Pawleys Island, SC

Pawleys Island is a town on South Carolina's Waccamaw Neck, shaped by the old rice-plantation pattern of moving families from river plantations to the island for summer. The town's historic district still includes houses from the late 1700s through mid-1800s, and the island's narrow geography keeps marsh, beach, dunes, and creek edges close together. The island was incorporated as a town in 1985, but its seasonal history reaches back two centuries earlier. Two things carry Pawleys' name beyond the island: rope hammocks, made locally since the early twentieth century, and the ghost stories attached to the coast. The town's map is residential and shoreline-based, while the commercial Hammock Shops sit across the causeway on the mainland. Pawleys Island feels like an old beach settlement with a town government, a historic district, and a working relationship with the marshes around it.