As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, we are staying at Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet, SC. We like this area very much. The beaches are nice and it's not overrun with people like Myrtle Beach is most of the time.
Huntington Beach is named after Archer and Anna Huntington who came here in 1930 looking for a place to build a winter home to escape the cold winters in New York. They ended up buying four abandoned rice plantations totaling about 9000 acres. Anna was a world class sculptor, and used the garden area on the Brookgreen Plantation to display her works of art. In addition, other famous American sculptors also displayed their works here. There are nearly 2000 sculptures displayed in this beautiful setting.
This sculpture stands at the entrance to Brookgreen Gardens. It was the creation of Anna Huntington.
There are very few buildings that remain from the old rice plantations. Most of the rice plantations in this area died out at the end of the civil war. One of the surviving buildings is the old kitchen from the original plantation. It has been restored and moved to its current location. We had lunch in the old kitchen. We chose the veggie wrap and it was not very good. In fact, it was a soggy mess and didn't have a great taste. Perhaps it was left over from the civil war!
Below is the Offner Sculpture Center. It was designed by Archer Huntington.
April 28, 1791, President George Washington spent the night here at Brookgreen Plantation. He was the guest of the plantation owner Dr. Henry Collins Flagg, a surgeon in the revolutionary war. Slaves were used to clear the land and plant and harvest the rice. The cheap labor made the plantation owners very wealthy. But, when slavery was abolished during the civil war, these rice plantations could no longer compete and were closed down.
There are hundreds of humongous, old live oak trees on this land dating back to the original plantations, some 300 years ago. Here are some pictures of a few of them.
Diana of the Chase
Dionysus
Pegasus
The Fountain of Muses
Kitty and me standing in front of Don Quixote
This is the type of place you should plan to spend more than a day or two, if you want to try and see it all. We only spent about four hours here and barely scratched the surface. But, we are moving to a camp ground in Charleston in the morning where we will spend the next six days enjoying the sights, and maybe a little history as well. Gotta go and get packed. See ya later!
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