He caught the fish with a hammer and a chisel instead of a rod and reel. The 7-foot long plywood fish, long a symbol of one of North Carolina's longest piers, was his for just $25.

"That one'll be in my room," said Pethel, 19.

It was everything-must-go time at the pier, which closed for good on New Year's Eve. The pier, a bait and tackle shop, a bar and a motel nearby are being torn down in February.

It's an increasingly common story on North Carolina's coastline, where people have come to fish from piers since the Depression. Eight other piers have been taken down in the past decade.

Built in 1955, the Long Beach Pier has withstood saltwater corrosion, hurricane damage, the high cost of insurance and countless lovestruck teenagers carving their names into the wooden viewing platform.

Two things led to its end: The skyrocketing price of real estate and a divorce.

Owner Tommy Thomes, a developer who has built homes on Oak Island for decades, would have preferred to keep the pier open a few more years. But a settlement with his former wife, Nora, last fall meant he had to divide his assets.

Once the structures are taken down, the land will be divided into 10 lots. In the white-hot real estate market on Oak Island, which is in Brunswick County about 30 miles south of Wilmington, each could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, real estate agents said.

"It's bittersweet," said his son, also named Tommy. "I can see Mom's side of it and Dad's side of it."

Similar math has led other pier owners to make the same decision in recent years.

In Bogue Banks, Kinston entrepreneur Gerald Barfield was first seen as the savior of the historic Iron Steamer fishing pier, which was abandoned after being damaged by Hurricane Floyd in 1999. In 2002, Barfield bought the pier and rebuilt it.

But early last year, he said he realized the profits just didn't add up.

"We couldn't grow our business any more," he said. "You can only serve so many patrons through the motel and the fishing pier. Looking at the numbers, it was more economically viable to tear it down and develop a new subdivision."

Ten single-family homes are being built on the site.

Several hundred feet of the landmark Kitty Hawk Pier were torn away by Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Sterling Webster, one of a group of owners, said insurance on the pier would have been as much as $100,000 a year, roughly the same as its profits.

"You have to remember, the pier was there 50 years and it didn't go anywhere, then one day, bam," he said. "How would you like to own a business that if you got up in the morning, it may not still be there?"

The partners are now building a 180-room Hilton Garden Inn on the land.

The number of piers along North Carolina's coast has steadily dropped over the past decade, from 32 in 1996 to 23 this year, based on the number of active pier fishing licenses issued by the state. Some fear that a way of life is disappearing along with them.

Damon Tatem, North Carolina's representative to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, said that piers have long been an accessible way for people to go fishing along the coast.

"It's the last cheap fishing opportunity," he said. "If you want to go fishing in the ocean, you've got to have a boat and a four-wheel drive, which will cost you $40,000. Or you can rent a boat for the day for $1,500."

A day on the Long Beach Pier, by contrast, costs as little as $7.

The people of Oak Island still have two other places to fish: The Ocean Crest Pier and the Yaupon Beach Pier. But for many, the Long Beach Pier was a favorite.

Avid fishers say the deep-water fishing for king mackerel and other species was better there, even if its claim to being North Carolina's longest pier was more of an advertising gimmick than a provable fact.

(At 1,056 feet, it is at best a distant second to a 1,840-foot research pier used by the Army Corps of Engineers in Duck.)

The south-facing pier was also a landmark, the site of beach bonfires, sunset weddings and even the final resting place for fishermen who asked for their ashes to be scattered from the end. Hundreds turned out on New Year's Eve for the final blowout.

Jim Ingram, a pharmaceutical consultant from McGees Crossroads, recalled gathering his buddies to go fishing from the pier in the 1960s. Back then, you could take your sleeping bag and stay overnight.

"You didn't really sleep all that much," said Ingram, 59. "There was always something going on to wake you up."

UNC-Chapel Hill senior Lera Germaine remembered the summer day a friend -- later her boyfriend -- surprised her with a hand-carved "I (TM) Lera" on the fishing platform. The relationship has long since ended, but she liked knowing her name was still out there.

"There's other piers, but this was an icon on Oak Island," she said.

Others had memories they would rather not bring up.

Concord resident Ann Edwards, 48, recalls the time as a teenager when she and a group of surfer friends went to the end of the pier during the first stirrings of a hurricane and jumped off.

"You threw your surfboard down first and then you swam to it and tried to catch a wave," she said. "I was pretty stupid then."

Tres Pethel had his own memories: meeting his best friend, catching his first 5-pound flounder and watching his younger brother catch a king mackerel from the end of the pier.

Aside from the plywood fish, Pethel also got a wooden stand of a fisherman where tourists used to pose for snapshots and a plywood fisherman nicknamed "Ernie." Other regulars bought nearly all of the pier's 70 benches at $20 apiece.

Soon, their souvenirs will be all that is left.

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