challenges facing the industry during upcoming meetings with state fisheries officials.

The meetings, hosted by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Marine Fisheries, will cover topics to include mandatory harvest reporting as well as other subjects those in attendance would like to discuss.

The first of three meetings will be held at 6 p.m. Nov. 13 at the Division of Marine Fisheries Central District Office, 5285 Highway 70, Morehead City.

A meeting will be hosted at 6 p.m. Nov. 18 at Cape Fear Community College, room 252, 502 N. Front St., Wilimington.

On Dec. 2, a meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at College of the Albemarle – Dare Room 110, 205 U.S. 64, Manteo.

For additional information about the meetings, contact Coral Sawyer at coral.sawyer@deq.nc.gov or 252-515-5527.

Editor’s note: The following is from historian David Cecelski’s “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” The Carteret County native introduced the nearly 20-part photo-essay series earlier this year on his website, explaining at the time that the images he selected from the N.C. Department of Conservation and Development Collection were taken in the late 1930s into the early 1950s of the state’s farms, industries, and working people.

This is a photograph of Ms. Neva Adams at work in the stitching room at the Morehead City Garment Co. in Morehead City, 1942.

Chartered in the fall of 1938, the “Shirt Factory” was first located on the second floor of a brick building a block from Bogue Sound. At the time, the Great Depression still lingered. Hoping to attract a textile company, the town’s leaders had invested in the space, the machinery, and a training program for workers.

By the time of this photograph, the company, which was started by a couple from Pennsylvania, had moved to a new building across the railroad tracks. The original building was later home to the Webb Memorial Library in downtown Morehead City.

In a way, the company’s arrival in town was an historic event. The work was hard, the hours long and, in its early years, workers were rather scandalously not even paid the legal minimum wage.

Nonetheless, a job at the Shirt Factory offered a singular opportunity for hundreds of women just before, during, and after World War II. For many, it was their first chance to do what used to be called “public work,” a catch-all phrase for any job not in the home or on the farm.

They came from near and far to the Shirt Factory. Scores of women commuted in the back of farm trucks.

Others walked from the Promise Land, the neighborhood of largely fishing families that bordered the Shirt Factory.

Some women even caught rides on the school bus from Salter Path, a fishing village all the way out on Bogue Banks.

Neva Adams, in this photo, resided in Morehead City, probably in the Promise Land. She was already a grandmother when she started working at the Shirt Factory, but she had lost her husband just before the war and was on her own.

For women like her, the Shirt Factory often seemed a godsend. To a large part, that was because of the income, of course.

But over the years, when I have been talking to women who worked at the Shirt Factory back in those days, they have often told me how much it meant to them to be part of a community of women who laughed a lot, shared stories, and supported one another.

Being with those women, they would say, was a balm for grief and loneliness and all the hurts that happen in life.

–2–

This is Ella Pittman, another of the Morehead City Garment Co.’s machine operators, at work in the stitching room in 1942.

Ms. Pittman was just the kind of woman that went to work at the Shirt Factory during the Second World War.

Born on Cedar Island in 1894, she had grown up in that remotest corner of the North Carolina coast long before bridges connected the local villages to the mainland.

Her father, Francis Marion Goodwin, was a fisherman all his life. A passel of Ms. Ella’s brothers, nephews, and cousins worked on the water as well– many of them on menhaden fishing boats.

Old timers still remember her brother, Capt. Leroy Goodwin, who was killed when a tugboat collided with his menhaden boat, the Barnegat, in 1960.

By the time that Ms. Pittman went to work at the Shirt Factory, she had come a long way in her life.

As a girl and young woman on Cedar Island, she had cooked on a wood stove or over a hearth. She had done laundry in a tin wash pot, salted barrels of fish every autumn, and had been unacquainted with electricity and indoor plumbing.

In all likelihood, she grew up helping her mother in a garden resplendent in collard greens, shallots, and sweet potatoes.

She was quite likely already well acquainted with needle and twine before coming to the Shirt Factory. Many a Cedar Island home had two hooks in the family’s kitchen walls, like the ones you might hang a hammock from, but they were put there for stitching fishing nets.

That way the women in the family could work on the family’s fishing nets In between their kitchen chores.

