Wilmington is a port city and the administrative center of New Hanover County on the southeast coast of North Carolina, USA.
With a population of 115,955 as of the 2020 U.S. Census, it is the eighth most populous city in the state. Wilmington is the principal city of the Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area, a metropolitan area that includes New Hanover and Pender counties in southeastern North Carolina, with a population of 301,284 as of the 2020 Census. Its historic center has a 1.75-mile (2.82 km) waterfront that was created as a tourist attraction in the late 20th century. In 2014, Wilmington’s waterfront was named “America’s Best Waterfront” by readers of USA Today. The National Trust for Historic Preservation selected Wilmington as one of a dozen outstanding destinations in 2008.
Residents live between the river and the ocean, with four nearby beach communities near Wilmington: Fort Fisher, Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Coure Beach, all a half-hour drive from downtown Wilmington. The city is home to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), which offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate and adult programs, as well as cultural and athletic events open to the community.
By the late 19th century, Wilmington was a thriving city with an ethnically integrated majority black population and the largest city in North Carolina. During the 1898 Wilmington massacre, supporters of white supremacy staged a coup that overthrew the legally elected local government of pro-Fusionists. They drove black and white opposition leaders out of town, destroyed black property and businesses established after the Civil War, including the only black newspaper in town, and killed between 60 and more than 300 people. This coincided with a broader effort to disenfranchise at the state level. While there were 125,000 black voters registered in North Carolina in 1896, by 1902 there were 6,000. By 1910, Charlotte had overtaken Wilmington as North Carolina’s largest city.
In 2003, Congress designated the city as a “Coast Guard City” and until 2020 it was the home port for the USCGC Diligence, a U.S. Coast Guard medium-range cutter. On September 2, 2020, then-President Trump officially declared Wilmington the nation’s first World War II heritage city. The World War II battleship USS North Carolina, now a war memorial, is moored in front of the harbor area downtown and is open for tours. Other attractions include the Cape Fear Museum of History and Science, the Wilmington Children’s Museum, and the Wilmington Hammerheads United Soccer Leagues.