Hilton Head Plantation Guide

Hilton Head Plantation has two gates, the Main Gate and the Cypress Gate (both on our Hilton Head Plantation map), and the roads inside are private. The association counts about 12,000 vehicles through the gates on a typical day. Every car needs a resident’s decal or a pass, security runs random driver’s license checks at the gates, and people on foot are let in only if they are residents or their guests. The security officers are licensed by SLED, the State Law Enforcement Division, and can make arrests and write state citations much as a sheriff’s deputy can.

Guests get in on a resident’s say-so. Your host orders a pass online, calls one in, or gives security a list of guests by name; the gate won’t accept an instruction to let everyone in. Passes ordered online last up to 10 days and passes phoned in to (843) 342-9980 up to 60, though security can limit a pass to a single day. Cars with a Sea Pines property owner’s decal are normally admitted, and Hilton Head Plantation owners’ decals work at the Sea Pines gates in return.

Without a host, the gate issues a one-day pass to a few destinations while they are open, including the four golf clubs, Fort Mitchel and the association’s own buildings. It covers the drive to that one place and back, not a look around. Golf carts aren’t allowed on the leisure paths, and on the roads only with the association board’s permission.

Most people who drive in without a host are going to play golf, to eat or to see Fort Mitchel. Three of the four courses, Oyster Reef, Bear Creek and Dolphin Head, sell public tee times, and our Hilton Head Plantation golf page compares them. The fourth, Country Club of Hilton Head, is for members and their guests. LagerHead Tavern, in the Oyster Reef clubhouse, is open to everyone.

Fort Mitchel, at 65 Skull Creek Drive, is the earthwork of a Union artillery battery built in 1862 to guard the way from Port Royal Sound up Skull Creek, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places. The Heritage Library owns the site and runs guided tours with costumed interpreters on Thursday mornings, for $10; book ahead. The gate pass for Fort Mitchel is free and good for the fort only.

Dolphin Head Park, on the bluff over Port Royal Sound, is the community’s own park, for residents and their guests rather than day visitors. Dolphin Head Golf Club is a separate place with the same name.

There is one restaurant inside the gate that anyone can go to: LagerHead Tavern, in the Oyster Reef Golf Club clubhouse at 155 High Bluff Road. It serves southern comfort food, has a covered patio over the course and takes bookings online, and a lot of the regulars live in the plantation. Tell the gate you are going to LagerHead and you will be given a pass. For everywhere else, see our Hilton Head restaurants list.

The association’s amenities are for property owners and their families, tenants on leases of nine months or more, and their guests. Residents carry the association’s photo ID, and each household gets two house guest cards for visitors. Tenants on shorter leases can use them only with the owner along.

The beach here is on Port Royal Sound, not the ocean. Pine Island, the community’s private beach, is at the end of the boardwalk from the Dolphin Head Recreation Area, and residents show their photo ID to use it. At low tide a sandbar joins Pine Island to Ribaut Island across the Salt Marsh Conservancy, a state-owned estuary where boats keep to no wake.

The sand below the high-tide line is public, as it is everywhere in South Carolina (our Hilton Head beach access guide explains the rule), but the only way to it by land is through the gate, and a golf or Fort Mitchel pass doesn’t cover it. For the same calm, marshy sound without a pass, Fish Haul Beach Park is open to everyone. For the ocean, Folly Field Beach Park and the rest of the island’s beach parks are in our Hilton Head beaches guide.

Most homes in Hilton Head Plantation can’t be rented short-term. The association’s Rules and Regulations, recorded with Beaufort County in January 2025, prohibit owners from short-term leasing. A home can be leased only as a whole, never by the room, and every lease must run at least six months unless the association’s board approves otherwise in writing. Leases have to be in writing, with a copy to the association, and calling a short stay a roommate or home-share arrangement is prohibited. Tenants on leases under nine months don’t get the association’s photo ID or vehicle decals, and for leases under six months the owner calls in the tenants’ gate passes. Some homes are grandfathered under older rules; if you are buying one and counting on that, ask the association how the exception applies to that home before you close.

So Hilton Head Plantation vacation rentals are the exception, not the rule. If you are buying here, plan on long-term tenants, not holiday income; our Hilton Head Plantation homes for sale page covers what that means for a buyer. If you want to stay nearby, most of the island’s vacation rentals are in Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Shipyard, Shelter Cove and around Folly Field, and our Hilton Head vacation rentals guide covers the companies that rent them.

About 4,300 homes sit inside the gate, most of them lived in all year, and the community has had its own monthly newsletter, Plantation Living, since 1976. The property owners’ association runs the gates, roads, paths and amenities from its service center at 7 Surrey Lane, open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ((843) 681-8800), and it says its annual assessment is the lowest of any community on the island. Its rules, covenants and design guidelines are on its member platform, which the association’s website links to.

It is a big place, with about 72 miles of roads, and from a home deep inside it can take a quarter of an hour to reach US 278. The Cypress, a retirement community, is inside the gate too, near the Cypress Gate. If you are buying, our Hilton Head real estate guide covers the whole island, and the Hilton Head neighborhoods guide compares Hilton Head Plantation with the other communities.