South Carolina Tourism Guide: Charleston Hotels, Myrtle Beach Lodging

South Carolina Tourism Information, Hotels and Travel Guide. Charleston, Myrtle Beach and More.

The relatively small state of SOUTH CAROLINA remains, with Mississippi, one of the poorest and most rural regions of America, although the prime real estate along its coast has lately been developed into exclusive golf courses and tennis clubs. Politics in the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 have traditionally been conservative. Reconstruction was mired in terrible Klan violence, while demagogues openly espoused lynching and enforced "Jim Crow" laws with frightening zeal. The state contains two of the country's most right-wing minor universities football fanatical Clemson, and Christian Bob Jones University in Greenville, a training ground for the fundamentalist right.

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South Carolina offers a fascinating sub tropical coastline of sea islands, great beaches, marshes and lush palmetto groves preserves traces of a virtually independent black culture featuring the unique patois gullah, from the days when slaves escaped the mainland plantations. Beyond the grand old peninsular port of Charleston South Carolina, arguably the most elegant city in America with its rainbow colored old buildings and magnificent, tree lined avenues, restored plantations stretch as far north as Georgetown , en route toward the poseurs paradise of Myrtle Beach. Inland, the rolling Piedmont and flat coastal plain hold little to see.

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Charleston Tourism
CHARLESTON South Carolina is one of the finest looking cities in America, today spreads way beyond its original boundaries on the tip of a peninsula at the confluence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers, roughly one hundred miles south of Myrtle Beach South Carolina and north of Savannah Georgia. Charleston is a compelling place to visit, its historic district lined with tall, narrow houses of peeling, multicolored stucco, adorned with wooden shutters and ironwork balconies wrought by slaves from Barbados. The Caribbean feel is augmented by palm trees, a tropical climate and laidback atmosphere, while the town's pretty hidden gardens and leafy patios evoke New Orleans.

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Founded in 1670 by a group of English aristocrats as a specifically money making venture, Charles Towne swiftly boomed as a port serving the rice and cotton plantations. It became the region's dominant town, a commercial and cultural center which right from the start had a mixed population, with immigrants including French, Germans, Jews, Italians and Irish, as well as the English majority. One third of all the nation's slaves came through Charleston, sold at the market on the riverfront and bringing with them their ironworking and building skills. The town had a sizeable free black community too, and its then unusually urban density allowed an anonymity and racial openness that, although still dominated by slavery, went a lot further than in the rest of the South. Nevertheless there was still slave unrest, culminating in the abortive Veysey slave revolt of 1823, after which the city built the Citadel armory and later the military university to control future uprisings.

The Civil War started on the very doorstep of Charleston South Carolina, at Fort Sumter in the harbor. Fire swept through Charleston, destroying large areas of the City, in 1861 more damage was inflicted when it was taken by Union troops in February 1865. The decline of the plantation economy and slump in cotton prices led to an economic crash after the war, made worse by a terrible earthquake in 1886. As the upcountry industrialized, capital steadily deserted the city, and it only really recovered when World War II restored its importance as a port and naval base. Since then, a steady program of preservation and restoration, not helped by the devastation of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, has made tourism Charleston's main focus. Despite the crowds, however, it has kept its atmosphere, while maintaining all the energy and life of a real, working town. The gullah traditions of the sea islands are a tangible presence here, too: basket ladies weave their sweetgrass baskets all around the market and near the post office, and many people, black and white, speak the distinctive gullah dialect.

Myrtle Beach South Carolina Tourism
MYRTLE BEACH is a shameless splurge of seaside fun, an unmitigated stretch of commercial development 20 miles down the coast from the North Carolina border at the center of the sixty mile Grand Strand. Predominantly a family resort, its packed fit to burst during mid term vacations with fun loving students in fashionable beachwear. Fans of world class golf, water parks, factory outlet stores, funfairs and parasailing will be in heaven, and the beach itself isn't bad. The widest stretch is at North Myrtle Beach, a chain of small communities among which Ocean Drive is the center and Atlantic Beach is used exclusively by African Americans.

South of Myrtle Beach South Carolina lie Murells Inlet, a fishing port with lots of great seafood restaurants, and Pawleys Island, a secluded resort previously favored by plantation owners and today retaining a far slower pace than its neighbors. Between the two on Highway 17 is the beautifully landscaped Brookgreen Gardens summer daily 9.30am-9.30pm rest of the year 9.30am-5pm; $8.50: tel 1-800 849-1931, a former rice and indigo plantation with an outdoor display of American figurative sculpture, and the background for many of Julia Peterkins novels of gullah life. There is also a wildlife sanctuary, where you are likely to spot alligator, deer, and an hour and a half boat tour around the region.

South Carolina Tourism: Myrtle Beach Hotels, Charleston SC Hotels and Top Travel Destinations Throughout the State.
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