Piers on Hilton Head Island, SC

Ask about “the pier” on Hilton Head and you could mean two different places. Harbour Town Pier, tucked into the yacht basin at Sea Pines, is the island’s postcard pier — a covered walkway next to the Harbour Town Lighthouse, built for photos and boat-watching, not for casting a line. If you’re actually looking to fish from a pier, the real answer is the Charles C. Haigh Jr. Fishing Pier, a free, year-round public spot on the north end near Pinckney Island.

A third site, Hilton Head Island Fishing Cooperative Park, doesn’t have a pier of its own but is worth knowing about too — it honors the island’s historic fishing cooperative and sits on Squire Pope Road, on the same end of the island as the Haigh Jr. pier.

• Landmark pier: Harbour Town Pier, inside Sea Pines — scenic, not for fishing
• Fishing pier: Charles C. Haigh Jr. Fishing Pier — free, year-round, Highway 278 near Pinckney Island
• Also worth knowing: Hilton Head Island Fishing Cooperative Park, 133 Squire Pope Road

Harbour Town Pier, Sea Pines

Harbour Town Pier (also spelled Harbor Town Pier) sits inside The Sea Pines Resort’s Harbour Town, the marina and shopping village at the island’s southern tip, right next to the Harbour Town Lighthouse. It’s a covered pier looking out over the yacht basin and Calibogue Sound, where sailboats and yachts come and go and dolphins are a regular sight — one of the most-photographed spots on Hilton Head, and stroller- and wheelchair-friendly to reach. Shops, restaurants, and charter-boat operators line the marina around it, but the pier itself isn’t set up for fishing.

Day visitors arriving by car pay Sea Pines’ standard gate fee ($10 as of March 1, 2026) at the Greenwood Drive or Ocean Gate entrance; property owners, resort guests, and rental reservations are exempt. See Sea Pines for the rest of the resort, South Beach, its marina neighborhood at the opposite end, and Harbour Town Golf Links, the course that shares the same lighthouse view.

Does Hilton Head Have a Fishing Pier? The Charles C. Haigh Jr. Fishing Pier

Yes — the Charles C. Haigh Jr. Fishing Pier, also known as the C.C. Haigh Jr. Boat Landing, is a free, year-round public saltwater fishing pier at 2 William Hilton Parkway (Highway 278), on McKay Creek and the Intracoastal Waterway near Pinckney Island. Beaufort County Public Works maintains it, there’s no admission or parking fee, and anglers fish it for redfish, whiting, small sharks, and blue crab.

It’s the pier to know about if Harbour Town’s marina view isn’t what you’re after — a working fishing spot rather than a landmark, with its own boat ramp alongside the pier itself. It sits at the edge of Pinckney Island, the wildlife refuge just across the causeway from Hilton Head.

Hilton Head Island Fishing Cooperative Park

On Squire Pope Road near Beach City Road, Hilton Head Island Fishing Cooperative Park honors the Hilton Head Fishing Cooperative, founded in 1966 by Black fishermen from the island’s Gullah communities and active until 1978 at this same site on Skull Creek. Today’s park doesn’t have a fishing pier of its own — it’s built around rowing and sailing on the surrounding waterways — but it’s worth knowing about for the history it preserves, especially if the name turned up while you were researching Hilton Head’s piers. For the rest of the island’s coastline, see the Hilton Head beaches guide.