Myrtle Beach is a very popular tourist destination. Home to a busy international airport serviced by 35 different airlines on 191 different routes its easy to get to. With 86 golf courses and over 60 miles of beaches along the Grand Stand it draws over 20 million visitors per year. For the purposes of this post I’ll confine myself Civil War trips of about an hour or less in each direction to sites shown within the confines of the map below.

Civil War Sites Within the City

The Myrtle Beach Classic Golf Tournament and the Singleton Swash Saltworks. Tournament occurs in May yearly see website for details.

Conway and the Horry County Museum

Murrell’s Inlet- Brookgreen Gardens and the Laurel Hill Battery (link). Access to the Laurel Hill portion of the property is restricted to a tour called the Laurel Hill and Springfield Excursion (link), which operates from March to November. There is an admission fee for the gardens and the tour. Pets are not allowed on the property. The ride is rough, sit on the left site looking forward, and they don’t allow anyone off the bus at any point on the tour.

Georgetown- Battery White see details on their website about visiting (link), the city itself, the Georgetown County Museum, the SC Maritime Museum, Cat Island Fort. The Cat Island Fort is at the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center and is a hidden gem. During the winter the Center offers a free tour called- A Walk Through History, the schedule is usually released on their Facebook page in November. There was a lot of walking involved on the tour. The day I visited there were a lot of mosquitos. The exterior wall of the fort can be viewed from the bay side on commercial boat tours of North Island (link). The Wreck of the USS Harvest Moon (link) can also be seen on the tour.

Ocean Isle, NC- The Museum of Coastal Carolina (link)

Holden Beach, NC- the Wreck of the Bendigo. I visited at low tide.