Cape Fear Pride: Holden Beach

Virgil Roberts’s grandfather, Peter Robinson, owned half of Holden Beach in the ’30s.
Now Roberts’s real estate company owns about 90 percent of Holden Beach.

When he first moved to the area in the ’40s there were only about 18 fishing shacks. Ocean lots sold for $15,000. Now there are hundreds of homes and ocean lots sell for $1.4 million.

Virgil Roberts said, “We have a 35-foot height limit, that way everyone’s got a view. And we’re stuck on that height limit… It will take a vote of the people to change that, so it never will, because that’s the reason why people move here.”

Roberts says northerners have also helped build up Holden Beach, because having a beach home is becoming more and more popular.