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"Topsail Island has no history," I was told. But there were too many rumors and evidence of stories that needed to be told. I felt compelled to dig into the island's past to pull out the facts. Seven years' mining of musty archives resulted in these books.
During WWII, tiny Holly Ridge was transformed into Camp Davis almost overnight. A training camp for 110,000 soldiers, it used Topsail Island for target practice.
Stories of the people who lived here abound and are captured in ECHOES of Topsail. It tells of Civil War salt production and blockade-runners that met their fate, a four-year dig for Spanish gold in the 1930s, and military operations in the 1940s that included a secret US Navy rocket program. The program was named Operation Bumblebee, and details of this well-kept secret were classified and hidden in archives for over 30 years.
The second edition of ECHOES updates the island's history to 2004 telling about hurricanes of the 1990s and Topsail's changing landscape.
Browse these pages for more details. If you want to contact me, click on E-mail Me or call me at 1.910.799.3782.
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