Six Oaks Cemetery, Hilton Head SC

Where

Across from 175 Greenwood Drive, inside Sea Pines

Open

Dawn to dusk, daily

Phone

(843) 671-7831, the cemetery administrator

Size

24 acres

Six Oaks Cemetery is a public, perpetual-care cemetery on 24 acres inside Sea Pines. It is laid out as a park, with lawns, benches and live oaks, and families come here to bury and to visit.

It is run as a nonprofit that is wholly owned by the Sea Pines Community Services Associates, the community association for the plantation. If you are looking for the island’s older burial grounds from the plantation era, see the note on those further down the page.

Six Oaks Cemetery: Hours, Address and How to Get In

The cemetery and park are open from dawn to dusk every day. Access closes an hour before and an hour after each scheduled service, so a family can have the grounds to themselves. The office is in the Sea Pines Community Services Associates administration building at 175 Greenwood Drive, Hilton Head Island, SC 29928, and the cemetery is directly across the street. Some maps list the grounds as 6 Oaks Lane; it is the same place.

The cemetery is inside the gated Sea Pines community. A family member whom the cemetery administrator approves can receive one free vehicle decal a year, good only for travel to and from the cemetery. If you are not family and are not sure how to enter, call the administrator at (843) 671-7831 before you drive over. Our guide to Sea Pines guest passes explains how the gate works for everyone else.

Why It Is Called Six Oaks

The name comes from the original six live oaks of Lawton Plantation, which stood on this land. Scientific dating puts their planting at 1665, which makes them more than 350 years old. The cemetery itself is much newer: landscape architect Robert Marvin, whose other work includes Callaway Gardens and Augusta National Golf Club, designed it in 1966.

Burial and Memorial Options

The cemetery offers burial plots, family estate sites, mausoleum sites, urn plots and urn bench sites, and cremation is available. Each site comes with a set number of rights of interment. Arrangements can be made ahead of time (pre-need planning) or when they are needed. The cemetery also keeps a page for veterans and one on its perpetual care trust, and it does not post prices. Ask the administrator for the current pricing sheet. To arrange a tour of the grounds, call the same number. Photography requests go to sixoaks@csaseapines.com.

The Older Cemeteries in Sea Pines

Six Oaks is not the island’s historic plantation-era burial ground. Sea Pines has older ones. Lawton Cemetery dates from the Lawton Plantation of the 1830s, and Braddock Point Cemetery, near Harbour Town, holds the graves of families descended from the enslaved people who worked on Braddock’s Point Plantation. Both are described on our page for the Stoney Baynard Ruins, which also covers the other historic sites inside the gates. For the wider story of the island, see history in Hilton Head Island.

Nearby

The cemetery is in the middle of the resort, close to the Sea Pines Forest Preserve and Lawton Stables, which is also on Greenwood Drive. The rest of the resort’s activities are in the Sea Pines things-to-do guide, and for more of the island, see Sea Pines.