Situated at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Bald Head Island has gained a reputation for privacy that is nearly as grand as its long and storied history. Believed to have gradually emerged from one of the sandbars that appear along the Frying Pan Shoals at irregular intervals, the island began to take on a solidified and permanent nature only after vegetation began to change the nature of its soil during prehistory. Though perhaps used by Native Americans as a defensive retreat during local and unrecorded wars, the island boasted no permanent settlement when it was first explored by the Spaniard Pedro de Quexos in the 1520s. After his financial backers lost a ship on Cape Fear's notorious shoals in 1526, the area remained unvisited again until successive attempts at colonization by Puritans and Barbadians in the 1660s failed due to crop failures and conflict with local tribes. Though used as a trading post after the 1700s, Bald Head next enters history as the site of a fort that was occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War and as a base for Confederate smugglers during the Civil War. Its most enduring feature, and one that has been oft-painted and photographed, however, is 'Old Baldy', a stone lighthouse that has guarded the entrance to Cape Fear since 1817. Today, the austere and charming structure still stands behind the island's marina and welcomes the local ferry, which is the only way for non-boaters to reach Bald Head, as it arrives from nearby Southport. Though, without gas-powered cars of any kind, this entirely sea-based life may seem unusual to many, its charms have continued to make the 123 permanent residents of Bald Head Island some of the happiest in the world.