The historic Waccamaw tribe lived in the Long Bay area prior to the arrival of Europeans. The Waccamaw used the river for transportation and fished along the Little River shore. Waties Island, the main barrier island along Long Bay, shows traces of burial and shell mounds, indicating that the visiting Waccamaw left behind their remains.
Long Bay’s earliest European residents arrived in the late 1800s, hoping to expand the plantation system outward toward the sea.
The majority of the recorded history during this period is cobbled together from English colonial land grant documents. These settlers had mixed results, producing little amounts of indigo and tobacco, the two main commodity crops.
The area along the current Grand Strand was essentially deserted prior to the American Revolution. Several families, notably the Witherses: John, Richard, William, and Mary, acquired land grants along the shore. The territory around Wither’s Swash, also known as Myrtle Swash or the Eight-Mile Swash, was given to this family. A separate grant was made to James Minor, which included a barrier island off the coast near Little River called Minor Island, which is today Waties Island.
“She gave up the delights of Society and went to Long Bay, where she remained a significant part of her life devoted to the welfare of her children,” according to Mary Withers’ headstone at Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church.
The area stayed virtually intact as the American colonies acquired freedom, and the shoreline remained desolate. During his presidency, George Washington traveled down the King’s Highway to scout out the southern states. Jeremiah Vereen escorted him through Wither’s Swash to Georgetown after he spent the night at Windy Hill (now part of North Myrtle Beach).
For the following half-century, the Withers family remained one of the few settlers in the Myrtle Beach area. R. F. Withers’ house was carried into the water by a violent hurricane in 1822, drowning 18 people inside. The Withers family decided to forsake their coastal plots after the catastrophe. When the region was left unmanaged, it began to revert to forest.
In 1881, the Burroughs and Collins Company of Conway, forerunner of today’s Burroughs & Chapin, purchased a large portion of the Withers family’s land. Around the turn of the century, the burgeoning community was dubbed “New Town.” In 1888, a post office named “Withers” was constructed to serve the original Swash location. Burroughs and Collins were granted a charter on February 28, 1899, to develop the Conway & Seashore Railroad, which would transport timber from the coast to inland clients. With two wood-burning engines, the railroad began daily service on May 1, 1900. One of the engines, dubbed The Black Maria, was acquired secondhand from a forestry business in North Carolina.
Employees of the lumber and railroad companies would ride railway flatcars down to the beach area on their free weekends when the railroad was completed, becoming the first Grand Strand visitors. The railroad station was dubbed “New Town,” in contrast to “Old Town,” or Conway.
Franklin Burroughs envisioned New Town as a tourist attraction to match the Florida and northeastern beaches at the turn of the century. Burroughs died in 1897, but his sons finished the beach extension of the railroad and built the Seaside Inn in 1901.
Burroughs’ wife recommended honoring the locally abundant shrub, the southern wax myrtle, in a contest to name the area around 1900. (Myrica cerifera). Soon after, the Withers post office was renamed “Myrtle Beach.” In 1938, it became a town, and in 1957, it became a city.
The Myrtle Beach Municipal Airport was completed in 1937. In 1940, it was taken over by the US Army Air Corps and turned into a military base. Commercial flights commenced in 1976, and the runway was shared for more than 15 years before the air facility closed in 1993. The airport has been renamed Myrtle Beach International Airport since then. Plans for a new terminal were approved in 2010. Kings Highway was completed in 1940. Finally giving Myrtle Beach its primary highway.