I’ve Lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, for 20 Years — Here’s Why I Recommend Travelers Visit

There is a certain vagueness about our national awareness of Wilmington, North Carolina. It is a significant American city, a 300-year-old colonial port that played a determining role in American history at more than one juncture, yet a striking number of people have never heard of it. I have been here for 20 years and am used to being met with a kind of blankness when I tell someone from another town where I live. 

Some remember Wilmington from their youth as a pretty beach town with an interesting “old” section down by the river. It was once referred to as “the Port City of Progress and Pleasure” — but many people who live here pay little attention to the port and the constant activity around it. 

Still, even if the city’s identity is fuzzy, there is an undeniable charm that may owe its existence to precisely that quality. Wilmington does not brand itself as aggressively as many other Southern coastal cities. It has chill, as the kids say these days. If you want to get to know it, you have to explore it some. The exploration is worth it. 

As a history obsessive and pale person who generally hides from the sun, my favorite part of Wilmington is not our famous beaches but Downtown, by the river, a small grid of streets lined with late-19th-century commercial buildings, and the blocks that flank it, where the oldest houses are. Only a few pre-Revolutionary structures survived the fires that have sporadically destroyed sections of the city. A couple of grand 18th-century homes overlook the wharves, and one very old brick building, the Mitchell-Anderson House at Orange and Front Streets, supposedly dates back to the 1730s, right around the time Wilmington came into existence. If you walk by there, take a look at the ballast-stone foundation, one of only a few that have lasted. These football-size stones were carried over from England in the holds of ships to weigh them down properly. When a ship arrived in port, its stones were removed so goods could be put into the hulls. The stones were then used to build foundations. 

Many visitors will probably always gravitate toward remnants of the antebellum South, and we certainly have those to offer. Downtown, horse-drawn-carriage tours move sleepily along brick streets; ghost tours are also fun (we seem to specialize in ghost stories, many involving pirates, which is funny, because we didn’t really have many pirates here). I recommend a tour of the Burgwin-Wright House & Gardens, built about 1770. During the Revolutionary War, when the city was occupied by the British, Lord Cornwallis briefly used it as his headquarters. You can also take a nighttime walk through the Latimer House, built during the 1850s, and see what those grand old places looked like when they were lit by gas lamps. 

Finally and most famously, there is the white-columned Bellamy Mansion, at the corner of Fifth and Market, with its intact brick “slave quarters” in the back. Most of the fine craftwork to be seen inside the mansion was executed by enslaved and free Black artisans. Only in 2002 was it discovered that one of them, William B. Gould, who escaped during the Civil War and joined the Union navy (and kept a diary that was later published), had signed his initials behind a piece of decorative plasterwork.

The discovery is, in a sense, a metaphor: in Wilmington, Black history is always peeking out from behind an Old South façade. In recent years, more people have become aware of the city’s complicated and often bloody racial past, and if they know anything about the place, they might be aware that a white-supremacist mob committed a massacre here in 1898. (A book on that subject, David Zucchino’s Wilmington’s Lie, won a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago.) To live here today is to be constantly aware of how the city is coming to grips with that story. 

Related: U.S. Road Trips That Honor and Celebrate Black History

For anyone interested in Wilmington’s African-American history — and not just the violence, but the cultural depth and achievement — there now exists an easy way to interact with it as a tourist: the WilmingtoNColor tour. This was created by my friend Cedric Harrison, a local entrepreneur whose nonprofit Support the Port has been active on the social-justice scene for a decade. A few years ago, he bought a bus (actually a decommissioned Atlanta transit tram) with a plan to use it for guided tours. I remember the day he got it: I went over to help rip out the old seats and install a video screen. 

Today the bus is thoroughly fancied up, and along the sides run the faces of some of the city’s Black heroes, including the newspaper editor Alex Manly, whose pioneering Daily Record was burned on that dark day in 1898; the artist Minnie Evans; and the basketball player Michael Jordan, who went to high school in the city and was back this past spring for the opening of a medical clinic that carries his name. 

