Bluffton, SC

Bluffton’s original one-square-mile settlement occupies a bluff on the May River and is now known as Old Town. The southern Beaufort County town’s population more than doubled from 2010 to a 2020 count of 27,716; Bluffton is centered along U.S. Route 278 between Hilton Head Island and Interstate 95. The 1844 Bluffton Movement protested federal taxes after the Tariff of 1842 and became part of South Carolina’s antebellum separatist politics. During the Civil War, fire destroyed two-thirds of the town in the Union’s Bluffton Expedition on June 4, 1863. Eight antebellum houses and two churches remain in Old Town’s registered historic district. On the May River, Bluffton Oyster Co. has operated since 1899 and is described as South Carolina’s last full-time oyster-shucking business.