This family owned Hilton Head land for decades. The highway expansion will change that
Decades ago, Hilton Head Island wasn’t a hot-spot destination.
It was a mostly undeveloped sea island, free of its now-famed golf courses and sprawling resorts. Tourists weren’t flocking to the island during the summer. A bridge didn’t connect the island to the mainland. Instead, the island’s around 1,000 residents, most of whom were Black, could pay cents to take a state-run ferry to the mainland. Hilton Head was a farming community and there was no electricity or telephones.
Robert Patterson, 77, remembers it well.
His father opened a small convenience store on the island in the 1950s. At first, it was a little wooden shack with a few canned goods. In 1954, his father built a simple cinder block structure where locals would stop by to use one of the island’s first telephones, buy basic groceries or catch up on the neighborhood news. As a 12-year-old, during Patterson’s summer break, he would work the till and stock the shelves.
The family stopped running the store in the 1960s or 1970s but they continued to own the land and the building, which has housed businesses including Willie Young’s Upholstery and Fabrics for the past 15 years.
The William Hilton Parkway Gateway Corridor Project, planned to replace the bridges between Bluffton and Hilton Head Island with one six-lane bridge, will end that historic run.
In the coming weeks, the town is set to purchase the land by eminent domain. The purchase will eliminate a fixture in Hilton Head’s native islander community that stood for over 65 years to make way for the coming six-lane expansion of U.S. 278 through the Big Stoney Historic Gullah Neighborhood.
It’s not the first time the family’s property has been up against the town’s development.
The third, and final, ask for land
In 1980, the state added two new lanes to the north side of U.S. 278, creating a four-lane divided highway. In some sections, the road was expanded to five lanes through Big Stoney. Twice before the state has mandated its purchase of pieces of the Patterson family land, slowly chipping away at the property. Now, the town is buying the entire parcel.
Other families in Big Stoney were also impacted, even if their land wasn’t purchased.
“With different families, you had different outcomes,” Thomas Boxley said of how the town’s past and present highway expansions through Big Stoney have impacted and will impact the community. “Some talked about the pollution issues, the noise issues, the fact that their property isn’t draining correctly and different things like that.”
Boxley is the first executive director for the town’s Gullah Geechee Historic Neighborhoods Community Development Corporation. Gullah Geechee are African descendants who primarily live in the Lowcountry, including Hilton Head Island. These islanders have seen land ownership and economic prospects dwindle as Hilton Head became an increasingly popular tourist destination. The town created the corporation in November 2023 to help preserve Gullah Geechee culture and improve the quality of life in the island’s oldest communities.
Boxley has been working with the town to mitigate the impact of the U.S. 278 corridor project as officials again weigh the necessity of infrastructure upgrades against negatively impacting Black neighborhoods.
Some town officials said the project and Big Stoney improvements go hand and hand, not against each other.
Of the project’s estimated $460 to $480 million cost, the town is asking for $10 million to go toward Big Stoney improvements. These would include two pedestrian overpasses and improving access to homes along the highway. “These are additional investments that will relieve what has happened in the past,” Councilman Alex Brown said.
For Patterson, he said he realizes “progress is progress,” and he doesn’t want to get in the way. That doesn’t mean it’s not sad, he said. It’s a loss greater than property.
“It’s the legacy of these little country stores that used to dot the island and serve the Gullah community,” he said. “Those memories of what this place represented will be gone when we’re gone.”
Shifting demographics
As the island’s demographics shifted and economic opportunities beckoned in larger nearby cities, Patterson’s children gradually moved away. Over the decades, Hilton Head Island has become decreasingly Black. In the 1950s, its population of 1,175 people was 90% Black. In 2020, the demographic is 6% of the island’s around 37,700 residents.
“One by one, they left the island,” Patterson said of his children.
But the store remained a family legacy, even through the two previous highway expansions. Regardless, the land has remained a tangible connection to the family’s roots, where Patterson could reminisce about his upbringing and his father’s entrepreneurship.
When the town buys the land, Patterson said, his descendants won’t be able to come to the island and say “Hey, look, that’s where my great-grandfather’s store was.”
The family should receive the town’s appraisal and sell the land in the coming weeks, Patterson said. Officials said the town is committed to making the process fair and transparent.
“The process has been more of a conversation, versus a delegation,” Boxley said.
That wasn’t the case in the past, according to Patterson. The town required the family to remove the store’s attached gas and service station for safety during the second highway expansion.
“When they took the tank out, they made my father buy the dirt to fill it back in,” Patterson said, explaining that his father did the work himself without being paid. “This was right after segregation when, if someone of authority, a white person, said something, that was gold — you didn’t dispute it.”
The town is also working with Young of Willie Young’s Upholstery and Fabrics to find a new place for his business, according to Patterson.
Family history
Once the town purchases the Patterson’s property, it’ll be the first time in several generations that no one from Patterson’s direct lineage will own land on the island. Other Pattersons still own Hilton Head property.
The family’s Hilton Head roots trace back to the 1800s when Patterson’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann Patterson, farmed over 4 acres in Hilton Head Plantation in 1870. Five generations of the Patterson family are buried in the Elliot Cemetery, the old slave cemetery within the gates of Hilton Head Plantation, according to Patterson.
Even though the family will lose the building, between the family members buried on the island and a new Hilton Head Park bearing the Patterson name, the family’s connection to the island won’t be lost. “We still feel (...) that we have that connection to Hilton Head,” Patterson said.
“When my generation dies out, so do those memories of what this little building meant,” Patterson said. “It was a big deal back when there were no other stores, no doctors, no pharmacies on the island.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
