Beaufort County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Beaufort County

One hundred and sixty-seven stairs to a lantern room 167 feet above the Atlantic surf — that numerical coincidence is the Hunting Island Light, completed 1875 to replace the original 1859 lighthouse that the Confederate Army deliberately destroyed during the Civil War to deny its navigation aid to the Union Navy's coastal blockade. The current iron-plate lighthouse was built in disassemblable sections so it could be (and was) moved 1.3 miles inland in 1889 ahead of shoreline erosion that has now caught up with it again, making it both South Carolina's only publicly-climbable historic lighthouse and one of the few iron-plate lighthouses ever built for portability rather than permanence. Hunting Island State Park is South Carolina's most-visited state park (1.05 million annual visitors per SC State Parks 2023 visitation reports) and the only fully-accessible undeveloped barrier-island beach in the state's public park system.

Beaufort County's 587 sq mi wrap the Sea Islands south of Charleston including Hilton Head Island (population 38,001, the largest planned-community resort island on the US East Coast, with Sea Pines Plantation the original 1956 master-planned development that established the modern coastal-resort template), Daufuskie Island (population 422, accessible only by ferry from Hilton Head, the historic Gullah cultural enclave that Pat Conroy taught school on and wrote about in The Water Is Wide), Parris Island (the US Marine Corps Recruit Depot, where every East Coast Marine since 1915 has completed basic training, 18,000-22,000 recruits per year), and the historic Antebellum city of Beaufort (population 13,607, the county seat and the second-oldest city in South Carolina after Charleston). Hunting Island State Park's campground accepts rigs to 36 ft with electric and water hookups across 102 sites; reservations open 13 months ahead through ReserveAmerica and the October-April snowbird window sells out within minutes per SCSP booking data. Hilton Head Island Beach & Tennis Resort and several commercial RV-friendly parks anchor the resort-island RV stock. Hilton Head Town Code §10-5-201 prohibits overnight RV street parking outside designated campground network. Reconstruction Era National Historical Park (the newest US national park unit, designated 2017) preserves the Penn Center on St. Helena Island and the Brick Baptist Church in the heart of the Sea Island Gullah-Geechee corridor.