Beulaville, NC

Beulaville is a Duplin County town on North Carolina's coastal plain, a little inland community whose early economy ran on pine trees and river freight. Lumbering and farming supplied tar, turpentine, resin, lumber, and paper pulp, while the Northeast Cape Fear River carried regional goods toward Wilmington. The settlement was first known as Snatchette after its 1873 post office; Ida Sandlin changed the name to Beulaville in 1874 after Beulah Baptist Church. The town incorporated in 1915 and remains Duplin County's youngest incorporated town.

The river and the farm country still give Beulaville its nearby places to go. Two boat landings sit within reach on the Northeast Cape Fear, Cabin Lake County Park offers camping, fishing, boating, and a swimming area, and Tarkil Branch Farm preserves an 1830s dogtrot house along with older farm buildings and tools. Beulaville's streets are modest, but the surrounding story is not: pine products, river transport, school life, and a name change that turned a rough crossroads into a town with its own identity.