Related: The Perfect Itinerary for North Carolina’s Inner Banks

Cedric’s trained guides will take you to see sites that are important to Wilmington’s Black history but might be difficult to identify otherwise, such as the empty lot next to St. Luke’s AME Zion Church, which was the final location of the Daily Record offices, or Williston Middle School, formerly Williston Senior High School, one of the great Black public schools in the South. It produced, among other notables, the Heath brothers, who were pioneers of modern jazz (bassist Percy and saxophonist Jimmy both attended Williston), and Althea Gibson, the first Black Wimbledon tennis champion. “I’ve had people take the tour, and it made them want to go do their own research,” Cedric said, adding that the most common reaction he gets on the bus is “Why isn’t any of this taught in schools?” 

Wilmington’s Cameron Art Museum was built on the site of the so-called Battle of Forks Road, where the city’s Confederate defenders faced off against the United States Colored Troops and lost. A permanent outdoor sculpture, Stephen Cameron’s Boundless, stands within a park on the property. Nine soldiers, representing the Black recruits who fought in the battle, march in rows of three behind a drummer and a flag-bearer. 

Most people who visit Wilmington come not for history, of course, but for the natural beauty. Our beaches are superb, especially given that all of them are public. The Cape Fear peninsula juts out a bit into the Atlantic, so the water there is at its clearest and cleanest. The sand is pale and fine. There are waves, though not the kind of waves that grind your face into the coral — surfing tournaments take place here, believe it or not. Wrightsville Beach is the main one: four miles long, with plenty of smooth sand for spreading out your towels, and almost never horrifically crowded, even in peak season. But be sure to check out at least one other stretch of strand, maybe Carolina Beach, which on some nights feels like a time capsule from the 1950s, with rows of small beach shacks and even an amusement park that runs through Labor Day. If you make it to Carolina Beach, find Britt’s Donut Shop, an institution, along the boardwalk, and get a coffee and a bag of fresh glazed doughnuts. They sell nothing else. Later take a walk on the wooden dock, which seems to extend fantastically far out over the ocean.

The countryside around Wilmington can also yield surprises. It’s not the traditional postcard kind of nature, with hikes and waterfalls. This country is flat. The soil is sandy and poor, easily exhausted. But the landscape has its own weird treasures. 

I took a kayak trip with Deb Maurer of the Nature Conservancy to see one of the oldest trees in North Carolina: a bald cypress in a swamp on the Black River. We had to paddle carefully, because all around us were cypress knees, the strange aboveground, or in this case above-water, roots that bald cypress trees put out, a familiar Wilmington sight. My friend the artist and naturalist George Sanford McGee, who came with us, spotted a gorgeous brown water snake napping on one knee. Little yellow prothonotary warblers flitted through the canopy. Deb said they don’t know exactly how old the tree is, but cores that have been taken suggest an age of at least 2,700 years. When we paddled up to it, it was totally enormous and unlike any tree I’ve seen. The outside bark looked like seal skin, slick and taut around the trunk.

Perhaps Wilmington’s greatest boast is its Venus flytraps. This part of the coast is the only place on earth where those famous carnivorous plants grow wild. When friends pass through, the first place I typically take them is one of the Venus flytrap preserves. Nobody’s mind is ever not blown. There has been a lot of interesting science done on flytraps. They can count, it turns out, and possess a kind of memory or sense of time. When a flytrap feels a tickle on one of its sensitive trigger hairs, known as trichomes, it waits to see how quickly the next couple of tickles happen — and snaps closed only if they occur within a certain time span. In this way, it can tell the difference between an insect and a raindrop, so it doesn’t go snapping its lobes at every wind, wasting its energy for zero nutrition. My favorite place to commune with the flytraps (and a couple of other species of pitcher plant) is at the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden at Piney Ridge Nature Preserve, where a little stone path winds through the moist habitat. There is hardly ever anyone else there.