As a young woman, Ms. Ella married Luther Pittman, a Cedar Island fisherman. Like so many other Down East families in that day, they soon left their island home and moved into Beaufort.

When young Ella and Luther moved into town, they settled in Lennoxville, a community largely of fishing families that was actually a few miles east of Beaufort’s town limits.

Many years later, when Ella Pittman went to work at the Shirt Factory, she was probably in her 50s.

She was a mother of four, and she was likely the first woman in her extended family to do “public work” unless one of her daughters or nieces had gotten a wartime job at the Naval Section Base in Morehead City or at the big Marine Corps installation that was being built near Havelock.

The hours and working conditions at the Shirt Factory would seem grueling to many of us today.

However — and while I hate to make broad generalizations, I’m going to do it here anyway — a woman that grew up on Cedar Island in the early 1900s was used to hard work and long hours.

Even so, combining a daily shift at the Shirt Factory with a housewife’s duties could not have been easy.

Working at the Shirt Factory also posed challenges for many of those women that we might not consider today.

When I was younger, for instance, I often spoke with local women, including some of the women in my own family, who had gone from a fishing or farm life to a job at a factory or other public work during World War II.

For some, and especially older women workers, it took some getting used to, and some never did get used to it and did not last long.

Though accustomed to hard work, many said that it was a whole other thing to work by the clock, to be indoors all day, to do repetitive tasks day after day, and to have a boss with the power to tell them what to do, when to do it, when they could take breaks, and all the rest.

By all accounts, the Shirt Factory had a somewhat tumultuous first year.

Convicted on 25 counts of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, including a failure to pay the minimum wage of 25 cents an hour, the company closed temporarily in May 1939. I am not sure how long the factory was idle, but the closure left more than 300 workers without a paycheck for a time.

Later in the 1940s, the company was also the scene of a bitter union drive.

During the union drive, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the company’s owners had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing pro-union activists and intimidating workers prior to the union election. A copy of the ruling is online.

-3-

During the Second World War, a considerable part of the company’s production was for the United States Government, including in 1941, a $25,000 contract for military-issue khaki shirts, according to a March 15, 1914, report in the Asheville Times.

-4-

Here we get a more expansive view of the women in the company’s stitching room.

In my younger days, I had several elderly cousins and a great-uncle who had retired from long careers at the Shirt Factory.

I remember that when my cousins, all women, reminisced about their days at the Shirt Factory, they talked mainly about their friends there. They spoke of the feeling of sisterhood at the plant.

Long after they retired, they remained close to those women.

I did not get as much chance to be around my great-uncle Leo Simpson, and I don’t remember him speaking of the Shirt Factory, though he must have. He was married to my grandmother’s sister, Hilda.

However, I know that Great-Uncle Leo began working at the Shirt Factory in the late 1930s, soon after it first opened. For most of his career, he was the head of the factory’s cutting room.

My wonderful cousin Doug, one of Leo and Hilda’s sons, believes that his father likely met the company’s owners while he was helping to build the company’s new factory building in 1939 or ’40.

Doug was around the Shirt Factory from the time he was a small child. And when he got a little older, he had summer jobs there, before he went off and became a distinguished college professor and a leading authority on the great American educational philosopher John Dewey.

When I talked with Doug the other day, he recalled the company’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, as being “kind, gracious people.”

He told me that Mrs. Jackson worked alongside her husband at the factory. She was, he said, a tall, imposing woman who always dressed very nicely.

Cousin Doug was not around her husband as much, but he did remember Mr. Jackson’s fierce anti-unionism.

On the other hand, he also recalled Mr. Jackson’s support for racial integration and his commitment to employing African Americans throughout the Shirt Factory. Such a policy was very out of keeping with the region’s other textile plants, and it was apparently controversial in Morehead City when first implemented at the Shirt Factory.

Judging from these photographs, the Shirt Factory had not yet opened its stitching room’s doors to Black women in 1942.

-5-

In this last photograph from the Shirt Factory’s stitching room, we meet an 18-year-old machine operator named Annie Grace Benton, about whom I also did a bit of research on her background.

I discovered that, in a way, young Ms. Benton represented another kind of woman that was drawn to wartime jobs such as those at the Shirt Factory.

