67 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.MountPleasantPodcast.com BY SARAH ROSE The Sleepiest Beach Town Pawleys Island: One of America’s oldest seaside resorts Pawleys Island welcomes travelers with a roadside sign claiming that the area is the “Oldest Seaside Resort in America.” While it is certainly “one of the oldest” vacation spots in the country, the declarative statement is misleading. In 1711, an early colonial settler named Percival Pawley received a royal grant of land along the Waccamaw Neck, which according to Susan Hoffer McMillan, author of “Georgetown and the Waccamaw Neck,” is “a 20-mile-long peninsula extending from Georgetown County’s northern border south to Winyah Bay, bordered on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the west by the Waccamaw River.” McMillan added that Pawley’s tract, which encompassed North Island, Pawleys Island, Magnolia Beach (now Litchfield Beach), duBourdieu Beach (now DeBordieu Beach) and Murrells Inlet, once boasted 50 plantations that ran from the river to the sea. Each of these working farms spanned approximately 1,000 acres and enslaved an average of 100 men, women and children. Throughout the Lowcountry region of what is now known as Georgetown County, indigo and rice emerged as cash crops that built immense wealth for local planters. During the growing season from April through October, the lack of breeze trapped suffocating heat in the fields and malaria-carrying mosquitos that caused deadly summer fevers swarmed in standing water. To escape the misery during those intolerable months, upper class All Photos Provided By Pawleys Island Civic Association and the Ehrich-Thomas Collection.
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