http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20070404/MAGAZINE20/70404011/-1/magazine50
Monkey Junction
Newcomers to Wilmington always get a good laugh when they first learn that the intersection of College Road and Carolina Beach Road actually has a name – Monkey Junction. Many assume Tregembo Animal Park had something to do with it, but it doesn’t. It does, however, actually have to do with a monkey.
Native Wilmingtonian Ed Letendre was about 6 years old when his first memories of this intersection developed – and they’ve stayed with him for 73 years. His aunt Dina and uncle Jack Spindle used to run a gas station there. And that gas station was the reason for the name Monkey Junction. To get the point across, Letendre draws a big ‘Y’ on a piece of paper. Back during World War II there weren’t as many roads around that area. Basically, you had Carolina Beach Road, which came from downtown and curved toward Carolina Beach. Then there was Piner Road, which intersected right at that curve, creating a junction. Right in the nook of that ‘Y’ is where his aunt and uncle built their gas station, where you could fill up and also buy packs of nabs and beer. “They brought the monkeys in there I think as an attraction to bring in the customers,” Letendre says. The store opened around 1939 and stayed open through the mid-1940s. During this time, Fort Fisher was re-opened by the army as an anti-aircraft training facility and hundreds of soldiers and Marines were passing by the little gas station. The monkeys were a curiosity and the soldiers would often stop to look at them.
Letendre’s aunt Dina had great big monkeys and little monkeys. The monkeys were cute and the soldiers were mischievous.
Eventually, the soldiers started handing the monkeys a bottle or two of beer that they’d buy. “It might have been funny to them, but monkeys are a lot like us,” Letendre says. “Some of them get really mean. Those little ones, I think, got really mean.”
Once the monkeys had learned to carry the beer, they moved on to throwing it at the soldiers. “They hurt too many men, I reckon,” Letendre says, and his aunt had to find them a new home. So while the monkeys moved, the name Monkey Junction will be there forever.