According to my research, she had grown up on a farm in Seven Springs, a rural hamlet 90 miles west of Morehead City.

She had evidently just left home for the first time.

For many young women such as her, a job at the Shirt Factory meant a chance to help their families. Many a time, their wages might even have helped keep their family’s farm afloat or enabled a younger brother or sister to go to college.

For many of the young women, the Shirt Factory and other public jobs were also an opportunity to put the Great Depression behind them and to free themselves from the provincialism of farm life, and most especially from the limited roles for women that had historically existed in the farming communities of eastern North Carolina.

Military boom towns such as Morehead City were particularly exciting during World War II. The town was bustling with a Naval section base that operated there, and Army patrols were in and out constantly.

A busy USO and other local businesses catered to servicemen and women on leave from the many military installations, army outposts, and airfields that were being built on that part of the North Carolina coast in the early part of the war.

The largest were the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, originally Cunningham Field, in Havelock and Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.

Boardinghouses had sprung up all over Morehead City to cater to military wives and girlfriends, as well as to young farm women like Annie Grace Benton who were away from home for the first time.

Wherever Ms. Benton lived in Morehead City, probably in a boardinghouse, she was also around legions of other young women who had moved from other parts of the country to fill jobs at Cherry Point.

Those women were no ordinary lot either. At Cherry Point, they ranged from aircraft painters to flight instructors, jobs for which women, because so many men were overseas, were welcome for the first time.

Not only did many farm women, including, presumably Ms. Benton, welcome the financial independence offered by that kind of “public work,” but many also relished the liberty of being someplace where everyone did not know them, and the excitement of being liberated, however briefly, from the old mores — economic, social, and sexual — that governed women’s lives back home.

-End-

Featured Image

A calf lies in a field of spring flowers near the Haystacks area of Morehead City in Carteret County. Photo: Dylan Ray

Carteret had 22 farms raising cattle and calves mostly for beef production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2022 county-by-county farm census, up by three from the 2017 count. The 2022 figure accounted for about 400 head of cattle.

Among coastal counties, Onslow leads in the number of cattle farms with 84 and about 1,900 head in 2022, down from 95 farms and nearly 2,100 head in 2017.

North Carolina had nearly 15,000 cattle farms in 2022 with just shy of 719,000 head, down from more than 18,000 farms and more than 776,000 cattle in 2017, but numbers rebounded last year to about 750,000 head, according to a 2024 USDA document.

By comparison, the state held steady at around 2,400 hog farms during the 2017-25 period, but the hog inventory during the 2022 census had decreased by about 700,000 from about 8.9 million in 2017.

About 32.3 million hogs were sold in 2022, compared to just over 11,300 cattle and calves sold that year.

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A state Department of Transportation crew works high above the Newport River Tuesday inspecting the underside of the Morehead City-Beaufort high-rise bridge next to the state port. Traffic delays were expected through Friday on this part of U.S. Highway 70 as one lane of travel was planned during daylight hours, or 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Track progress online. Photo: Dylan Ray

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Paint crews work high above the deck of the North Carolina Port of Morehead City March 13 as they apply a protective coating to the water tower. Photo: Dylan Ray

No matter how big worldwide brands like McDonald’s or KFC get, they’ll never match the iconic status of a tiny Morehead City burger stand named El’s Drive-In.

Tucked away on a gravel lot, shaded by centuries-old live oaks that whisper of a time when forest bordered this 69-year-old restaurant, El’s has no flashy, sky-high sign beckoning motorists from the road. The same faded, white menu board that’s always listed El’s beloved super burger and shrimp burgers is all that crowns the vanilla milkshake-colored brick box.

If you didn’t know El’s was there sitting on its plain concrete slab, you’d probably never stop.

But everyone knows it’s there.

“Sometimes the train will call in his order and say, ‘Can you have it ready in 20 minutes?’” El’s third-generation owner Shelton Franks says, raising his chin to the conductor’s whistle as a locomotive chugs down tracks dividing U.S. 70 in front of El’s.

“And he’ll block the traffic right there so he can come in and get his order,” Franks’ mother, Gail, adds.

The affection people have for this tiny take-out was especially obvious when El’s re-opened on Jan. 17, following a nine-month closure. Every vehicle jamming the parking lot held a personal story.

