Imagine a time when life kept pace to the clippety-clop of a horse's hooves. When the scent of magnolia mingled with a salty breeze. And the welcome was as warm and long as a sea island summer day.

History and nature are inextricably mixed on Hilton Head Island. The first islanders were native Indians who lived here as early as 4000 B.C., supported by the rich bounty of the earth and sea. In 1664, the fertile land of the New World drew English sea captain William Hilton to explore the Island on behalf of a syndicate of Barbadian planters. His report was enthusiastic, and in honor of his pioneering explorations, the Island was christened Hilton's Head - a reference to the headlands that marked the way into Port Royal Sound. However, it was not until the threat of the Spaniards to the south and the Indians to the west was quelled in the closing years of the 17th century, that English colonists would settle permanently in the area.

As the 18th century dawned, the Island prospered with large indigo and later, rice plantations. But it was sea island cotton - first successfully cultivated in the 1780's- that made the planters wealthy beyond their dreams. By the mid-1800's, at the height of the plantation era, more than a dozen large land-owning families divided the Island's riches among themselves.

The onset of the Civil War brought an abrupt end to the cotton dynasties. The fine homes and fertile fields of the planters were destroyed by occupying Union troops after what would prove to be the largest naval engagement of the entire war: the Battle of Port Royal. A freedman's city, Mitchelville, sprang up briefly, but its life was short, and when the Union troops left, the Island to a long period of bulcolic quiet, with those who remained make a modest living farming, fishing, and oystering.