BUILDING HISTORY: Wilmington History app

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — How one man turned his love of history into one of those ideas, you wish you would have thought of.

“Well I love history and I go to other cities and a lot of them have an app that is similar to this,” Dan Camacho explained. “You can walk around, look at the history. I like to imagine what places used to be like and Wilmington didn’t have that.”

Dan and his partner Beverly Tetterton fixed that. Wilmington History Tours.com gives you a front row seat to the past.

”On our sample site which is free on the web site Wilmingtonhistorytours.com, we have four sites. One is the foot of Market Street, it looks nothing like it does today,” Camacho said.

We have some street performers today but look at this guy’s act. Professor Dare put on his high wire act in 1879 without a net.

”The Custom House/Federal building. The port used to be down on the river front right at the foot of Market Street and all the boats would come in, there used to be a custom house there which sort of looks like the book ends of the Federal Building now,” Camacho illustrated.

Dan and Beverly document changes to some of Wilmington’s most familiar homes.

”There used to be a giant portico on the front of the Dudley mansion that is no longer there. It was once an Elks lodge and it had elk antlers over the front door. It’s been a lot of things in it’s over 150 year history,” Camacho said.

A new take on an old theme. There will always be guided tours but now you can elect to be your own guide.

You can go on line now and see the sample mini tour. In a few weeks Dan and Beverly will launch the I-Phone app and the Android app, so you can show off our city to visitors or send them off on their own adventure.