Mending hearts

Construction worker Joseph Booth is sure he’s been an El’s regular since the days right after he was born 45 years ago in the hospital next door. “My momma used to love coming over here,” he said, “All the time!”

High school sweethearts Josh and Amanda Lyle not only grew up eating at El’s, the restaurant even played a role in rekindling their teenage romance. “I wanted to get back together because I realized the wrongs of my ways,” Josh recalled, “so, she agreed to meet me at El’s after school one day, and it was January 17, of 1997.”

Josh convinced carhops to deliver chocolate milkshakes to his vehicle when Amanda arrived, and he set the mood with her favorite country music playing. “We’ve been together ever since.”

“And we do still try to come back every year on this day,” Amanda said.

An obituary in the local newspaper days before the reopening is one of many over the years to note a deceased’s love of El’s. It reminded Gail Franks of the man who once stood atop the building in honor of a buddy who passed. “All his friends had their hot rod cars lined up out here in the parking lot and did a drive away,” Gail recalled, tearing up.

“You know, people just have a lot of memories. If it weren’t for them, we’d just be a little place.”

Because of its location in a popular coastal tourist area, El’s has long been known outside of North Carolina, but its fame across the state and beyond exploded with the introduction of Google reviews and social media, Gail said. Especially during the pandemic, fans shared their El’s experiences.

But it was clear by 2024 that the old building could no longer withstand the weight of time. The Franks family was forced to shutter El’s that April and do the unimaginable — tear the place down.

A family’s resilience

The Franks family didn’t bulldoze El’s. They convinced contractors, including Booth, to dismantle it brick by brick. Workers salvaged 90% of those bricks to construct a new El’s identical to the original that an indomitable Elvin Franks built in 1959.

Though a childhood bout of osteomyelitis left him with a limp, Elvin persevered. He worked tirelessly in various restaurants since high school, eventually channeling his passion and determination into starting his own business.

“He had a good work ethic and, you know, he cared about what we put out there,” Elvin’s son, Mark Franks, said.

Elvin co-owned an Atlantic Beach drive-in before leasing what is now nearby Cox’s Family Restaurant. There, Elvin and his wife, Helen, operated a drive-in named This Is It, but Elvin soon realized owning property was his best bet.

Ambition brought challenges. Construction of the first El’s couldn’t begin until a house on the property was relocated. Gail Franks recalls stories about Elvin and Helen owning just one car. “She worked in the daytime, and he would work at night,” Gail said. At midnight, Mom would gather her children for the drive to pick up Elvin after his shift.

Mark always knew he would work at El’s. Family legend has it that when Mark’s draft number for the U.S. Army came up, Elvin “talked to somebody” to ensure his son wouldn’t report to duty until after clocking one more summer at the restaurant. “I got in on what they called ‘the delayed-entry program,'” Mark said with a grin.

Like his dad, Shelton was happy to start working at El’s as soon as he was old enough, around age 12. Now, he runs the place, although Shelton stresses that his father “still beats me out here every morning.” And Mark was right there in the kitchen on reopening day.

“He’s my best friend,” Shelton said, “so, I guess I never thought about doing anything else. Why wouldn’t I want to help my dad? Why wouldn’t I want to keep this going?”

Gail is El’s bookkeeper. She and Mark’s daughter, Jenna, have lent a hand at the restaurant too. When the family agreed to expand to Smyrna in 2024, while the original location was under renovation, the goal wasn’t to seed a mega brand. Instead, Shelton wanted to help a cousin fulfill his own entrepreneurial dream. The independently operated El’s food truck there offers the same beloved menu and features a convenient drive-up window. Despite its remote address, a steady stream of loyal customers lines up.

No shortcuts

The Frankses write at El’s website that they have lovingly maintained the Morehead City restaurant “so you can feel the history — but not taste it.” Yet, it’s clear the values that the late Elvin Franks instilled all those years ago still season each order.

“I try to tell people who work for me, ‘Don’t send anything out that you wouldn’t want to receive,’” Shelton said.

What looks like chaos along the narrow kitchen line is a synchronized dance of short-order and prep cooks who patty Black Angus ground beef each morning into El’s signature burgers, the most popular items on the menu.

