Bald Head Island's First Developer

Bald Head Island, NC was once a stopping place for pirates. The island site was visited by Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet. Today Bald Head Island is a resort for the wealthy. Located at the mouth of the Cape Fear River the island offers some of the most costly real estate in Brunswick County.  Situated on the south-west tip of Smith Island Bald Head is supposedly named for the smooth surface of the land.  Thomas Smith is recorded as the first to acquire the island in 1690.  A 1733 map shows the site under the name of Barren Head Island.

Current development of Bald Head as an island resort began in the 1970's.  The permanent population began to expand from about 78 year long residents to over 2,000 residents 
during the summer months.  It became necessary to adapt local laws for the town based on this unique situation. The town, today is governed by a five member Village Council.  A 1970s referendum provided permanent residents, rather than property owners, control in selecting the council.  Before the referendum was passed the governing board had been appointed by the directors of the property owners association.  Bald head was incorporated in 1985 and held it's first democratic election in 1995 with the residents electing five councilmen.

Bald Head Island offers visitors 14 miles of sand beaches and the magnificent Bald Head Island Golf Course.  All of this glory can only be reached by passenger ferry from Southport.  But what of Bald Head Island between Smith's ownership and today's high priced resort community, the years between 1690 and 1970?  During that interim it was actually a Boyd that made the first attempt to create a resort at Bald Head. 

Thomas Frank Boyd was a many faceted man. A newspaper reporter described him as a 
business from the Richmond County town of Hamlet with interest in a number of "generally 
successful" ventures in the Cape Fear area.  Boyd's own daughter described her father
as being resourceful and said that if others were as resourceful "maybe the State Capitol
would have been at Bald Head."  Boyd himself is reputed to have said "Every man I ever 
helped has knifed me in the back".

Whatever the truth of Boyd's character, he was a visionary.  He pictured, the island he 
called Palmetto Island as a tropical paradise where visitors could enjoy the bounties
provided by nature and himself.  Toward this end he claimed to have sold about forty lots in the initial development area of sixty acres before the cleared paths were even converted 
to completed roads. 

Thomas F. Boyd began his development with a long wooden dock, which extended out to 
the Cape Fear Channel, and by putting up a two-story building on the nearby shore, which 
he called The Pavilion.  He arranged for the steamer Wilmington to make excursion trips to
the island on summer weekends.  The steamer would tie up at the dock and the passengers 
would go ashore to picnic, fish, swim, or just walk the miles of unspoiled beaches. 

The Pavilion was successful enough to encourage the next phase of development, the con-
struction of a hotel.  An outside boardwalk connected the hotel with the pavilion and the dock.

Promotional materials were released stressing the agricultural potential of the island paradises well.  Materials included statements about the climate and soil of the island which Boyd claimed were highly favorable to the raising of vegetables. All kinds of vegetables, he claimed, would grow here even without glass or forest protection, at any season of the year.  He also claimed the soil appeared specially adapted to fruit growing and that fruits of all kinds would thrive here without spraying.  Boyd demonstrated his agricultural commitment by build a barn just a few hundred feet east of the hotel and by clearing some of the forest land for fields.  Additionally, he bought livestock, cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs to the island.

Boyd's plan for Palmetto Island were beginning to take shape in the early 1900s. The Great 
Depression brought them to an end.  Boyd found himself unable to pay the 1919 property taxes ($22, 453), though he did manage to make token payments for a few years.  Several attempts were made to forestall financial ruin.  Boyd salvaged the lumber from the dock 
that had been destroyed  during a severe storm, the same storm that had damaged the Pavilion.  Some of this lumber he marked for use in completing the hotel and some was ship-
ped by barge to Southport for sale. 

In another attempt to salvage his dream, cedar trees were harvested for shipment overseas to be used in the manufacture of pencils.  But when none of Boyd''s attempts to avert the failing dream succeeded he tried to give the major portion of the island to the government to be used as a coastal park.  The Federal Government rejected the offer for financial reasons and recommended the gift be made to the State.  Local objection to the loss of tax dollars from the property, loss of revenue from the tourists coming to the area, and the general objection to a government controlled park, convinced State officials to refuse the gift.  In a letter to State Forester, J.S. Holmes, Boyd wrote "It seems it is harder to give away a thing than it is to sell it."

For $45,000 Boyd had gained title to the whole Smith Island complex - Bald Head Island, 
Middle Island, Bluff Island, and assorted patches of migratory marshlands.  The only ex-
clusions were federally-owned sites of the Cape Fear and Bald Head lighthouses, and the 
thirty-foot wide right-of-way known as the Federal Road. 

One of the first things Boyd did after acquiring the island was to change the name of the Island.  He did not adopt the broader, older name for the complex, Smith Island or Smith's Island.  Nor did he adopt either of the earlier names for the Island, Cedar Island or Cape Island.  Impressed with what he characterized as "the beautiful Palmetto of the Tropics" Boyd renamed the island Palmetto Island.

By 1920 with the Pavilion destroyed by storm, the hotel unfinished, the farming efforts rejected because of transportation difficulties, the pencil market glutted, and the park proposal thwarted, Palmetto Island and a man's dream were dead.  A couple of years later Brunswick County foreclosed and took over the property.

Before the modern resurrection of Bald Head Island as a luxury beach resort it was Thomas Frank Boyd's dream to be the developer of Bald Head Island.  "Boyd bought Bald Head in 1916 and held unto it through a war and a devastating depression only to have it taken from him for unpaid property taxes about the time the Depression was beginning to ease up and a second world war loomed. 
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"Bald Head Island"  Morning Star  25 May 1996. Wilmington Star-News, Inc.

Stick, David  Bald Head: A History of Smith Island and Cape Fear.  Wendell, NC: 
Broadfoot Publishing Company, 1985

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