Daufuskie Island, South Carolina

Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, is the last inhabited sea island before Georgia: Hilton Head is across Calibogue Sound to the north and east, Savannah lies to the southwest across the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Atlantic washes its beaches. It is about five miles long and two and a half wide, roughly eight square miles, and belongs to Beaufort County, the same county as Hilton Head and Bluffton.

Daufuskie has never had a bridge, and that one fact explains most of the rest: 557 people lived here at the 2020 census, there are no traffic lights, and many of the roads are unpaved. The name is usually traced to a Muscogee word meaning “sharp feather”, after the island’s shape. From our side of the water, Daufuskie Island and Hilton Head are neighbors, and nearly every boat to the island leaves from Hilton Head.

Everything comes and goes by boat. The county’s public ferry runs four round trips a day from the C.C. Haigh Jr. Boat Landing, on Pinckney Island just before the last bridge onto Hilton Head, to Melrose Landing. Day-trip boats leave Harbour Town and Broad Creek Marina for Freeport Marina, a water taxi runs from Harbour Town on request, and Haig Point runs a private ferry for its members and their guests. The Daufuskie Island ferry page has the timetable, fares, parking and luggage rules for each.

You cannot bring a rental car across, so visitors get around by golf cart, bike or on foot. Carts are the island’s taxis: reserve one before you go, especially in summer, and most of the boat operators and island rental companies will have it waiting at the dock. Bikes are good on the inland roads. Some of the island’s roads are private, inside Haig Point and Melrose, and the gates mean it. Our Daufuskie Island golf cart rentals page compares the island’s cart companies, and if you would rather be driven, the Daufuskie Island tours from Hilton Head include the boat, the carts and a guide. Our Daufuskie Island map shows where each boat lands, the main roads and the sights, and prints on one page.

Daufuskie has a handful of places to eat, and their hours move with the seasons, so call ahead. The Old Daufuskie Crab Company, on the dock at Freeport Marina, is the one most day-trippers come for, with its deviled crab and a strong tea cocktail called the Scrap Iron, and live music on afternoons from April to October. The Daufuskie Island Distillery makes rum and vodka and runs tastings. At Melrose, on the Atlantic side, is The Sportsman, a family pub, and in between are a breakfast diner, a coffee house, barbecue and ice cream. Our Daufuskie Island restaurants page has every one of them.

The island has more than three miles of beach, most of it empty on a weekday, and the Atlantic side is good for shelling and watching for dolphins; our things to do on Daufuskie Island page has the beaches, the trail rides and a plan for the day. Inland, the roads run under live oaks past small studios: at Iron Fish, Chase Allen cuts fish and mermaids from sheet steel, and Daufuskie Blues dyes cloth by hand in natural indigo. There are two lighthouses, Haig Point’s (1873) on the north end and the Bloody Point Lighthouse (1883) on the south, and a general store at Freeport Marina for snacks and supplies (see Daufuskie Island shopping). For the day-trip version from Hilton Head, see our things to do in Hilton Head guide too.

People lived on Daufuskie long before Europeans arrived, and the island’s south end is still called Bloody Point after battles fought there in the Yamasee War between 1715 and 1717. By the Civil War there were eleven plantations, worked by enslaved West Africans, and Union troops held the island during the war. The families who stayed after emancipation are the root of Daufuskie’s Gullah-Geechee community, and because the island was so hard to reach, its language, food and faith held on here after they had faded in easier places.

From the 1880s the island ran on oysters: by 1900 two to three thousand people lived here, many of them working the beds and the cannery L.P. Maggioni’s company ran at the public dock from 1883 to 1903. Pollution closed the oyster beds in the 1950s and the population fell. Electricity came in 1953 and telephones in 1972. In the late 1960s a young teacher named Pat Conroy taught the children at the Mary Field School, and his book about that year, The Water Is Wide, calls the island Yamacraw. First Union African Baptist Church still stands, and the island’s historic district has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982. Our Daufuskie Island history page has the whole story and the sites to visit.

Three golf courses were built on Daufuskie and one is open: the Rees Jones Signature Course at Haig Point, a private club that takes a limited number of guests and is reached by its own ferry. Bloody Point’s course has closed for good, and Melrose’s Jack Nicklaus course has been shut for years; a reopening in phases is planned, but it is still closed. Our Daufuskie Island golf page has what happened to each and how a visitor plays Haig Point.

Daufuskie has no big hotel, so most visitors come for the day and sleep on Hilton Head. If you want to stay the night, the island has rental cottages and homes, from the small painted cottages at Freeport Marina to houses on the beach at Melrose; our Daufuskie Island rentals page covers each kind of stay. Homes and lots come up for sale all over the island, and owning one means planning around the ferry for everything from groceries to building materials: see Daufuskie Island real estate. For a place on our side of the water, start with our Hilton Head vacation rentals guide.

Haig Point, Daufuskie Island’s private, member-owned community on the north end, has its own ferry, the golf course, an equestrian center, a beach club and the 1873 lighthouse. Its roads and amenities are for members and their guests; you get in by invitation, a stay or a round of golf. Melrose, facing Hilton Head across the sound, was home to the island’s resort; today it has homes, The Sportsman, a beach club and Melrose Landing, where the public ferry docks. Bloody Point, on the southern tip, was built around a golf course whose land is being turned into parks and trails. Between them are the island’s historic district, the old Gullah settlements and Freeport.

Daufuskie Island weather is Hilton Head’s: hot, humid summers with afternoon storms, mild winters, and the best days in spring and fall. Our Hilton Head weather guide has the month by month. Wind and storms can change the boat schedules, so check your ferry the morning you travel.

Bring what you need for the day: sunscreen, bug spray for the marsh side and water. The general store at Freeport sells snacks and basics, but there is no supermarket on the island, and the last boat back sets the end of your day.