SEASONS MAGAZINE: For 100 years, people have had the time of their lives at Goldston’s Beach

Her memories are countless, for those that have come and gone for 100 years is impossible to count.

Goldston’s Beach opened at White Lake in 1921, and the fun and frolic created since are an incredible imagination of life’s possibilities. From the first telephone line coming across the Cape Fear River to the thousands of selfie images taken today and instantly shared to anyone on the planet, this has been an ideal setting for family vacations, rest and relaxation, and the origination point of a romance or two.

She survived a fire on the busiest of holiday weekends and a health threat to her crystal clear waters. White Lake has been a place of refuge amid world war and cold war, in times of societal unrest, and in times of unifying patriotism.

Goldston’s Beach, now known as the Grand Regal at Goldston’s Beach, has been there for it all.

The old-timers can still tell you about the scrumptious country cooking in the restaurant, the days of Dovie Collins, Alma Rhyne and Vernell Lyons when chicken and pastry was the Friday favorite and the church crowds enjoyed Sundays with turkey and dressing. Bill Kirby Jr., the award-winning columnist in Fayetteville, liked to write about them and his friend, the late Harry Womble.

He was born in 1921, the year H.P. Goldston — Harry’s uncle — came from Chatham County and started Goldston’s Beach.

“You had to take a ferry across from Elizabethtown,” says Goldston Womble, the mayor here since 1985 and Harry’s son. “H.P. got the first telephone line run to White Lake. People in that area, they would come to use the telephone.”

And enjoy the sandy beach which had far less development than today.

“He lived until about the early 1950s,” Goldston Womble said. “My dad, he had worked there all his life growing up. He was running it, he went into the service, and when he came back, he took over running it.”

And helping it survive ruin.

A fire in 1957 is legendary, one that started at adjacent Crystal Beach and burned through the night.

“Not all of it” burned, Goldston Womble recalled earlier this month, “but our souvenir shop, and the bowling alley building burned. And it left the hotel and sandwich shop and pool room. The bathhouse burned. That was on July 2, 1957. My dad opened up in a new building on July 5 — not much of a building, but he opened.

“They built, wired and plumbed a building in three days. It wasn’t a palace, but it had a drink stand, a bathhouse area. That was the height of the season.”

And business, as it has since the beginning and even after the coronavirus pandemic, would go on.

By the time White Lake’s future mayor was a teenager, old times were the new times. The music of the day brought everyone to a dance floor, be it at Goldston’s or next door at Crystal, just as it did in the 1940s when the Johnny Long Orchestra was a regular.

“Crystal Beach had a dance hall, a dance floor with a jukebox,” Goldston Womble says. “And Goldston’s Beach had a dance hall with a jukebox. At night, that’s where everybody would go. It was covered, but open on the lake front. There might be a couple hundred people there and nobody at Crystal. An hour later, it would be too crowded at Goldston’s, and they’d go to Crystal. A little while later, Goldston’s would be empty.

“People who liked to dance, that’s what they would do. When it got crowded, they’d go to the other dance floor.”

The water was clear for decades, and photographs from overhead wowed everyone with the visible sandy white bottom. The roughly 1,200-acre lake is not more than about 9 feet deep anywhere, and remains a paradise for swimming and skiing.

Old photographs and newspaper clippings are numerous in the Womble family. They show a timber lodging facility at the outset, scores of people young and old having the time of their lives decade after decade, and people who not only worked in the businesses but helped make memories by the million.

The water and the sand remain, changing some over time. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the experience, the realization of fun times limited only by our imagination.