Wilmington does not show up on many people’s culinary maps of the most exciting places to eat in America, but that may be about to change. When I moved here in 2004, there were very few places to take visiting friends who were into food. The exception has always been barbecue. This part of eastern North Carolina has its own sub-regional style. The sauce is not thick, red, and spicy, like you find farther west. Here it is tangy and vinegar-based. The hush puppies are not round but shaped like chubby fingers. Most unusual of all, when you order a barbecue sandwich, it is typically served with a scoop of coleslaw directly on top of the meat. That may sound disgusting, but somehow, it bangs. Just make sure to eat quickly, because the bun gets soggy very fast. 

My favorite barbecue joint in town, a place that could have bottled and sold its own authenticity in a pinch, was Parchie’s, which was just down the street from my house. It closed a few years ago, one of many pandemic casualties. These days your best bet, and the old standby, is Jackson’s Big Oak Barbecue (there is actually a giant oak tree in the back — we are a people of subtle naming). 

We also have two fantastic soul-food places that have managed to stay open. There’s Nippy’s Soul Food, on 17th Street, where, as the sign says, they’re taking you back to mama’s kitchen, provided your mama knew how to make sumptuous chitterlings, neck bones, and oxtails. And there is Truck’s Chicken ‘n Fish, downtown on Red Cross, where you can sit at the counter and get your sweet tea on, then feast on fried catfish, which is the best I’ve ever tasted, full stop. 

Related: I’ve Lived in North Carolina My Whole Life, and These Are The Most Underrated Destinations in the State

If you had told me when I moved to Wilmington that there would someday be too many good and interesting higher-end dining establishments to name, I’d have asked you to sit and tell me about your apparent drinking problem. Not so, anymore. I have encountered people in the past four or five years who claim that the food scene is one of the reasons they moved here. Caprice Bistro is the anchor and the mainstay, a French restaurant owned and run by a real Frenchman and his Belgian wife, Thierry and Patricia Moity. They serve classic dishes like lamb cassoulet and beef bourguignon. I’ve eaten at Caprice maybe a hundred times and have never had a bad meal. The cocktails and wine list are similar to the food: solid, unpretentious, tasty. If you’re leaning swankier, think about Manna, still one of the best restaurants in Wilmington after going on 15 years of existence. The proprietor, Billy Mellon, is cut from the old cloth. A former military man, he circulates through the room in a suit with slicked-back hair. One block south is Manna’s competitor, PinPoint Restaurant. The fried chicken is memorable, in a region where it’s hard to stand out for your fried chicken.

The most exciting new spot, which opened in 2021, is Seabird. Head chef Dean Neff was a finalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef this year. On the short list of the best and most interesting seafood I’ve eaten in my life are three Seabird meals. The fish is so fresh you taste the seawater. 

Once I went oyster harvesting with one of Dean’s providers, a sustainable shellfisher named Äna Shellem. We rode on a little skiff to a wild oyster bed on Masonboro Island and ate oysters right there on the little spit of muddy sand. They were wonderful right out of the shell, and Neff mainly lets their natural savor shine through, though the little mignonettes and preparations he serves them with are superb. It’s his stews that I love most, though: rich broths full of different sea life — including plants, seaweeds, and algae. Shellem brings him dead man’s fingers, a type of seaweed that he uses in salads. It’s all sinfully good, and for dessert there’s sometimes a house-made mint chocolate chip ice cream that, according to my younger daughter, has redefined ice cream.

