MYRTLE BEACH HISTORY

The Myrtle Beach area is rich in culture and tradition. Continual efforts are taken to preserve the past and commemorate it through landmarks, museums, and tales of bygone days.

• Kings Highway began as an Indian trail long before Europeans settled along the Grand Strand. Later, this trail became the route from the northern states to Charleston and Savannah.

• The area’s first inhabitants were the Waccamaw and Winyah Indians who named the region Chicora, meaning the land.

• Early attempts by European explorers to settle the Grand Strand were disastrous. Spaniard Lucas Vasques de Allyon founded the first colony in North America here in 1526, but the settlement was ravaged by disease, and the inhabitants perished within a year.

• During the 18th century, pirates found the waters off the Grand Strand a paradise for their wild revels. The infamous Blackbeard regularly terrorized the Carolina shores before his gory death in 1718. Captain Kidd himself is thought to have buried some loot near Murrells Inlet.

• English colonists formed Prince George Parish and laid out plans for Georgetown, the state’s third oldest city, in 1730. Surrounded by rivers and marshlands, Georgetown became the center of America’s colonial rice empire.

• Before the Civil War, plantation owners turned Pawleys Island into one of the first summer resorts on the Atlantic coast. Just a few miles north of Pawleys Island, Murrells Inlet is the source of the area’s most endearing ghost stories, including that of a young woman who died brokenhearted: Alice Belin Flagg (1833-1849).

• Until the 1900s, the beaches of Horry County were virtually uninhabited due to the county’s geographical inaccessibility and poor economy.

• Near the turn of the century, the Burroughs & Collins Company, a timber turpentine firm with extensive beachfront holdings, began developing the resort potential of the Strand. In 1901, their company built the beach’s first hotel, the Seaside Inn. At that time, oceanfront lots sold for $25, and buyers received an extra lot free if they built a house valued at $500 or more. The beach community was called New Town until the Horry Herald newspaper held a contest to officially name the area. Mrs. F.E. Burroughs, wife of the founder of Burroughs & Collins Company, won the competition with Myrtle Beach, a name she chose for the many wax myrtle trees growing wild along the shore.