Around here, history isn’t tucked away in museums or reserved for old photographs. It lingers in family stories, in the marshes and waterways, and in the familiar rhythm of places where people still gather, work, and build community today.  

 

For local historian Steve Edens, remembering isn’t simply about looking back. It’s about honoring a way of life that once defined this corner of coastal North Carolina and, in many ways, still quietly shapes it.    Edens, who has spent nearly his entire life in Eastern Pender County, has become known for the stories and reflections he shares about Hampstead, Scotts Hill, Surf City, and Topsail Beach. His perspective is one of lived memory — of a place he knew through work, family, faith, and community.    “As I look around the area where I grew up working and playing, living and loving almost every aspect,” Edens wrote, “I realize that almost nothing today remains of what made it home to folks of my generation.”    And yet, much of what mattered most hasn’t disappeared — it’s simply taken a different shape.    

 

What he remembers most is not just a different landscape, but a different way of life. It was a world of dirt roads, family farms, front porches, and routines shaped more by seasons and neighbors than by schedules and traffic.    Families worked hard. Many made a living on family farms, in blueberry fields, on the water, or in small local businesses. Children were expected to help, learn responsibility early, and contribute where they could. Neighbors knew one another, and when someone was sick or in need, people stepped in. Life may have been demanding, but it was deeply connected.     

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That sense of connection was rooted in the places where people gathered. In those years, Topsail School, local churches, and country stores were more than practical spaces — they were the social heartbeat of the community. Edens recalls a time when Topsail School served not only as a place of learning, but as a center for meetings, dances, performances, graduations, and annual celebrations that drew families from miles around. The local store was where people bought what they needed, but also where they checked in on one another and exchanged news.

 

If you’ve been here long enough, you don’t need anyone to tell you how much this area has changed.

Some of those changes have been gradual, while others have been impossible to miss. Longtime locals have watched familiar farmland, open views, and everyday landmarks give way to growth and modernization. Even the trip onto the island tells that story. For many, the old swing bridge was more than a route to Topsail — it was part of the rhythm of the place itself. Its replacement with the newer high-rise bridge made sense for a growing coastal community, but for many, it also marked the difference between the Topsail they once knew and the one still taking shape today.

And in this part of the coast, that story has always been tied to both the land and the water.

While Edens remembers the fields, stores, churches, and schools that once anchored daily life, Jake Lea remembers another force that shaped this area just as deeply: the coast itself.

 

For Lea, whose family has deep roots in the local seafood industry, the story of Hampstead and Topsail can’t be told without the creeks, marshes, and sounds that helped sustain generations of families here. He said his family has at least four confirmed generations in the seafood business, a legacy closely tied to the waters that run through this part of the coast.

 

Growing up around that work taught him early on that making a living on the water took more than skill — it took adaptability.    

 “We don’t have any year-round fisheries that can support someone who’s trying to make a living on the water year-round,” Lea said. “You have to be able to oyster in the winter and crab in the summer and gillnet for spot in the fall.”

 

That kind of versatility says something about the people who have long called this place home. Life here has always meant adjusting with the seasons, working hard, and making the most of what the land and water provided.

 

At one time, Hampstead was not only known locally for seafood — it was a major distribution point. Lea said there were once three seafood distribution businesses in Hampstead, and that more seafood reportedly passed through the small community than almost anywhere else on the East Coast, second only to New York City. That history helps explain why the area once earned recognition as the “Seafood Capital of the Carolinas.”

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And if one fish tells the story of this area more than any other, it may be the humble spot.

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Lea described spot as dependable, abundant, and woven into everyday life. The annual run of spot each fall helped support fishermen, brought people into the area, and shaped the kind of seasonal rhythm that defined life along the coast. That connection became part of the area’s identity as well, eventually inspiring traditions like Hampstead’s longtime Spot Festival — a reminder of how closely seafood, celebration, and community have long been tied here.

He also spoke about older practices that are now largely gone — large groups working together during mullet season, fishermen hauling and working side by side on and around Lea Island, and the kind of labor that once made the island and surrounding waterways feel less like recreation and more like livelihood.

And yet, for Lea, not everything has disappeared. "No matter how many houses they put on the mainland or on the island,” he said, “the creeks and the marshes and the inlets, they all stay the same.”

Maybe that says as much about this place as anything. So much of the visible landscape has changed. And yet, once you get out on the water — past the docks, rooftops, and traffic — some of the oldest truths of the area still remain.
 

TOPSAIL TODAY
 

Today, Lea helps others experience that connection in a different way. Through his work on the water with his business, Lea Island Excursions, he takes visitors and locals out to the sandbars, through the marsh grass, and into the quiet stretches of water that still feel much like they did decades ago. In that way, he’s carrying forward a legacy in a new form — not through wholesale seafood or commercial fishing, but through storytelling, place, and experience.

While the places and rhythms of daily life may have changed, the need for connection hasn’t.
 For Cody Leutgens, that tension between change and continuity is part of what still defines Topsail.

“Topsail as a kid presented a different world,” he said. “Aside from Food Lion, forest occupied all the land from Hwy. 17 to the bridge. The island had tumbleweeds in winter. What used to be my treehouses are now homes valued in the millions.”

And yet, he doesn’t see change as the whole story.
 
BUILT FOR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS

“There is a reason people are moving here,” Leutgens said, “and while the influx is vast, the community is ever present and stronger than ever.”

 That belief is part of what shaped Shaka Taco, which Leutgens said was built with “friends and neighbors in mind” — a place where anyone is welcome and where both locals and visitors can feel like part of something familiar. In that way, Shaka has become a modern version of the same instinct that has long defined this area: the need for places where people can gather, connect, and feel at home.

The same idea carries into Ocean Fest, the annual Surf City event co-founded by Leutgens and others to celebrate coastal life while also encouraging care for the land and water that define this area.

“The first conversation Mark, Cory and I had about O Fest was just that,” he said. “Party, raise money, surf, and ensure everyone feels welcome.”

With its blend of live music, surf culture, local vendors, food, art, and family-friendly activities, Ocean Fest feels distinctly local — rooted in the coast, but also in the idea that community is something worth intentionally creating and protecting.

“Plainly put,” Leutgens said, “places like Shaka and events like Ocean Fest embody Topsail.”

 Locals once gathered to work together in the fields and on the water. They gathered at schoolhouses, churches, stores, and fish camps. Today, they still gather — just in ways that look a little different.
    
The form has changed, but the heart of it hasn’t.

That is part of what makes this area such a fitting place to reflect on during America 250. The story of America is often told through national milestones. But it is also told through places like this one — through ordinary people, working families, local traditions, changing landscapes, and the quiet, enduring ways communities hold onto who they are.

In the Topsail area, the past is not gone. It simply shows up differently now.

It lives in the stories Steve Edens continues to preserve. It moves through the water Jake Lea still knows by heart. And it can still be found in the gathering spaces and traditions that continue to take shape in new ways. That may be the real legacy worth celebrating — one still found in the land, along the water, and in the people who call this place home.