Port Royal Beach, Hilton Head Island, SC

Location

Port Royal Plantation, Hilton Head Island’s north end

Access

Private — landowners, long-term tenants & guests

Facing

Atlantic Ocean & Port Royal Sound

Not

The town of Port Royal, SC, near Beaufort — a different place

Port Royal Beach is the ocean-facing shoreline inside Port Royal Plantation, a private, gated community wrapped around the northeastern tip of Hilton Head Island, where the Atlantic meets Port Royal Sound. It’s not a town beach park with a public lot the way Coligny or Folly Field are — the sand here is reached through the plantation around it, open to landowners, their long-term tenants and their guests.

If you searched “Port Royal Beach” looking for the town of Port Royal, South Carolina, near Beaufort — that’s a real, separate place about 20 miles from here, with its own public beach (Sands Beach) on Battery Creek. This page is about the beach on Hilton Head Island, inside Port Royal Plantation.

About Port Royal Beach, Hilton Head Plantation

Port Royal Plantation is Hilton Head’s only entirely residential oceanfront community — no hotels, no timeshares, and no rentals shorter than 180 days inside the gates. In exchange, it holds some of the quietest beachfront on the island: about a mile of it, where the open Atlantic meets the calmer water of Port Royal Sound. The association owns 21 beach paths that lead down from the community’s streets to the sand; only three have parking, at the Beach House, the Steam Gun and Fort Walker Park.

The Port Royal Beach House, Hilton Head Plantation

Rebuilt in a multi-million-dollar project the landowners approved and finished in January 2019, the Port Royal Beach House sits directly on the oceanfront, with a community room, a screened porch, a deck over the dunes, a boardwalk to the beach and beach lockers. Beside it are a large outdoor pool and a zero-entry children’s pool, both open year-round. It’s a gathering spot for landowners and their guests, not something outside visitors can book; more on the Port Royal Plantation guide.

Getting to Port Royal Beach, Hilton Head Plantation

There’s no public parking lot or day-use pass at Port Royal Plantation’s gate — access is limited to landowners, their long-term tenants and guests a landowner has asked a pass for. The beach itself is public land under South Carolina law from the water to the high-water mark, same as everywhere on the island, but reaching it without going through the gate means arriving by boat.

Golf Next to Port Royal Plantation

Port Royal Plantation is better known island-wide for its golf than its beach — Barony and Robber’s Row, the two courses at Port Royal Golf & Racquet Club, just outside the plantation gate, both sell public tee times, while the beach and the rest of the community stay landowner-and-guest-only.

A public beach alternative nearby

For an open-to-everyone beach near this end of the island, Fish Haul Beach Park also faces Port Royal Sound and has its own public parking lot. For the island’s full lineup of public beaches, start at the Hilton Head beaches guide.