The Hilton Head Lighthouse at Harbour Town

Hours

Daily from 10 a.m.; until 6 p.m. Nov. 1 to Jan. 31, around sundown the rest of the year

Climb

114 steps, 90 feet

Admission

$8 per person, 5 and under free

Sea Pines gate fee

$10/day per vehicle

The Harbour Town Lighthouse is the red-and-white striped tower at the edge of the Harbour Town Yacht Basin in Sea Pines, and it is the picture most people have in mind when they think of Hilton Head. It is 90 feet tall, you can climb it, and the 114 steps to the top double as a small museum of island history. At the top is a gift shop and a wide view over the harbour and Calibogue Sound.

You will also see it spelled Harbor Town Lighthouse or Harbourtown Lighthouse, and some people just call it the Sea Pines lighthouse or the HHI lighthouse. It is all the same tower. It stands inside gated Sea Pines, so unless you are staying there, getting to it means the Sea Pines gate fee. The rest of the harbour, the shops and the restaurants are in our Harbour Town guide, and the wider resort is on the Sea Pines page.

Inside the Harbour Town Lighthouse and Museum

The climb is the museum. Photographs and exhibits line the walls on the way up, and you read them at the landings as you go, which also makes the stairs easier to take in stages. The subjects are the island’s own past: its Civil War years and earlier island history, the lighthouses of the region, and memorabilia from the Heritage golf tournament that made the lighthouse famous. There is also a U.S. Coast Guard exhibit.

Harbour Town Lighthouse tours are self-guided: you climb at your own pace and read your way up. The one thing to plan around is the stairs themselves. It is 114 steps each way, so think about it if anyone in your group has trouble with a long climb.

Harbour Town Lighthouse Tickets, Hours and Address

Admission to climb is $8 per person, and children 5 and under go free. Tickets can be booked ahead online through The Sea Pines Resort. The lighthouse is open every day from 10 a.m. Winter hours run from November 1 through January 31, when it closes at 6 p.m. The rest of the year its own site says it closes at sundown, and the resort lists 7:30 p.m., so check before a late visit.

The address is 149 Lighthouse Road, Hilton Head Island, SC 29928, and the lighthouse’s phone number is 866-305-9814. In a map app, searching for Harbour Town Lighthouse, Hilton Head, SC finds it; the route runs through a Sea Pines gate either way.

Getting In: the Sea Pines Gate

Harbour Town is at the southern end of Sea Pines, a gated community, so you pay to drive in unless you are a property owner, a resort guest, or have a Sea Pines rental reservation. The visitor fee is $10 per day for a standard vehicle. Motorcycles and RVs are not allowed in Sea Pines. The lighthouse ticket is a separate charge on top of the gate fee.

Why a Lighthouse at Harbour Town

Harbour Town did not need a lighthouse to keep ships off the rocks. Sea Pines founder Charles Fraser wanted a landmark that would draw people, and boaters on the Intracoastal Waterway, into the small harbour village he was building. People who doubted the plan called it “Fraser’s Folly.” Within a decade the doubters had come around. The tower became the symbol of the resort, and today it is the best-known lighthouse on Hilton Head Island.

The lighthouse was finished in 1970, too late for the first Heritage golf tournament in 1969, and it is described as the first privately funded lighthouse built in the area since the early 1800s. It is still a working light, a privately maintained aid to navigation that shows on nautical charts. Television made it famous: every April the RBC Heritage finishes on the 18th hole of Harbour Town Golf Links, with the lighthouse behind the green.

Watch the Harbour Town Lighthouse Live

The live view at the top of this page is The Sea Pines Resort’s own stream from across the harbour, and the camera under it looks down from the top of the tower. Both are a good way to check the weather and the crowds before you drive in. We keep both on our Hilton Head webcams page along with the island’s beach cams.

Around the Lighthouse

The lighthouse is the easy anchor for an afternoon in Harbour Town. For lunch or dinner with a view of it, see the restaurants near the Harbour Town Lighthouse. The covered Harbour Town pier over the yacht basin is right beside it, and the Harbour Town shops ring the harbour. For the beach afterward, the Sea Pines Beach Club and South Beach are both inside the gate, and the Sea Pines Forest Preserve is a quieter half day on the inland side.