Inn-Side Story

In the late 1800’s, before highways began crisscrossing the country, America moved along waterways. Towns sprouted along these waterways, which flowed with commerce linking Water Street, where boats dropped their goods, to the merchants on Main Street in river towns like Belhaven, NC. The space between Water and Main is where backyards came together, and where neighbors talked over picket fences, tended their gardens and found sweet solace under the blooming magnolias. This space can be found at Between Water and Main, a bed and breakfast that connects the town’s waterfront, now largely used for fishing and recreation, with the residential charm of tree-lined Main Street.

Once the home of Willie “Capt’n Will” Wilkinson, who managed the Atlantic Ice and Seafood Company or “The Ice Plant,” the house was expanded into a six bedroom private residence by local visionary and former Belhaven Mayor Dr. Charles Boyette. In the 1990’s, 367 East Water Street was converted to a bed and breakfast, The Duck Blind Inn. The owners closed the inn before putting it up for sale. While visiting family in N.C. in 2005, Gail Fowler and her husband Alan Rodgers discovered Belhaven. They soon began a multi-year labor of love to renovate and reopen the home as a bed and breakfast. The top-to-bottom renovations took years longer than they had anticipated, but in 2015 the doors were open. Gail and Alan spent the next four years reinvigorating the home to its original roots in hospitality, providing a new level of luxury combined with their adopted southern hospitality. As stories go, life inevitably has changes.

In 2019 the Mickler-Joyner families also fell in love with the house, its history, and its spirit of hospitality. We hope to carry on the tradition of love of family and community and hospitality for many years to come.