Although you might head first for lovely, historic Charleston – now linked with London by direct air service – there’s much more on offer in this sunny, seductive southern state.
BY MARY MOORE MASON, LYNN HOUGHTON AND TIM LOCKE
MYRTLE BEACH AND MORE
When I was at university in neighbouring North Carolina, recalls Mary Moore Mason, our laid-back beach holidays were spent in Myrtle Beach’s old frame boarding houses, where the wide front porches – equipped with comfy swings, gliders and rocking chairs – were the perfect places for meeting up, chatting up and perhaps pairing up with your suitor for the day, the week…or who knew?
We’d sun ourselves on the wide, sandy beaches of ‘The Grand Strand’, dash shrieking into the turbulent waves of the Atlantic Ocean, play highly competitive rounds of miniature golf and, in the evenings, head for rustic Murells Inlet to eat delicious seafood straight off the fishing boats, or to Pawleys Island’s old wooden dance hall reached by a rickety boardwalk across the marshes.
Now, I find it’s quite different: Myrtle Beach’s waterfront, about 100 miles north of Charleston, is lined with tower block resort hotels, while attractions include a 187ft-tall Skywheel; the Broadway at the Beach area, buzzy with restaurants, shops and that underwater wonderland, Ripley’s Aquarium; and Wild Encounters where we view a giant, rare cross-breed of a lion and tiger (Liger) and relax in a wooden pavilion while tiger cubs, under the keen eyes of their minders, play at our feet – fascinating for some, but for others an uncomfortable exploitation of performing animals.
Murrells Inlet just down the coast has also smartened up; as the ‘Seafood Capital of South Carolina’, it now offers a choice of seven neat, tidy waterfront restaurants along its Marshlands Boardwalk. Choosing the Claw House, my friends and I sit at a long table on an open porch gorging ourselves on lobster, fresh oysters, crab, catfish and ever-popular shrimp and grits. Among the former residents, we are told by a local, was great, late crime writer Micky Spillane, who penned many of his Mike Hammer epics while perched in the cabin of his boat berthed nearby.
Although Pawleys Island’s old dance hall (where we enjoyed ‘shagging’, then the current dance craze) has long-since disappeared, the island retains its old “shabby chic” frame cottages, as well as some modern ones, and its wide sandy beaches, now being ‘renourished’ with additional sand due to the erosion caused by global warming and higher ocean waters all along America’s eastern coast. There’s not a neon or traffic light in sight and the only commercial establishment is the delightful old Sea View Inn, known for its delicious food. In fact, Pawleys, linked by two causeways to the mainland, claims to be one of the oldest beach resorts in America, dating back to the 1700s when area rice plantation owners moved their families, workers and livestock here during the summers, to enjoy the ocean breezes and escape the mainland mosquitoes. Its long-established island rope hammock makers and its laid-back lifestyle have also inspired the name Hammock Coast for much of the area.
One of the nearby former rice plantations, the Oaks near Murrells Inlet, has been transformed into 9,000-acre Brookgreen Gardens, the world’s largest outdoor collection of American figurative sculpture by the late owners Archer Huntington and his sculptress wife, Anne. I spend a couple of idyllic hours wandering through its beautiful gardens shaded by huge, Spanish Moss-veiled 200-year-old oak trees and past fountains and ponds graced by the likes of a golden Dionysus, a slim Diana, bow and arrow at the ready, and a group of frolicking muses.
Located on the site of another former plantation, Bellefield, near Georgetown, is the oddly-named Hobcaw (Native American for “Between the Rivers”) Barony (granted in 1718 as a barony to English royalty). Within its 6,000 acres – now a research and education centre for forestry, wildlife and marine science – is the elegant, white-columned mansion of Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other US presidents. Among his house guests was Winston Churchill.
Also unmissable is gorgeous old Georgetown, founded in 1729, South Carolina’s third oldest city and its second largest port. Among the 60 local structures on the National Registry of Historic Places are the clock tower topped former public market, now the Rice Museum, the white-columned 1769 Kaminsky House, straight out of Gone with the Wind, and museums to the local maritime and African-American Gullah culture. Each spring (April 3-4, 2020) there is a Plantation and Town House Tour, and throughout the year you can take a boat cruise from the picturesque harbour into the lush Lowcountry, which made the fortunes of so many plantation owners more than two centuries ago.
