Hunting Island State Park, South Carolina

“At the beach, life is different. Time doesn’t move hour to hour but mood to moment. We live by the currents, plan by the tides, and follow the sun.”

Anonymous

Hunting Island Lighthouse 2019

Some of the neat trees that were there back before hurricane Matthew.

More pictures from before Matthew

Joe and are heading to shore today (I believe my Jersey talk just showed up) and plan on many stops but I will separate our stops into different blog posts. We haven’t been to Hunting Island since before Hurricane Matthew came through and reeked havoc in October 2016. Sad to say that Matthew did over 5 million dollars worth of damage and killed 2,500 trees by the saltwater and with many falling during the storm. The dunes were swept away during this storm. This has always been our go to state park when we want to go to the beach. We have had many good times here. We have camped here a few times in early summer and so enjoyed the campground. The campground has 100 campsites and is a beautiful setting with the trees with Spanish Moss all around. There is a nice easy walk to the beach from there. The pristine sandy beaches are absolutely stunning with the natural setting of the trees covered in Spanish moss coming right up to the beach. We have spent time riding our bikes all through this semi tropical maritime forest and so enjoyed looking at the variety of plants and trees and marshy areas. It was just stunning. Well, that was before the hurricane and tropical storm Irma hit Hunting Island. When Irma hit the barrier island did not have any protection from the surge that came through since the dunes were gone. Over three feet of water poured onto some of the roads. Between both storms, the beaches got pretty eroded, the cabins for rent were destroyed, the fishing pier was damaged and is still not open for use because of repairs, two bathhouses were destroyed, many picnic tables are gone and they have lost lots of parking spaces.

Picture of the forest before hurricane Matthew 

Picture of the marshes  2019

Beach picture from 2019

Marshes from before Matthew

Beach 2019

During Colonial days they named this island “Hunting Island” because it was a great hunting area for the lowcountry planters and wealthy in the 19^th and early 20^th century. Hunting Island was developed into a state park in 1930 when the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) built bridges connecting the sea islands to Beaufort. Hunting Island is a wildlife paradise. Hunting Island State Park has 5,000 acres is part of the barrier islands just outside of Beaufort, South Carolina and is one of South Carolina’s most visited state parks.

Beautiful road 2019

Downed trees from beach 2019

Beach before hurricane Matthew

We drove up to the gate to pay our five dollar a person admission fee and drove in. They do have a senior rate and a child rate as well. The first thing we noticed coming in was all the trees that were down or missing. It was sad seeing the destruction. There was not as much Spanish moss hanging from the trees as there once was and it appeared a little bit more open and less dense than it used to be. But it was still beautiful. The visitor center was as it was with the lovely pond where Mr. Alligator (what my children used to call the alligator) lives. We always enjoyed a visit with him before hitting the beach. We drove around and saw how the roads were damaged from the flooding. We drove out towards South Beach and saw the construction crew working on the roads. It had been raining so we did notice the parking area was still somewhat flooded.

Lighthouse 2019 

Before Matthew 

Beautiful lighthouse before Matthew 

Then we drove towards the Hunting Island Lighthouse. On the way, we could see where the road had been washed away and saw more down trees. Mother Nature can be quite fierce when she wants to be. The beach is still lovely but we noticed the dunes are gone. Matthew took them out. We walked on the beach and looked for sharks teeth. Joe was able to find three. My score was zero. There are five lovely miles of beach to walk as well as beautiful nature trails.

Beach and lighthouse in 2019 

View from lighthouse before the hurricane

View from lighthouse prior to Matthew

View before Hurricane Matthew

Looking at the top of the lighthouse

The winding steps in the lighthouse

From where we were on the beach, we could see the beautiful Hunting Island lighthouse. The first lighthouse was built in 1859 but was destroyed by the Confederates during the Civil War to stop the Union soldiers from being able to navigate. The current lighthouse was rebuilt in 1875 the and is the only lighthouse in all of South Carolina that is open to the public. In 1889, the lighthouse was moved 1 ¼ miles from where it was originally because of erosion. It was deactivated in June 1933. The views after hiking 167 stairs to the top platform are incredible. It cost two dollars to climb to the top but I thought it was worth it. The lighthouse was not damaged during the storms.

The light

Steps in the lighthouse

An area of the beach prior to Matthew 

There are still areas on the beach were there are trees down that can be climbed as my children did many years ago.  The downed trees always made for great pictures. Hunting Island is still a great place to go but there is still much to do to get it back to where it was. They are working hard on this park and it is still a fantastic destination. I urge you to go and see this amazing park. The beach is amazing.