The Lowcountry of South Carolina

The name is literal. The Lowcountry is South Carolina’s coastal plain, where the land sits at or near sea level and rarely climbs above 30 feet. Rivers slow into tidal creeks, salt marsh spreads for miles, and the coast breaks into sea islands. Inland, above the fall line, is the Upstate; in between is the Midlands.

The word also means a way of life: shrimp boats and oyster roasts, Spanish moss on live oaks, Gullah Geechee culture, and towns built around the water and the tides.

Officially, the Lowcountry is four counties at the southern tip of the state: Beaufort, Jasper, Colleton and Hampton, the area the state’s tourism region and the Lowcountry Council of Governments use. Hilton Head, Bluffton, Beaufort, Port Royal and Daufuskie Island are all in Beaufort County.

In everyday use the name stretches further: up the coast to Charleston and the islands around it, and across the Savannah River to the Georgia coast. Ask locals where it ends and you will get different answers.

The marsh is the Lowcountry’s signature: miles of spartina grass, green in summer and gold in winter, flooded and drained twice a day by tides of six feet or more. At low tide the creeks show their banks of pluff mud, the soft, sulfur-smelling mud locals love, and the oyster beds that filter the water. It is a nursery for shrimp, crabs and fish, and a feeding ground for herons, egrets and dolphins.

To see it close up, try a kayak tour, a walk at Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge or a drive out to Hunting Island State Park.

The Gullah Geechee people are descendants of West Africans enslaved on the rice, indigo and cotton plantations of the Sea Islands. Isolated on the islands, they kept a language, crafts, food and faith of their own, and their communities are still here, on Hilton Head, St. Helena and Daufuskie. See Gullah Geechee culture on Hilton Head.

Lowcountry cooking comes from the water and from Gullah kitchens: shrimp and grits, she-crab soup, red rice, fried shrimp off the local boats, and oysters roasted over a fire in the cool months. The Lowcountry boil, shrimp, sausage, corn and potatoes boiled together and poured onto a table, is also called Frogmore stew, after a community on St. Helena Island. See where to eat on Hilton Head.