The beach reveals itself in layers: firm sand that holds your footprint for hours, then tidal pools warm as bathwater where fiddler crabs scatter at your approach. Beyond the high-tide line, the boneyard forest—a graveyard of live oaks and palmetto palms toppled by decades of erosion—creates a sculptural maze that shifts with every nor'easter. Families stake umbrellas near the boardwalk where the sand is softest; further south, the beach empties into long, uninterrupted stretches where shorebirds outnumber people.
“South Carolina's only public beach with a climbable lighthouse and a ghost forest that grows more dramatic each season.”
Credit: FlickrHunting Island Photography by Jim Crotty 4
The 5,000-acre state park wraps around the Atlantic side, buffered by tidal creeks thick with oyster beds and salt grass that glows amber in late afternoon. You can walk from the fishing pier to the lighthouse and back without ever leaving sand, passing rental cabins tucked into palmetto groves and a nature center that explains why this island keeps moving westward, pushed by wind and tide.
Come in October when the crowds thin and the water still hovers in the mid-seventies, or arrive at dawn any month to watch dolphins work the sandbars just beyond the breakers. The park gate opens at six, an hour before the beachcombers and the fishing guides and the toddlers wielding plastic shovels arrive to reshape the shoreline one bucket at a time.
