Story content, photographic integrity, design creativity, the criteria we used to pick the top twelve stories of 2000 to 2011. In the twelfth month of the twelfth year December 2000
The Cotton Blossom, A Traditional Family Christmas
The stage was set for a pictureperfect
Norman Rockwell-style
holiday in the beach home of Joan
Gillings. With all of the trimmings,
the centerpiece of this home
feature, published in the inaugural
issue of Wrightsville Beach
Magazine, was the historic house
itself. Built on East Oxford Street
in 1945,
the Cotton
Blossom was
once a guest
cottage for
the J. Holmes
Davis family.
By Pat Bradford
April 2002
Making
History
In the natural progression of
inlet history, a new inlet must
open before an old inlet closes.
Though there was nothing natural
about moving Masons Inlet, the
grandest manmade engineering
feat in Wrightsville’s history, a
relocated Masons Inlet opened
on March 2002, when the sheet
piles holding back the inlet
were lifted and
the Atlantic Ocean
flowed through its
new mouth. The old
inlet, which had for 14
years drifted 3,000 feet
south, precariously close
to the Shell Island towers,
was closed a week later.
By Pat Bradford
16
WBM december 2012