Think of Georgetown as Beaufort’s lesser-known cousin. Like Beaufort, it’s an hour away from Charleston, except to the north rather than to the south. Like Beaufort, it boasts a tidy historic downtown that can be walked from end to end in an afternoon. And like Beaufort, it was once a major center of Lowcountry plantation culture.

However, Georgetown gets significantly less attention and less traffic. Unlike Beaufort, no movies are shot here, and no rambling Southern memoirs were penned here. Certainly the fact that the entrance into town is dominated by the sprawling, ominous-looking Georgetown Steel mill on one side of the road and the massive, smelly International Paper plant on the other has something to do with it. Make no mistake, industry is a way of life here. An important seaport for most of its history, Georgetown today boasts South Carolina’s second busiest port next to Charleston itself.

But when you take a quick turn to the east and go down to the waterfront, you’ll see the charm of old Georgetown: bright, attractive, historical homes, cute shops and cafés, and the peaceful Sampit River flowing by.

There are several enjoyable and educational places a short ways north on U.S. 17. Chief among them are Hobcaw Barony—former playground of the rich turned environmental education center—and Hampton Plantation, a well-preserved look back into antebellum elegance and rice-culture history.

Indeed, that coastal stretch from Georgetown down to the Charleston suburb of Mt. Pleasant is an inexplicably underrated microcosm of the Lowcountry, one that’s easy to travel, relatively rustic, yet close enough to “civilization” so that you never really have to leave your comfort zone.

One particularly delightful aspect is the fact that the massive Francis Marion National Forest is your constant companion on the west side of U.S. 17—helping to keep at bay much of the egregious overdevelopment that is taking place elsewhere on the South Carolina coast. The forest also provides plenty of recreation opportunities.

Getting to Georgetown

Georgetown is at the extreme southern tip of the Grand Strand, accessible by U.S. 17 from the east and south and U.S. 521 (Highmarket Street in town) from the west. Very centrally located for a tour of the coast, it’s about an hour north of Charleston and slightly less than that from Myrtle Beach.

Though there’s no public transportation to speak of in Georgetown, its small size makes touring fairly simple. Metered parking is available downtown.