Hilton Head is part of the Low Country, where much of the romance, beauty, and graciousness of the Old South survives. Broad white-sand beaches are warmed by the Gulf Stream and fringed with palm trees and rolling dunes. Graceful sea oats, anchoring the beaches, wave in the wind. The subtropical climate makes all this beauty the ideal setting for golf and for some of the Southeast's finest saltwater fishing. Somewhat more sophisticated and upscale than Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand, Hilton Head's "plantations" offer visitors a leisurely lifestyle.
Although it covers only 42 square miles, Hilton Head feels spacious, a blessing because about 2.5 million resort guests visit annually. The lovely setting attracts artists, writers, musicians, theater groups, and craftspeople. The only downtown (of sorts) is Harbour Town, at the Sea Pines Resort, a Mediterranean-style cluster of shops and restaurants.
The island's recorded origins go back to visits from Spanish sailors in 1521, and by its later "discovery" by an English sea captain, William Hilton, in 1663. By 1860, it boasted 24 plantations, most of them cultivating long-stem Sea Island cotton as well as indigo, rice, and sugar cane. On November 7, 1861, Hilton Head became the scene of the largest naval battle ever fought in American waters. More than 12,000 Union soldiers and marines invaded the island as part of a plan to blockade shipping in and out of nearby Charleston and Savannah. After the Civil War, and with the subsequent destruction of its cotton crops by the boll weevil, Hilton Head slid into obscurity, inhabited mostly by descendants of former slaves, who survived on small farms and as hunters and fishermen. An unusual result of the island's obscurity involved the survival of their language and culture, Gullah.
In 1956, Charles Fraser, son of one of the families that owned the island, embarked on an ambitious plan to develop it as a modern resort and residential community. Under Fraser, the Sea Pines Plantation (today the Sea Pines Resort) became a much-studied prototype of an ecologically desirable resort community, and was copied worldwide.
