It was a curious sight, back in the day, driving on U.S. 17/74/76 near Wilmington past the Leland and Belville exit at N.C. 133 in northern Brunswick County.
From the late 1970s into the mid-2000s, passers-by would see a strip of businesses with large, colorful signs — motels, restaurants, a gas station, even a couple of retail outlets — that were oddly cut off from the main road on a dead-end street that looked and felt like no-man's land.
In the early 1970s, however, it made sense for those businesses to be there.
That's because the bridge drivers currently use to cross the Brunswick River hadn't been built yet. In its place was an older causeway and a different bridge crossing the river. That's where the strip of businesses cropped up to serve
drivers going to and from Wilmington.
When the new bridge and bypass were build in 1977, it didn't exactly do those businesses in "downtown Belville" any favors. Some closed, but others hung on, gradually succumbing to a seediness that would come to define turn-of-the-century Belville. (A rusty, half-sunken barge on the other side of the bridge spray-painted with the words "USS Belville" probably didn't help the town's reputation.)
Belville incorporated in 1977, partially if not entirely in response to the bypass being built, and by the mid-2000s the town was beginning to turn a corner. According to a 2007 StarNews story, as the "yellow-roofed Cookery, a busy diner years ago but an abandoned, broken structure lately" and other buildings were bulldozed, town staffers gathered and cheered.
"It's not often that you get to help clean up a central business district," Belville Town Administrator Tracie Davis said in 2007.
These days, "downtown Belville" is oriented more north-south than east-west, with a gas station and several businesses lining the road just down 133 from Belville Riverwalk Park, a regional destination with scenic views of the Brunswick River.
Rather than on a blighted strip, emphasis now tends to be more on the history of the town, which took its name from the old Belleville Plantation, part of the old Buchoi Plantation, which dated to around 1740 and was known for rice cultivation.
John Staton is the arts and culture reporter for the StarNews. You can reach him at jstaton@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: In the days of the old Brunswick River bridge, Belville was different
