The Hidden Gem of Topsail Island
If you’ve spent time on Topsail Island, you may have heard people mention “Serenity Point” — or simply “The Point.” You might have even stood at the southern tip of the island and looked out at the place where the Atlantic Ocean meets Banks Channel, feeling that particular kind of stillness that earns a place its name. But there’s a lot more to this stretch of North Carolina coastline than meets the eye, and for many it remains one of those places you feel lucky to discover.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is Serenity Point?
Serenity Point sits at the very southern tip of Topsail Island, a 26-mile-long barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, between Wilmington and the Crystal Coast. The name comes from a small neighborhood of townhomes built on the southern end of the island in the late 1980s and early 1990s — but locals and visitors long ago started using it to refer to the wild, undeveloped land that extends beyond those homes to the very end of the island.
For decades, that wild land was one of the last things on the North Carolina coast you could count on looking exactly the way it always had. No development, no structures — just expansive dunes, maritime shrub forest, estuarine wetlands, open beach, and a remarkable variety of wildlife. The property stretches from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to Banks Channel on the sound side, and over the years — through the natural processes of coastal accretion — it grew to encompass roughly 150 acres.
The Fight To Keep It That Way
The fact that The Point remains wild today is not an accident. It’s the result of two decades of community effort, a grassroots conservation campaign, and a fundraising push that drew support from nearly 800 donors and multiple state and federal agencies.
The land had been owned since the 1960s by three families — the McCullens, McLeods, and Oppegaards — who largely let the public use it recreationally while the island grew around it. The town of Topsail Beach, recognizing both the ecological value of the land and the fragility of the island’s south end, zoned the property as a C4 conservation zone in the early 1980s. For a while, that seemed like enough.
In 2005, the property hit the market for the first time, and the community mobilized. A local resident named Maggie Chesnutt — who lived in the Serenity Point townhomes — organized her neighbors, produced t-shirts and petitions, and presented at town meetings. The effort attracted national attention, including a Wall Street Journal piece on the battle. A nonprofit called Conserve The Point was formed. The town tried to purchase the land outright, but with an annual budget of $1.7 million, it simply couldn’t. The Great Recession eventually pulled the property off the market in 2008 — but the grassroots infrastructure remained, quietly waiting.
In 2022, the property was relisted at $8 million. A prospective buyer applied to rezone part of the 150-acre site to build a private family compound: multiple 5,000-square-foot homes, a swimming pool, a private marina, and boardwalks to the beach. Conserve The Point relaunched almost overnight — this time via social media — and hundreds of residents and thousands of visitors submitted public commentary opposing the rezoning. In late 2023, the buyers withdrew their application.
What happened next was remarkable. The NC Coastal Land Trust signed a purchase contract with the owners in early 2024 and launched the “Save the South End” fundraising campaign, targeting nearly $8 million. The community met the goal. Nearly 800 donors contributed $1.5 million in private donations. The rest came from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the NC Land and Water Fund, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In April 2025, the Land Trust officially closed on the purchase at a final price of $7.5 million. The mayor of Topsail Beach called it simply: “This beautiful and beloved section of Topsail is now protected forever.”
The property — now called the South Topsail Preserve — will eventually transfer to the NC Division of Coastal Management as part of the state’s coastal preserve system.
What’s There Now (And Why It’s Worth Your Time)
The preserve is open to the public. There’s a small paid parking lot managed by the town of Topsail Beach, and from there you can walk the beach, watch for nesting loggerhead sea turtles and shorebirds, and experience what increasingly few stretches of barrier island coastline look like when left alone. The property hosts Wilson’s plovers, willets, and more than 30 priority bird species. A rare coastal plant called seabeach amaranth grows on the open beach. In 2025, Audubon North Carolina helped establish the island’s first protected nesting area for Piping Plovers. The volunteer South Topsail Stewards now serve as ambassadors for the preserve, offering educational beach walks.
It’s not a curated nature center. It’s just the land, the birds, and the water — which is exactly why people keep coming back.
The Walk You Won’t Forget
One of the best-kept secrets on the south end of the island isn’t The Point itself — it’s a walk you can do right from the Serenity Point neighborhood.
The neighborhood has beach accesses on both the sound side and the ocean side. Start at one, hit the beach, and walk around the southern tip of the island to the other — a roughly two-mile loop that’s unlike any beach walk I’ve come across. At one end you’re on the Banks Channel beach, watching pelicans skim the sound and the sun starting its descent toward the mainland. At the other, you’re on a wide, uncrowded Atlantic Ocean beach with waves rolling in. The two feel like completely different worlds, and you get both in a single walk. When you reach “The Point,” you’ll feel like you are at the center of the universe.
The sound-side beach faces west, which means the sunsets can be genuinely spectacular — unobstructed, over the water, the kind that make people stop mid-sentence. And because this is the very southern tip of the island, the beaches are uncrowded even in summer. The entire area is dog-friendly, so four-legged visitors are welcome along for the walk.
The Town Next Door
The Point sits just minutes from the small town of Topsail Beach, which rewards the kind of slow, wandering visit that beach vacations are made for.
The Beach Shop & Grill is the dining anchor of the south end — a higher-end restaurant with a relaxed island feel and a menu that makes it worth a reservation. White Crab Coffee & Books is a newer addition that locals have quickly claimed as a favorite: coffee, books, and a quiet start to a beach morning. For ice cream, you have two solid options — Four Cousins and Scoops Micro Creamery — both worth the stop. The Gift Basket has been a Topsail institution for years, the kind of gift shop that feels genuinely local rather than tourist-trap. And if you have kids (or are simply nostalgic), the town also has an old-school roller rink and a mini golf and arcade spot that round out an evening.
A few miles north, Surf City offers a broader range of restaurants, the surf shop scene, and the main bridge connection to the mainland. Between the two, the south end of Topsail Island offers a full week’s worth of days that can be as active or as lazy as you want.
A place worth knowing, Serenity Point is not flashy. There’s no boardwalk, no attractions, no development pitch. What it has is something increasingly rare on the North Carolina coast: undisturbed land, wide beaches, a community that fought hard to keep it that way, and the particular kind of quiet that comes from a place that has been, against considerable odds, left alone.
It’s worth knowing about. And now you do.
Want to explore more of Topsail Island’s south end? Check out our guide to Exploring Topsail Island’s South End for local eats, family activities, and hidden gems.