- Title
- Our State
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-
- Date
- October 2006
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-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
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Our State
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Traveling 24
Small -town charm and a country farm await you along a segment
of N.C. Highway 24 in Onslow- and Duplin counties.
by Misti C . Lir
As she winds past an array of exhibits
on the way bade to her office.
Onslow County Museum Director
I is.i Whitman 'Grice seems unfared by the
busyness of her day. “I'm so happy." she
says, as excited little voices pop in the
background. “The museum is filled svith
children this morning, and it's not with
scheduled groups. These are families that
have dropped in for the day."
It's a sunny weekday morning in Richlands.
Onslow County's “town of perfect water."
less than a half-hour's drive from the 1-40
exit at Kciunsvillc. Like many eastern
North Carolina towns, Richlands has
retained the charm and ncighborliness that
sse treasure in small towns, where front
porches, downtown hardware stores, and
welcome mats arc plentiful.
“One of the best parts about Richlands is
that because it’s still a real rural community
— but in a serv metropolitan county where
there arc people from all over the world —
everybody feels comfortable, and everybody
feels welcome, and you see such diversity."
Whitman-Grice says. "It still retains and
holds on to that hometown charm."
In the fall, the landscape leading into
Richlands is dotted with large fields of white
cotton waiting for harvest, along with |ust-
emptied tobacco barns and tall bundles of
hay. Yet there arc signs of grow th and
cultural diversity, in part due to the town's
relationship with Jacksonville, the county
scat, and Camp I cicunc Marine Corps Base,
which has been bringing people from all
over tbc world to the area since it was
established in 1941. Local businesses in