Myrtle Beach historical timeline

The Grand Strand was economically marginal for two centuries and then became one of the busiest resorts in the United States.

Before the resort

The Waccamaw people lived along the river. Colonial settlement concentrated south of here on the rice plantations of the Waccamaw and Santee deltas, which by the early nineteenth century produced an enormous share of American rice using the labour of enslaved Africans whose West African expertise in tidal rice cultivation made the system possible. The sandy coast itself was too poor to farm and was left to fishing and timber.

The resort begins

The Burroughs and Collins company, a Conway timber and turpentine business, built a rail line to the coast and opened a seaside hotel in 1901. A competition named the place after the wax myrtle growing in the dunes. Growth was slow until the road and the car arrived.

Mid-century

The Ocean Forest Hotel of 1930 announced the town’s ambitions; the air force base opened during the war and closed in 1993; and from the 1950s beach music and the shag made the northern end a destination for young people from across the Carolinas.

Modern growth

Golf from the 1970s extended the season, and high-rise condominium building from the 1980s transformed the skyline. The population of the county has grown several times over since 1980.

The Pavilion

The Myrtle Beach Pavilion and its amusement park stood on the oceanfront from the 1940s until 2006, with a Herschell-Spillman carousel and a German band organ, and was the centre of the resort’s social life for two generations. Its closure and demolition was a genuine local grief, and the carousel and organ were preserved and put back on display nearby.

Storms

Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hazel in 1954 both reshaped the coast.