Pawleys Island, Murrells Inlet, and the rest of the so-called “Waccamaw Neck” comprise the lower portion of the Grand Strand. While a certain amount of Myrtle Beach-style development is encroaching southward, this area is still far away in spirit and generally much more relaxed.

Tiny Pawleys Island—year-round population about 200—likes to call itself “America’s first resort” because of its early role in the late 1700s as a place for planters to go with their families to escape the mosquito-infested rice and cotton fields. (George Washington himself visited in 1791.) It’s still a vacation getaway, and still has a certain elite understatement, an attitude the locals call “arrogantly shabby.”

Beach access is correspondingly more difficult than further up the Strand near Myrtle Beach. While you can visit casually, most people who enjoy the famous Pawleys Island beaches do so from one of the many vacation rental properties there.

Shabby arrogance does have its upside, however—there is a ban on further commercial development in the community, allowing Pawleys to remain slow and peaceful indefinitely. The maximum speed limit throughout town is a suitably lazy 25 miles per hour.

For generations Pawleys was famous for its cypress cottages, many on stilts. Sadly, Hurricane Hugo in 1989 destroyed a great many of these iconic structures—27 out of 29 on the south end alone, most of which have been replaced by far less aesthetically pleasing homes.

Directly adjacent to Pawleys, Litchfield Beach offers similar low-key enjoyment along with a world-class golf resort.

While several key attractions in the Grand Strand are technically in Murrells Inlet, that’s more for post office convenience than anything else. Murrells Inlet itself is chiefly known for a single block of seafood restaurants on its eponymous waterway.