The Grand Strand was once the happy hunting and shellfish-gathering grounds of the Waccamaw Indian people, whose legacy is still felt today in the name of the dominant river in the region and the Strand’s main drag itself, Kings Highway, which is actually built on an old tribal trail.

The southern portion of the Strand, Georgetown and Pawleys Island in particular, rapidly became host to a number of rice plantations soon after the area was colonized. However, the area now known as Myrtle Beach didn’t share in the wealth since its soil and topography weren’t conducive to the plantation system. Indeed, the northern portion of the Grand Strand was largely uninhabited during colonial times, and hurricane damage prevented much development throughout the first half of the 19th century.

That changed after the Civil War with the boom of nearby Conway to the west, now the seat of Horry County (pronounced “OR-ee”). As Conway’s lumber and export economy grew, a railroad spur was built to bring in lumber from the coast, much of which was owned by a single firm, the Conway Lumber Company. Lumber company employees began using the rail lines to take vacation time on the Strand, in effect becoming the first of millions of tourists to the area. At this time it was simply called “New Town,” in contrast to Conway’s “Old Town.”

In the second half of the 19th century, Civil War veteran Franklin G. Burroughs of the Burroughs and Collins Company, which supplied lumber and turpentine to Conway business interests, sought to expand the tourism profitability of the coastal area. Though he died in 1897, his heirs continued his dream, inaugurated by the opening of the Seaside Inn in 1901. The first bona fide resort came in the 1920s with the building of the Arcady resort, which included the first golf course in the area.

In 1938 Burroughs’s widow Adeline, known locally as “Miss Addie,” was credited with giving the town its modern name, after the locally abundant wax myrtle shrub. During this time locals on the Strand originated the shagging subculture, built around the dance of the same name and celebrated at numerous pavilions and “beach clubs.” The building of Myrtle Beach Air Force Base in 1940—now closed—brought further growth and jobs to the area.

Tourism, especially, grew apace here until Hurricane Hazel virtually wiped the slate clean in 1954. In typical Carolinian fashion, residents and landowners made lemonade out of lemons, using the hurricane’s devastation as an excuse to build even bigger resort developments, including a plethora of golf courses.

Since then, the Strand has grown to encompass about a quarter-million permanent residents, with about ten million tourists on top of that each year. A huge influx of money in the 1990s led to a higher-dollar form of development on the coast leading to the sad demolition of many of the old beach pavilions in favor of new attractions and massive condo high-rises.