Ocean Boulevard, the Golden Mile, and the Rise of the Motels
Near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Ocean Boulevard is the spine of Myrtle Beach, and driving it you can read the whole arc of an American vacation town. In the years after World War Two, and especially after Hurricane Hazel wiped the old wooden cottages away in nineteen fifty four, this boulevard filled with a distinctly mid century creation, the oceanfront motor court and neon motel. Cheap, cheerful, and family sized, they turned Myrtle Beach into a working class summer paradise, the place where mill town and factory town families from the Carolinas could finally afford a week by the sea.
A long, wealthier residential stretch to the north, lined with grand oceanfront estates, is known as the Golden Mile. Meanwhile the boulevard itself became a carnival of putt putt courses, pancake houses, airbrush T shirt shops, and arcades, the sensory blur that generations of southern children equate with summer. It is loud and unpretentious and entirely on purpose.
Myrtle Beach never tried to be Newport or the Hamptons. It built itself as everybody's beach, and Ocean Boulevard is where that promise still hums under the neon.
