‘Lettuce City’ or ‘Frog Level’: Which lovely name once belonged to Beaufort SC?

It must have been the winter doldrums that caused Beaufort to adopt “The Lettuce City” as its nickname in 1926.

The residents who voted in that contest put on by the city must have been anxiously awaiting the fresh, crisp lettuce that would come in the early spring.

Calvin Coolidge was in office, silent films were really close to producing sound, there was an obvious joy in America that celebrated seemingly small things — like fresh produce. There’s almost no other explanation for the obscurity.

Caesar had already been dead a while, if memory serves, but the salad named for him was probably around even back in the 1920’s. This was, of course, well before Paula Deen was juicing up lettuce with gallons of butter, y’all.

Romaine, Bibb, Iceberg ... all the lettuce we had in Beaufort deserved to be celebrated for the goodness it would provide in Zaxby’s salads and Alvin Ord’s sandwiches in centuries to come.

Even if the nickname was ultimately to honor the truck farming and truck growers associations that had sprouted in Beaufort at the turn of the century, it makes you wonder what names were turned down.

The boll weevil had destroyed the cotton crop on Beaufort’s islands already, so “The Cotton City” was never going to work, and truck farming never did supplant cotton in terms of booming business.

The Great Hurricane of 1893 — still a pervasive memory in the community — had wiped out other crops, leaving only rotten sweet potatoes for temporary sustenance. That was also out as an option.

You can probably agree that “The Rhubarb City” or “Phosphate Town” or “Land of 1,000 Gnats” also don’t have quite the same ring to them.

From a marketing standpoint, it probably could have been worse. Charleston was already The Holy City, and much like Chicago to New York, we could have been the Second City to Charleston. We were already the second-oldest city in the state behind them, and probably second in number of churches and second in number of leisurely folks with a massive accumulation of inherited wealth.

And “Frog Level” was already taken by Prosperity, S.C., darn it all.

Our options were based, then, on what we had in abundance. What we had, apparently, was lettuce. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

It’s hard to imagine a tourist industry like the one we have now thriving on folks making their spring break vacation plans around visiting a museum highlighting various heads of lettuce.

Maybe it’s a sign of how things have changed in the last century that we don’t tout the many productive tomato farms in the area as the agricultural wonders that they are.

Then again, in 1926 our beaches — a current marketing feature — weren’t necessarily public, and women and men were probably wearing bathing suits that covered head to toe, if they were allowed near the water at all.

Our rivers were also only for maritime cultivation, not heading toward the sandbars in a lightning-fast canoe.

But we did have all that delicious lettuce, right? I mean, why go to the beach or sandbar when you could sit on your porch and chop vegetables all the livelong day?

Now, of course, we’re “Beautiful Beaufort By the Bay” or “America’s Happiest Seaside Town” or whatever moniker is more fitting to the 21st century, but to fully appreciate what we are now, you have to sometimes remember where we once were.

Just ask the fine folks in what was once Frog Level.

This story was originally published March 28, 2019 at 3:50 PM.