Port Royal Plantation- this is a restricted gated community with very limited access. I accessed it on a history tour during the pandemic when the participants drove in a car caravan following a docent. The tour was by the Coastal Discovery Museum (link). The tour covered the Port Royal Plantation- many of those pictures are shown is a previous post on the Battle of Port Royal Sound. Since then the museum has outsourced the tour to a private group called Hilton Head History Tours which uses a minibus. The museum site says they go to five places but doesn’t mention what they are. I will attempt to find out and list them here. The museum staff member who answered my call did not know.

Fort Sherman- Named for the other Sherman, the first Union army commander on the island, General Thomas W. Sherman, the fort was completed in 1862. this large earthen fort was designed to defend the Union base on Hilton Head against Confederate land attack. Its earthworks enclose a 14-acre area. With other fortications Fort Sherman formed part of a defensive line 5-miles long across the north end of the island. The LiDAR images below show better how extensive it is. When I visited here I didn’t know how to use LiDAR. I will try and return at a future date now that I know how extensive the earthworks are.

The pictures below are from the interior of the fort. I did not know at the time that there were extensive earthworks shown on LiDAR in the woods. LiDAR has allowed me to map the GPS coordinates of earthworks surrounded by vegetation making my trips in the last couple of years much more productive.

Fish Hall Plantation- this area is surrounded by a fence which makes it difficult to obtain good pictures. The Fish Hall Plantation was owned by Confederate General Thomas Drayton through his wife Catherine Pope who had inherited it. He was in command of Fort Walker when it fell to Union forces during the Battle of Port Royal. Thomas’ younger brother Percival commanded the Federal gunboat Pocahontas which was part of the Union naval force attacking Fort Walker in a battle that truly pitted brother against brother.