It is separated from the mainland by a series of small sounds and channels that make up a portion of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

Area residents frequently made this short trip and picnicked on the sandy shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

During the early 20th century only a few structures, probably less than a dozen, were built along the sound and were used as shelter for fishing trips and summer vacations.

At the beginning of World War II, the U.S. Army built a large temporary anti-aircraft training base at Holly Ridge known as Camp Davis and took possession of the island.

Immediately after the war, the US Navy took possession of the island and began a joint project with Johns Hopkins University known as Operation Bumblebee which was an early guided missile development program.

Founded by Karen Beasley, her dream was reached and included tasks provided by volunteers such as walking the beaches at night staking out the nesting sites and overseeing the hatching of the eggs.

[8] At the end of World War II the Navy took possession of Topsail Island and began a joint venture with Johns Hopkins University[9] and established the US Naval Ordnance Test Facilities at Topsail Island, North Carolina, for Operation Bumblebee, a top-secret, experimental project to develop and test ramjet missiles, which advanced the Nation's jet aircraft and missile programs.

So successful were the tests conducted at the Topsail Island site that the ramjet proved its value, opened the way for the advance of supersonic jet aircraft design, and brought the United States to the threshold of modern space technology with the Talos, Terrier, Tartar, and Sea Sparrow missiles aboard naval vessels.

With the emergence of Operation Bumblebee it brought about the dredging of the waterway, new buildings of roads, and fresh water being piped into the island.

The Topsail Island site, placed in operation in March 1947, incorporated rigid structures that were designed and built for specific uses related to the assembly, firing, monitoring, and perfecting of experimental ramjet missiles.

2 possess exceptional importance because they are the only above ground resources remaining at these three sites where the Nation's burgeoning ramjet missile program grew from experimentation to maturity.

Naval and Marine personnel, numbering 500 men, and led by Lieutenant Commander Tad Stanwick, arrived at the site by mid-1946 to begin installation of the facilities needed for the testing.

During the next 18 months, an estimated 200 experimental rockets, each measuring six inches in diameter and between three and 13 feet in length, were fabricated at the Assembly Building, dispatched to the launch site, and fired along a northeasterly angular deflection of 15 degrees to the shoreline for a maximum clear distance of 40 miles.

Despite the initial success of the US Naval Ordnance Testing facility at Topsail Island over its 18-month span, its location did not fulfill completely the needs of a permanent base because weather conditions and increased sea traffic interfered with testing, and the facility was abandoned and its equipment moved to other sites.