Lauderdale: Is the Hilton Head beach getting longer?
We have known since the beginning of time, or so it seems, that Hilton Head Island has 12 miles of beach.
The only question has been which adjective to tack onto this factoid.
"Fertile salt marshes, networks of lagoons and creeks, forests of moss-draped oaks, magnolias, pines, palmettos and 12 miles (19 km) of sandy beaches ..." says the chamber of commerce on its website.
"The Town of Hilton Head Island contains 12 miles of the world's finest beach," the town's website says.
"Hilton Head Island is famous for its 12-mile stretch of glistening sandy beaches," another site says.
"With 12 miles of breathtaking South Carolina coastline, Hilton Head Island is blessed with pristine sand beaches and the blue waves of the Atlantic Ocean," croons another.
Even the scholarly bible of modern Hilton Head history gets in on the act. "Profits and Politics in Paridise: The Development of Hilton Head Island" reports: "Twelve miles of magnificent beaches flank the ocean, wide and sparkling white with gentle surf and clear, balmy waters."
So why was our lustrous shoreline said to be 13.5 miles long during the jaw-flapping over beach tents Tuesday night at Town Hall?
Let me guess.
The board of Realtors has declared more land to be oceanfront property.
They've started to count all the mole farms, I mean yards, like mine that look like a beach.
Everything is now called oceanfront so that nobody's self-esteem is damaged.
This is unsettling because if you can't believe a travel brochure, what can you believe?
Well, you can believe town code. The code book spells out what is beach and what is not, for the purpose of regulating activities on the beach.
Which raises the question of whether we'll have a 12-mile tent village or a 13.5-mile tent village on the beach. Some people want the tents banned. Other want shovels and gardening tools banned because who needs to dig a hole that deep on the beach?
At this rate, if we post all the "NO!" items prohibited on the beach, the signs will get so large that they'll block the sun and we won't need a beach. We can have tanning beds on our darkened beach. But then someone will trip over an extension cord and ... oh, never mind.
Unless the earth turns out to be flat, we can take this much as the truth: Hilton Head is 12 miles long and 5 miles wide at its widest point, and at 42 square miles is the largest coastal island in the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island, N.Y.
So maybe the island's length as the crow flies morphed into the length of our bejeweled beach, where the nuisance not that long ago was cow pies, not tents pitched by people who flock to the sun to get out of the sun.
Or, it could be that the beach actually on the Atlantic is 12 miles long.
But town code says the beach stretches from Braddock Cove on the toe of our tennis-shoe shaped island to Fish Haul Creek off of Port Royal Sound on island's heel.
And the handy emergency mile markers that are dug into the sand about every tenth of a mile measure that span to be 13.4 miles.
The town should know every inch of it well because since 1990, it has laid out some $50 million to pump sand onto the beach, so we'll have a beach. And on Wednesday, it opened bids for another $20 million nourishment project to begin soon.
However, if you want to be correct, the Hilton Head Island "Eco Map" produced in 1995 by Todd Ballantine's Southeastern Ecological Institute said the "sandy shoreline extends 19 miles from Dolphin Head to South Beach." It said, "The beach on Hilton Head Island is actually many beaches."
Each, of course, worthy of its own sparkling travel brochure.
Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.
Related content:
- Residents express frustrations over Hilton Head beach canopies at town meeting, Sept. 29, 2015
- 2015/2016 Town of Hilton Head Island Beach Nourishment Project
This story was originally published October 1, 2015 at 7:38 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Is the Hilton Head beach getting longer?."