Surfing and Surf Culture in Southeast North Carolina

This guide describes resources related to southeast North Carolina's history of surfing and surf culture, with an emphasis on materials held by the Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History and UNCW Library. While the guide is geographically focused on the Lower Cape Fear region, resources related to surfing in other parts of the North Carolina coast, such as the Outer Banks and Crystal Coast area, have been included for context.

When searching the databases and resources described in this guide, we recommend trying the following keywords:

• surf*
• surfer OR surfers
• surfing
• surfboard* OR "surf board" OR "surf boards"
• "wave riding" OR waverid*
• "surf shop" OR "surf shops"
• "surf culture"
• Names of individual surfers, surfboard manufacturers, or surf shops

The Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History (CSENCAH) at UNC Wilmington consists of the library's Special Collections, University Archives, and Government Resources. To search the Center's collections, visit our website and use the search bar near the top of the page.

To search across our finding aids for archival collections, click the Finding Aids tab.

To search for published materials, such as books, serials, periodicals, and audiovisual media, click the Books, Media and More tab.

To search for materials that have been digitized and made available online, click the Digital Collections tab.

The Center's holdings consist of both published and unpublished materials.

Published materials found in the Center's collections include monographs, periodicals, serials, and recorded media. Most of these materials are focused on the Southeast NC region, but we also have collections of publications related to literature, religion, the history of science and medicine, and other topics.

Unpublished materials are also commonly called manuscripts or archival records, and these materials are generally organized into larger groupings called collections or record groups. A collection or record group can contain a single document or tens of thousands of documents. They are organized around the creator of the materials. The creator is usually an individual, a family, an organization, or administrative unit. Because collections are not organized around subjects, researchers often need to examine multiple collections to study a subject. 

Most collections are described using finding aids. A finding aid is a description of a collection of archival material. A finding aid provides information about a collection and its creators. It also provides an outline of a collection's contents. A finding aid may include the following information: indications of a collection's size, date span, and formats (such as bound volumes, audio recordings, photographs, etc.); biographical or historical descriptions of a collection's creator; summaries of a collection's contents; and a list of a collection's contents by container (for example, by folder or box). A finding aid does not always include descriptions of individual documents.