North Topsail vs Surf City vs Topsail Beach: which end of the island?

Topsail Island is 26 miles long with three towns on it, and picking the wrong one is the most common mistake first timers make. I am Amy, our family has hosted families on the north end since 2013, and I am not going to pretend to be neutral. Here is how the three ends actually compare.

Surf City: the busy middle

Surf City is the island's downtown, and it has the crowds to prove it. The pier, the t-shirt shops, the mini golf, and most of the day trip traffic from the mainland all land here. Public beach accesses every few blocks mean the sand fills up by mid morning in season, and you will circle for parking with everyone else. The beaches are narrower, the traffic on the bridge and along the main road is a fact of summer life, and the ocean in front of the pier is where the surfers and the jet skis go. If your idea of a beach week is walking to tacos and back through a crowd, it will do. If your idea is quiet, it will not.

Topsail Beach: the far south tip

The south end is small and residential with a soda fountain and a nice old fashioned feel, and it is the longest drive on the island from anywhere. From the Surf City bridge you creep the entire length of the island on one two lane road, which matters twice a day with a car full of groceries and kids. Beach access is mostly shared street ends, so the sand in front of you is rarely just yours, and there is no sandbar to speak of to calm the surf for little swimmers.

North Topsail Beach: the quiet, peaceful end

The north end is where the island stops trying to be a town and goes back to being a beach. No commercial strip, no boardwalk, no pier crowds, and along our stretch of New River Inlet Road, almost no public beach access at all. The people on the sand behind your house are the people staying in the houses. In the middle of July you can walk a quarter mile and count the umbrellas on one hand.

Then there is the sandbar. A bar sits 30 to 40 feet off our beach and knocks the surf down before it reaches the shore, so little kids can play in ankle deep water while the teenagers ride the waves just past it. Late in the day the tide leaves warm, shallow tidal pools between the bar and the beach that toddlers claim as their own. That single feature is the reason so many of our families come back every summer.

Add wide beaches, dunes instead of houses stacked on the sand, sea turtles nesting in front of the house, dark enough skies to see the Milky Way, and a sunrise you watch from your own deck with coffee, and you have the week most people picture when they say "the beach." It is also the easiest end to reach from the north: the Highway 210 bridge drops you straight into North Topsail without ever touching Surf City traffic.

What you give up on the north end

You will drive ten minutes to dinner instead of walking, and you will stock the kitchen on the way in. That is the whole list. Sneads Ferry seafood and the restaurants at St. Regis are minutes away, and our guides cover where we actually eat.

The scorecard

• Quiet beach: North Topsail, by a wide margin.
• Safe swimming for kids: North Topsail, because of the sandbar and the tidal pools.
• Room to spread out: North Topsail. Wide sand, no public access crowds.
• Dogs: North Topsail. Long empty leash walks, and our beach houses welcome them.
• Getting here from Raleigh, Richmond, or the north: North Topsail, straight off the 210 bridge.
• Walking to a t-shirt shop: Surf City. We are happy to give that one up.

Our four beach houses and three condos are all on the north end because that is where our own family wanted to be. If your ideal week is more porch than boardwalk, you already know your answer.

A week in each, side by side

Picture a Saturday changeover in July. In Surf City you cross the bridge into town traffic, wait at the light, circle for parking at the grocery store, and carry the coolers past three other families to a beach access. On the north end you come over the Highway 210 bridge, turn onto New River Inlet Road with nobody in front of you, pull into the driveway of a house whose deck faces the ocean, and the kids are on the sand before you have unlocked the second door. Now picture Tuesday. In Surf City you walk to a taco place and wait forty minutes. On the north end you grill on the deck and watch dolphins. Both are a beach week. Only one of them is a rest.

The beach itself

The sand on the north end is wider and backed by tall dunes, because the island is broader here and because the town has kept building off the beach. In Surf City the buildings come closer to the water, the dunes are lower, and the beach narrows at high tide in places to a strip. The ocean is the same Atlantic in both towns, with one large difference: the sandbar off our stretch of the north end, which breaks the surf before it reaches the shore and leaves tidal pools behind it in the afternoon. In front of the Surf City pier the water is deeper sooner, which is why the surfers like it and why parents of small children do not.

Dogs, on each end

Dogs are allowed on the beach in every town on the island, on a leash, and the rules are about the same. What differs is the experience. On the north end a dog gets a long, empty beach walk at sunrise with nobody to tangle a leash around and no umbrellas to duck. Surf City in summer is a dodge through a crowd. All four of our beach houses welcome dogs, with an outdoor shower for sandy paws by the walkway, so the dog's day looks like the kids' day: door, walkway, sand, ocean, nap.

If you already booked the busy end

Come see us anyway. The north end is a twenty minute drive from Surf City, and on a summer weekday you can park at one of the few public accesses near the state park at the far north tip and walk a beach that will feel like a different island. Then, next year, book the house in front of it. Most of the families in our four beach houses and three condos came to the north end exactly that way: one visit, and the decision made itself.