Explore North Carolina’s Barrier Islands

North Carolina boasts numerous islands along its eastern coast. Each one has its special beauty and charms.

You might want to take a vacation to these barrier-island shores. One of the best ways is to rent beach houses in North Carolina.

What Is a Barrier Island?

Barrier islands are long, low, sandy islands disconnected from the mainland by a bay or lagoon. North Carlina has many barrier islands, as do other states along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.

These islands owe their existence to the activity of wind, waves, tides, surf, and especially, strong storms. These meteorological processes form and shape barrier islands.

Barrier Islands of North Carolina

Because North Carolina juts out to the Atlantic relative to the adjacent states north and south of it, powerful weather forces have shaped numerous barrier islands along the North Carolina coast. These islands are a vacationers dream and include the following:

• Sunset, Holden and Ocean Island Beaches
• Oak Island and Caswell Beach
• Bald Head Island
• Carolina(Pleasure Island), Kure, and Wrightsville Beaches
• Topsail Beach and Emerald Island, and the famous
• The Outer Banks and adjacent islands

All of these offer wonderful vacation opportunities.

Ship Wrecks of the North Carolina Coast

The barrier islands of the North Carolina coast front seas are sometimes quite stormy. Hurricanes, tropical storms, and strong cold fronts affect this coastal area almost every year.

Over the last few centuries, many ships aff the Noth Carolina coast have met their demise in stormy waters. Indeed, there are so many shipwrecks off this coast that it is sometimes referred to as “The Graveyard of the Atlantic“. These shipwrecks include many colonial sailing vessels as well as ships lost during wartime, especially during the Civil War, WW I, and WW II.

Renting a beach house along the North Carolina coast can provide an excellent base of operations to learn more about these shipwrecks. Check it out.