Hilton Head Island

This marker honors the men who imagined Hilton Head Island as a place where people could live in harmony with nature. The vision belonged largely to a developer named Charles Fraser. In the nineteen fifties, Fraser bought out his father's timber interests on the southern end of the island and founded the Sea Pines Company.

Instead of clearing the land flat, Fraser did something almost unheard of at the time. He curved the roads around the live oaks, preserved the marsh views, limited the signs, and set aside a forest preserve. He is remembered as a pioneer of environmentally sensitive resort planning. In nineteen sixty-nine, he helped lead a fight to keep a chemical plant from being built nearby on the Colleton River. The resort island you see today grew straight from that idea.