BEAUFORT AND THE SOUTHERN ISLANDS
I am enjoying a warm breeze swirling off the Atlantic Ocean, ruffling my hair as I sip cool, sweet iced tea on a white, wooden porch, writes Lynn Houghton from Hilton Head Island, 116 miles south of Charleston. All around are Live Oak trees dripping with Spanish Moss. An alligator or a deer could easily cross my path. This is a tiny snapshot of life on one of the Sea Islands.
Measuring 12 miles long and five miles wide, the island is renowned for its glistening white sand beaches, championship PGA golf courses, cycling trails and such idyllic resorts as Sea Pines and Palmetto Dunes. As the surrounding coastal waters teem with oyster, shrimp and lobster and the mainland creeks with various types of fish, it is no surprise that the local restaurants serve superb seafood, often based on recipes imported by the enslaved Gullah people of West Africa, who were brought here in the 18th Century to work the fields and harvest Carolina Gold Rice, indigo and cotton.
But to me, the island’s most intriguing place is Mitchelville Freedom Park, which, says the site’s executive director Ahmad Ward, “was the first freedman’s town for formerly enslaved persons in the US.” These are folks that went from being property to owning property!” Previously the slaves, whose owners fled the advancing Union Army, were treated as ‘contraband’ and housed in Army barracks. When this became untenable, Mitchelville – named after a Union Army general – was constructed and each family given a plot of land. “The mission of Mitchelville Freedom Park is to preserve our heritage, and focus on citizenship, freedom and opportunity,” adds guide Jasmine Sellars. You can reflect upon it all while sitting on a bench overlooking the nearby marsh – it was given to the site by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American novelist Toni Morrison.
More African-American heritage is to be found at the still active Penn Center on St Helena Island. Built in 1862 by Quaker and Unitarian reformers from Pennsylvania, it focused on providing an education for the slaves after their owners left during the Civil War. Basic academic subjects were taught, as well as such practical skills as weaving South Carolina’s unique and highly marketable sweetgrass baskets. Incidentally, one of my favourite meals was at the island’s Foolish Frog restaurant.
The mainland base for these and other islands is delightful Beaufort where many of the plantation owners had their town houses. It was also the home of local teacher and prolific author Pat Conroy whose award-winning novels, including Prince of Tides and The Water Is Wide – both made into films – were inspired by his time here. Visit the Pat Conroy Literary Center and stroll by such places as Tidalhome Mansion, the film site for both the star-studded 1983 film The Big Chill and Conroy’s The Great Santini.
But then, storytelling seems to be part of the Beaufort experience. The local Gullah people often tell their stories in public performances – the portrayals of the struggles and joys of their slave ancestors’ experiences are riveting. I saw Aunt Pearlie Sue and the Gullah Kinfolk present intimate stories and songs. It left me and the rest of the audience spellbound.
COLUMBIA, THE CAPITAL CITY, AND REVITALIZED GREENVILLE
As I wander among the numerous memorials in the grounds of Columbia’s State Capitol, says Tim Locke, I can’t help noticing the six bronze stars embedded on the building’s exterior. They are there to mark the spots struck by Union cannonballs during the American Civil War, which began when Confederate soldiers fired on Union troops on island-based Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
More lively history is recounted on a free tour of the Greek Revival building’s marble and mosaic-embellished interior. Then I head a few blocks away to view the Columbia Museum of Art’s impressive collection, exhibited by theme rather than period. It works well in a wonderfully renovated building including the only Botticelli fresco outside Italy and an astonishing 20-foot mural by Jackson Pollock, with a Van Gogh exhibition scheduled for October through January next year.
Next comes Riverbanks Zoo, the largest in the Southeast and one of the first to have open enclosures for its animals. My “behind the scenes” tour includes an encounter with some very venerable Galapagos turtles, all but one in residence for nearly a century. “Bravo is famously grumpy” warns his keeper Kathy, but he seems to like a tickle under the chin.
Just over 100 miles to the north-west I arrive at the impressively revived former mill town of Greenville, now the base for a major nearby BMW factory. As well as having an excellent choice of places to eat and drink, the city offers the scenic Reedy River, which cuts through a miniature gorge in the middle of town, a footbridge above the river’s waterfalls and, in summer, movies and Shakespearean plays in the riverside park.
Heading toward the mountainous Georgia border, my travel companions and I enter Lake Hartwell country, one of the wettest places in America. A boat cruise on Lake Jocassee provides views of waterfalls, while a naturalist describes area wildlife, including black bears. Next time I’d be tempted to explore on a paddleboat or hike around the Horsepasture River, which falls more than 700 feet in less than a mile.
FURTHER INFORMATION: www.DiscoverSouthCarolina.com
