Charleston gets all the credit but this South Carolina island town has the same old streets

Charleston’s little sister doesn’t need the crowds

Beaufort sits on Port Royal Island in the heart of South Carolina’s Sea Islands, about 70 miles south of Charleston and 45 miles north of Savannah.

Chartered in 1711 and named for Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort, it holds the title of the state’s second-oldest city.

You get the same Lowcountry setting, the same mild climate, and a walkable downtown, but without the big crowds or high prices.

Southern Living put it at number 8 on its 2026 list of the South’s Best Small Towns, and the entire downtown carries a historic district designation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Cotton wealth and cannonballs shaped this town

European explorers reached these Sea Islands as early as the 1520s, and the French, Spanish and British spent two centuries fighting over them.

Before the Civil War, Sea Island cotton and Carolina Gold rice turned Beaufort into one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Some called it the “Newport of the South.”

Union forces captured the city in November 1861, making it one of the first communities in the Deep South under federal control.

That occupation set the stage for the Port Royal Experiment, an early effort to help formerly enslaved people build self-sufficient lives through education and land ownership.

Robert Smalls sailed a stolen ship to freedom

One of Beaufort’s most important figures is Robert Smalls, born enslaved here in 1839.

In 1862, he commandeered a Confederate ship out of Charleston Harbor and delivered it to the Union Navy, winning freedom for himself, his crew and their families in one daring run. Smalls later served five terms in the U.S. Congress.

His story tracks closely with the city’s arc, from the wealth built on enslaved labor to the fight for freedom that reshaped the whole region.

Centuries-old oaks line every downtown block

Live oaks hundreds of years old shade the downtown streets, their branches heavy with Spanish moss. Beneath them, rows of antebellum homes sit in Federal, Greek Revival and Neoclassical styles.

Close to 70 sites here hold a place on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Point neighborhood has some of the finest houses, and you can walk those quiet streets to see them from the sidewalk.

On Bay Street, the John Mark Verdier House dates to the 1790s and is the only historic home in Beaufort open to the public year-round.

The waterfront park runs the length of the river

Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park stretches along the Beaufort River and acts as the social center of town.

A paved promenade follows the seawall past swinging benches, gardens, a playground, a marina and an amphitheater. The park carries the name of a longtime mayor who pushed to replace old docks with public green space.

It opened in 1979, got a renovation in the early 2000s, and now hosts events throughout the year. The Taste of Beaufort food festival fills it in May, and the Beaufort Shrimp Festival takes over in October.

Hunting Island draws a million visitors a year

Hunting Island State Park sits about 16 miles east of downtown and pulls in over a million visitors annually, making it the most visited state park in South Carolina.

The park covers 5,000 acres of maritime forest, salt marsh and coastline, with five miles of natural beach. At the southern end, a driftwood-strewn boneyard beach ranks among the most photographed spots on the coast.

The historic lighthouse, first built in 1859, destroyed in the Civil War, rebuilt in 1875 and moved 1.3 miles inland in 1889, stands 132 feet tall with 167 steps.

It is closed for restoration in 2026, but the park, beaches, trails and nature center stay open.

Gullah heritage runs deep in the Sea Islands

The Gullah people have preserved more of their West African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other African American community in the country.

Their traditions include sweetgrass basket weaving, storytelling, a creole language rich with African influences, and a food culture that shaped the entire Lowcountry.

Beaufort and the surrounding Sea Islands sit at the center of the federally designated Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which runs from North Carolina to Florida.

The Original Gullah Festival takes over Waterfront Park each Memorial Day weekend, scheduled for May 22 through 24 in 2026.

Penn Center started as a school for the enslaved

On nearby St. Helena Island, Penn Center opened in 1862 as one of the first schools in the South for formerly enslaved people. Quaker and Unitarian missionaries from Pennsylvania founded it and named it for William Penn.

The 50-acre campus became a National Historic Landmark in 1974, and you can walk the grounds on a self-guided tour past historic buildings and the York W. Bailey Museum.

In the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held retreats here because it was one of the few places in the segregated South where interracial groups could gather.

UNESCO added Penn Center to its Network of Places of History and Memory in 2024.

The first national park for the Reconstruction era

Beaufort County is home to the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, the first national park site dedicated entirely to the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.

It started as a national monument in January 2017 and became a full national historical park in 2019. The park includes sites in Beaufort, St. Helena Island and Port Royal.

Park rangers lead walking tours from the visitor center in the Old Beaufort Firehouse at 706 Craven Street.

At Camp Saxton in nearby Port Royal, about 3,000 formerly enslaved people heard the Emancipation Proclamation read publicly for the first time in the South on Jan. 1, 1863.

Pedal 10 miles on a former railroad line

The Spanish Moss Trail follows a former railroad corridor for 10 miles through northern Beaufort County.

The paved path runs 12 feet wide, passing through neighborhoods shaded by live oaks, over trestles with marsh views, and past historic landmarks.

A completed connector now links the Depot Road Trailhead directly to downtown Beaufort and Bay Street, so you can ride straight from the trail into the heart of the city.

The trail is also part of the developing 3,000-mile East Coast Greenway, a network of paths running from Maine to Florida.

A quarter of the East Coast’s salt marsh is here

Beaufort County holds nearly a quarter of all the salt marshland on the entire East Coast. Guided kayak tours take you through winding tidal creeks where dolphins surface alongside herons and egrets.

The ACE Basin, one of the largest undeveloped estuaries on the Atlantic Coast, is reachable from the Beaufort area and gives you miles of open waterways to paddle.

Port Royal Sound, the second-deepest natural harbor on the East Coast, has drawn explorers and settlers for more than 500 years, and the water still looks the way they found it.

Frogmore Stew has no frogs in it

The signature Lowcountry dish goes by Frogmore Stew, and no, there are no frogs. The name comes from the small community of Frogmore on nearby St. Helena Island.

You get a one-pot meal of shrimp, smoked sausage, corn on the cob and potatoes, served on newspaper-covered tables.

Gullah cuisine runs through the local food culture too, with staples like shrimp and grits, red rice, okra soup and hoppin’ john rooted in West African cooking traditions.

The 32nd Annual Beaufort Shrimp Festival hits Waterfront Park on Oct. 2 through 3, 2026.

A half-circle cemetery holds 9,000 Union soldiers

Beaufort National Cemetery dates to 1863, established under authorization from President Abraham Lincoln.

The burial sections fan out from the entrance in a half-circle, like the spokes of a wheel, surrounded by a brick wall built around 1876.

More than 9,000 Union soldiers rest here, including about 1,700 African American troops and roughly 117 Confederate soldiers in a separate section.

In 1989, the remains of 19 soldiers from the all-Black Massachusetts 55th Volunteer Infantry, found on Folly Island, were reinterred here with full military honors.

The Beaufort History Museum sits nearby in the 1798 Arsenal building and runs guided tours through 500 years of local history.

Explore Beaufort’s Lowcountry history on foot

You can start at the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park visitor center at 706 Craven Street in the Old Beaufort Firehouse, where park rangers will point you in the right direction.

Downtown is compact, and most attractions, shops and waterfront access sit within a few blocks.

Hunting Island State Park is about a 30-minute drive east on U.S. Highway 21, and Penn Center on St. Helena Island is about 20 minutes southeast.

The Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport puts you about an hour away by car.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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