Christmas shopping in the downtown Wilmington of yesteryear
We talk with longtime Wilmington resident Elaine Henson about what shopping downtown in the 1950s and '60s was like: Where the department st...
Radio and PodcastLive Radio & Podcasts
Government & Organizations
Cape Fear Unearthed Podcast
StarNews Media Presents "Cape Fear Unearthed," a podcast digging into the history books of Southeastern North Carolina. The weekly podcast will feature stories drawn from the region's persis...
Episodes
20 of 94 episodes
Film documentary 'McKinley's Guns' digs into 1898 coup
Wilmington filmmaker Kent Chatfield played a starring role in "Wilmington on Fire," Christopher Everett's documentary film about Wilmington'...
'Race, Place and Memory': Wilmington's troubled racial history
For this week's episode, we talk with Margaret M. Mulrooney, author of the book "Race, Place and Memory: Deep Currents in Wilmington, North...
When Shell Island was an island, and a Black beach resort
The tourists who stay there might not know, but the Holiday Inn at Wrightsville Beach, recently rebranded as Lumina on Wrightsville Beach, a...
Revisiting The Barn: a legendary Wilmington jazz club and dance hall
We talk to Wilmington native and North Carolina jazz historian Larry Reni Thomas about The Barn, a club that shone brightly during the days...
A brief history of Eagles Island and Wilmington's 'west bank'
From the early days of rice plantations to its time as an industrial zone for Wilmington's naval stores industry, Eagles Island, which with...
Wilmington corner stores, gone but not forgotten
Before the rise of chain grocery and convenience stores, dozens of mom-and-pop stores run by independent merchants could be found in nearly...
Roots of the GOAT: Michael Jordan's history in Wilmington
We talk with retired StarNews sports reporter Chuck Carree about Jordan's days in the '70s and '80s playing high school basketball in Wilmin...
Train tracking: The lost Wilmington, Brunswick & Southern Railroad
We talk with Mark W. Koenig, the former director of the Wilmington Railroad Museum. In January, his first book, "The Wilmington, Brunswick a...
Losing, and preserving, Black historic sites in Wilmington
We talk with StarNews investigative reporter Matthew Prensky about a 1983 study commissioned by the city of Wilmington that documented more...
Photographic memories: Wilmington's history in photos
This week, we take a deep dive into more than 15,000 historic Wilmington photographs the Cape Fear Museum recently made available to the pub...
Wilmington's Temple of Israel: storied past, building a future
Built in 1876 at Fourth and Market streets, Wilmington's Temple of Israel is believed to be the oldest synagogue in North Carolina and the 1...
The curious case of the Christmas flounder
The tale of the Christmas flounder has captured the imagination of Wilmingtonians ever since the story began running in the StarNews every C...
Preserving history, one window and door at a time
We talk to the folks at Legacy Architectural Salvage, an offshoot of the Historic Wilmington Foundation, about their work in preserving old...
Commemorating 1898, and the search for descendants
This week, we talk to Jim Downey and Tim Pinnick of the New Hanover County Community Remembrance Project, who are involved with some of the...
The bridges of New Hanover County
In this week's episode, we take a look at the history of bridges in New Hanover County, both the bridges that exist today, and the bridges t...
Ideal location: Wilmington film history and the Ideal Cement factory
Let's talk a little bit of Wilmington film history, history that took place in an unlikely location in the northern wilds of New Hanover Cou...
Century club: Wilmington's 100-year-old businesses
100 years is a long time. Almost no one even lives that long. But as we look back on the history of Wilmington, there are a handful of busin...
Wilmington goes to the movies: bygone theaters and drive-ins
Let's take a look back at the many Wilmington movie theaters and drive-ins from yesteryear! Wilmington native Ann Hutteman saw movies at man...
Historic Wilmington Foundation takes the past into the future
Founded in 1966, the Historic Wilmington Foundation, which has saved dozens if not hundreds of prominent structures in downtown Wilmington,...