Creamy slaw for the top-selling “All The Way” — a classic Carolina burger that also gets mustard, chili and onions — is still prepared from-scratch according to Helen Franks’ recipe, with an unexpected hint of ketchup. “If it weren’t for the slaw, we’d just be another burger joint,” Shelton said as his father nodded in agreement.

Every shrimp burger, every piece of fried chicken, everything on the menu, from BLTs to oyster dinners, is cooked to order, no matter if 20 tickets crowd the board and an equal number waits stacked on the counter to take their place.

With nary a second of dilly dally, carhops whiz back and forth, delivering brown bags stuffed full of El’s goodness to what resembles a parking lot pile up. Servers magically monitor who’s just pulled in, who gets which bag and who needs special attention because they’ve been waiting in their vehicle too long.

“It’s hard to explain how we keep track of it,” said Mary Magara, who’s been working at El’s since 2006. “You just know.”

Between monitoring a griddle covered in burgers and five fryers all a go, cooks still take time to slide food to the few people, like Robert Ligas, who slip inside to grab their call-in orders.

Customers know to stay out of the way, but even in the lunch-rush madness, cooks alert Ligas that burgers for his six-man painting crew are almost ready. He doesn’t mind a delay. “We’ve been waiting nine months, so everybody wants a cheeseburger.”

Where did his team eat while El’s was closed? Ligas answers with a true testament of loyalty to this timeless piece of delicious history. “We brought a grill to work, and we made our own burgers.”

Editor’s note: Amanda Lyle is chief community engagement officer with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

Featured Image

A rainbow reaches skyward from the Newport River as viewed from the marsh at Radio Island following Sunday showers. The island was formed by the placement of dredge spoils from an early channel-deepening project at the Morehead City port in the 1930s and takes its name from Carteret Broadcasting Co.’s WMBL, which began broadcasting in 1947 at 740 kHz. Photo: Mark Hibbs

Former Pine Knoll Shores resident Walt Zaenker authored a 2015 blog post about how Radio Island got its name.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority said recently that its fiscal 2024 results were “mixed, yet balanced,” with volumes above budget at both the Wilmington and Morehead City ports.

Financial figures were not included in the July 25 announcement, which are expected to be made public later this year.

“Fiscal Year 2024 marked a robust year for investment in our ports and a record year for intermodal volume, demonstrating NC Ports’ commitment to strengthening the efficient movement of goods across the state of North Carolina and growing multimodal capabilities from port berths to the hinterlands,” North Carolina Ports Executive Director Brian E. Clark said in a statement.

The authority said strong cash flow from operations and state appropriations allowed it to pour $80 million into its Wilmington and Morehead City seaports and its inland facility in Charlotte.

Officials pointed to projects at the Wilmington port including the second phase of the authority’s refrigerated container yard and container yard expansion. They said new warehouse space and berth renovations in Morehead City are nearly complete.

New gantry cranes are on order for both ports to keep pace with what officials characterized as strong general cargo demand.

The authority said state ports moved a record 17,000 containers by rail during the year, 13% above budget.

The Wilmington and Morehead City ports moved nearly 4.2 million short tons of bulk and breakbulk cargo during the year, 5% over budget. Officials said the ports handled “substantial volumes” of natural rubber, steel, lumber, cement, wood chips and wood pellets and noted that the commodities support “everything from U.S. infrastructure, aerospace and the region’s growing automotive industry.”

The authority also noted a nearly $11 million United States Department of Transportation grant through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program. The money will go toward relocating the Wilmington port’s north gate closer to the designated truck route and away from neighborhood streets.

The authority noted a groundbreaking for an intermodal rail yard that will expand capacity to more than 50,000 container movements annually.

Officials also noted new roll-on/roll-off business at the Morehead City port. This includes imported finished vehicles such as coach buses and commercial vans and breakbulk and project cargo, including wind turbine blades, nacelles and towers for Timbermill Wind near Edenton.

Morehead City also has a new monthly ConRo liner service that Spliethoff Group launched between Belgium, the UK, and U.S. East Coast.

The authority said North Carolina, like other East Coast ports, faced global challenges in the container market, but there were bright spots.

“Given the challenges felt across the broader container shipping industry in FY24, remaining diversified between containers and general cargo continues to serve us well and remains a focus,” Clark said.