One of the true hidden treasures along this stretch of North Carolina coast is Bald Head Island, which is not in Wilmington proper but about 40 miles south. Catch the ferry at Southport, a little seaside town that is itself worth an afternoon of antiques shopping and ice cream. Bald Head is partly a nature preserve — turtles nest there — and its most untouched sections give you a chance to see what this part of the Southern coast looked like when only Native Americans lived here. Gnarly oaks groan in the ocean breezes. A tall, powerful lighthouse, Old Baldy, celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2017. You can climb to the top and survey the whole island. There are plenty of houses and condos, but no cars. Everyone gets around on golf carts and bikes, a rule that does much to preserve the atmosphere of seclusion. A great place to stay is the Inn at Bald Head Island, owned by a groovy New Jersey couple, Dann and Gail Jackson. A few passable restaurants and a grocery store mean you can stay as long as you like. If you’re spending a week in Wilmington, the island makes for a perfect vacation-within-a-vacation.

Wilmington! What a weird, beautiful little city. I recommend you get here before we figure out what we are. The population is about 120,000 these days — still small enough for residents to feel each time the influx pulses: when the students come back to college at University of North Carolina Wilmington, or the tourists arrive for the summer. I came here once for six months, to get some writing done. That was 20 years ago. You might not stay that long. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t. We have a housing crisis: new people are having a hard time finding a place to live. To visit, though? Heaven. 

Where to Stay

Blockade Runner Beach Resort

While there have been hotels on this spot on Wrightsville Beach since the 1860s, the 150-room Brutalist building that houses the Blockade Runner has been a local icon since its debut in 1964. The property has access to both the Atlantic Ocean (for surfing) and the more sedate Wrightsville Sound (for fishing and kayaking). New owners have initiated a welcome renovation.

Dreamers by DW

This handsome Queen Anne–style house in a residential part of Downtown has been converted into five bright and airy guest rooms and suites, available on an Airbnb-style rental model. The contemporary interiors are decorated with blond wood and pops of pastel color.

The Hive

Fifteen individually designed suites, all with fully equipped kitchenettes, in a converted indus trial building only two blocks from the riverfront.

The Inn at Bald Head Island

This 10-suite bed and breakfast, just across the harbor from the island’s ferry landing, is rich with Southern coastal charm. Sit out on the long terrace and enjoy the ocean breezes.

Where to Eat

Britt’s Donut Shop

This Carolina Beach institution has been making doughnuts since 1939. And they make only one type— original glazed.

Caprice Bistro

Timeless French dishes — such as duck confit and steak frites — prepared simply and elegantly.

Jackson’s Big Oak Barbecue

All the classics, including barbecued pork, fried chicken, and banana pudding.

Manna

Thoughtful revamps of American standards, as well an excellent craft-cocktail menu.

Nippy’s Soul Food

At this family-owned restaurant, customers can “pay it forward”: buy a meal in advance for someone who might not be able to afford one.

PinPoint Restaurant

Chef Cameron Garvey presents a rotating menu of elevated American classics, such as a fried chicken with General Tso sauce.

Seabird

Spectacular, inventively prepared seafood is the star of chef Dean Neff’s menu — try the swordfish schnitzel or the crispy smoked catfish.

Truck’s Chicken ‘n Fish

A great soul-food place, with a legendary mac and cheese.

What to Do

Bellamy Mansion Museum

The self-guided tour of this ornate mid-19th-century home of a physician’s family includes the quarters of his enslaved workers. 

Burgwin-Wright House & Gardens

The city’s only colonial-era building open to the public is surrounded by extensive grounds that reflect 18th-century garden style, with terraces, an orchard, and a kitchen garden. 

Cameron Art Museum

This eclectic institution has a collection that ranges from Mary Cassatt to Robert Rauschenberg — as well as a study center for the work of visionary artist Minnie Evans.

Latimer House Museum

Once the home of a prosperous Wilmington family, this 1852 residence is a window into the
city’s Victorian past. 

Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden

Named after a local horticulturalist, this compact plot showcases Venus flytraps, sundews, and pitcher plants. 

WilmingtoNColor

Cedric Harrison’s 70-minute bus tour of the city focuses on the history of its African-American population, from the 1898 massacre by white supremacists to the achievements of artists and athletes.

A version of this story first appeared in the August 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Time and Tide.”