Hunting Island

Hunting Island got its name literally — it was the sea island where the Beaufort planters went to hunt. In 1858 a syndicate of local men bought two thousand acres at the south end as a private hunting preserve; they came by boat with horses, dogs, and tents, and spent weeks in the maritime forest after deer and waterfowl. The name was accurate before it was poetic.

The lighthouse is the island's stubborn landmark. The first, built in 1859, was blown up by retreating Confederates to keep it from Union hands. Its replacement, lit in 1875, was built of cast-iron sections specifically so it could be dismantled — and it needed to be. Beach erosion forced the whole tower to be moved a mile and a third inland in 1889, reassembled piece by piece. It's the only lighthouse in South Carolina the public can still climb — a hundred and sixty-seven steps to a view over an island that has been eroding since before the light was lit.

The CCC built the park in the 1930s on land Beaufort County donated in 1938, and Hunting Island became the most-visited state park in South Carolina — over a million people a year on five miles of beach the hunting preserve kept wild. The island is still losing ground to the sea; the lighthouse has already been moved once, and the park's museum is largely a chronicle of erosion.