Tag: Morehead City NC

Wikipedia says: Morehead City is a port town in Carteret County, North Carolina, United States…

By the early 1850s, a group of investors had been formed and incorporated a land development project known as the “Shepard Point Land Company,” which purchased 600 acres (2.4 km2) of land on the eastern tip of the peninsula bordering the Newport River, known then as “Shepards Point,” which is the present location of Morehead City. The Shepard Point Land Company’s objective was to take advantage of the natural deep channel of Topsail Inlet, known today as the Beaufort Inlet, which splits Bogue Banks from Shackleford Banks and provides access to Morehead City, Beaufort, North Carolina, the Newport River and the Intracoastal Waterway. The Shepard Point Land Company was established to construct a deepwater port to allow another access point for North Carolina timber products to relieve pressure at the port located in Wilmington. To make the port accessible to the interior of North Carolina, the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad line between Goldsboro and New Bern was completed on April 29, 1858.

North Carolina Governor John Motley Morehead, for whom the city of Morehead City is named, was a principal member of the Shepard Point Land Company investment group. Fully operational rail service began in July 1858 connecting the town to points west, north, and south.

The town of Morehead City was laid out using a grid plan, whereby city blocks were equally laid out with each block consisting of 16 equally divided lots. The city blocks stretched from 1st Street to 15th Street, incorporating a system of alleys forming an “H” shape that enabled businesses and residential homes to be served from the alleys behind them.

Morehead City was officially incorporated by the North Carolina Senate in 1860, at which time the total number of households consisted of only 300 individual families.

The town continued to prosper until the Civil War, when in 1862 it was occupied by Federal troops. The war disrupted commerce, and the economy of the port declined along with the town’s population. It was not until the 1880s, with the construction of the Atlantic Hotel at the tip of the peninsula and its promotion by the railroad as the “Summer Capital by the Sea,” that the area began to experience a resurgence.