Greater Charleston, SC | Charleston South Carolina's Free Publishing and Video Community » Inland Islands

Daniel Island

Greater Charleston — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:51:03 +0000

Riverfront of upper Daniel Island as Viewed from the Mark Clark Expressway Bridge over the Wando River (click to zoom)

Thanks to narrow marshland of Beresfords Creek, Daniel Island is in fact a true inland island, even though by road it feels more like a river-delta peninsula, similar to one that forms downtown Charleston. If you click over to the satellite setting for the map below, you’ll see what we mean. Daniel Island is the southeastern most tip of Berkeley County and has it’s own distinct “town” culture. But despite being separated by two rivers and the municipalities of North Charleston to the west and Mount Pleasant to the right, Daniel Island is actually part of the City of Charleston. To locals, the island was always that massive unpopulated “new world” way off to the right of the Cooper River bridge. It just sat there for decades serving mostly as farmland, but looking every bit like the land the original explorers would have found… just as the first picture reveals. There simply wasn’t any easy way to get there, unless you wanted to driive north to jump the Cooper River just outside of Moncks Corner, and that’s a hike.

All that began to change in 1990 when the Mark Clark Expressway (I-526) and its dual deep water bridges gave birth to the pristine island town. In 1997 the Island was purchased by the Daniel Island Company who immediately established their master plan community to award winning status. Aside from the mostly rural northbound Clements Ferry Road, the island’s only road access is by way of the Mark Clark Expressway, and while the island still feels very remote, it’s just 15 to 20 minutes from downtown when the traffic is light, and just a 5 minute bridge hop from the Long Point Road retail district of Mout Pleasant.

The golf-resort look and feel of the Daniel Island bedroom community (click to zoom)

Over the past decade, Daniel Island has evolved as a 21^st century small town community a legitimate resort feel. The Island has nearly every luxury amenity one would expect from an affluent island community on the South Carolina coast, golf, yachting, restaurants, you name it, they probably have it. Adding to the unique island town feel are Bishop England High School, Charleston’s largest Private High School (a 3A powerhouse in the public high school league), and BlackBaud Soccer Stadium, which is home to the Charleston Battery professional soccer team. And for a legitimate crowning jewel, the community boasts the Daniel Island Tennis Complex, host of the Family Circle Cup, a nationally televised professional tour event. If you haven’t visited Daniel Island, go give it a test drive. You’ll definitely enjoy the ride.

Click here to see photos of Daniel Island in our Gallery, and be sure to try the slideshow while there!

Click here to visit the City of Charleston website.

Click here for encyclopedic information at Wikipedia.com

Johns Island

Greater Charleston — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 02:22:52 +0000

Horse ranches are commonplace on Johns Island (click to zoom)

Though the huge Johns Island has a seemingly endless supply of deep water property and is sandwiched between the City of Charleston, James Island, Kiawah Island, the town of Seabrook Island, it remains the most underdeveloped land mass in the Greater Charleston area. Johns Island is framed primarily by the Stono River (part of the Intracoastal Waterway), the Kiawah River, and Bohicket Creek for it’s very long border with the even more rural, nearly-as-large Wadmalaw Island. Despite being the fourth largest island on the East Coast, Johns Island has a population just over 12,000 and is still mostly rural. This paradox of statistics is partly due to the lack of quality roads and bridges to access the island (until this century the island was only accessible across draw bridges), but is primarily a reflection of the overall lack of large population centers in Greater Charleston. The entire region has just a half million residents, and the City of Charleston has just about 115,000 residents, which is an astonishingly low number for such a globally famous city. Not surprisingly the oak studded island is home to the famous Angel Oak, which at approximately 1400 years is recognized as the oldest object – living or man-made – anywhere this side of the Rocky Mountains.

Angel Oak is the oldest tree east of the Rocky Mountains (click to zoom)

All that said, Johns Island is expected to see tremendous increases in population and business development over the coming decades, but land owners and city fathers alike are working hard to avoid over-exploitation of the mostly rural isle. Johns Island has no ocean front beaches of its own, though it does enjoy public access to Beachwalker Park on Kiawah Island. As another interesting tidbit, Seabrook Island (with its beaches) is not actually an island at all, but is the southernmost tip of Johns Island – the only part of the island that makes direct contact with the Atlantic Ocean. Johns Island has just two access bridges over the Stono River (both of which are brand new deep water replacements of previously infamous draw bridges); the most used is on Maybank Highway from James Island while its partner is on Main Road from West Ashley.

Click here to see photos of Johns Island in our Gallery, and be sure to try the slideshow while there!

Click here to see photos of Angel Oak in our Gallery, and be sure to try the slideshow while there!

James Island: The Real Thing

Public — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:36:57 +0000

The towering oak canopies of Camp Road (click to zoom)

Many would argue that James Island is quite possibly the truest representation of mainstream Charleston culture, which is no surprise considering it is just a few minutes from downtown and forms most of the southern shore of Charleston harbor. James Island is bordered by the harbor to the east, Wappoo Creek (Intracoastal Waterway) to the north, the Stono River to the west, and Greater Charleston’s largest tidal flats and Folly Beach to the southeast. While approximately half of James Island is still part of the City of Charleston, the balance is part of the recently incorporated Town of James Island. In what has become a peacefully fought legal secession from the city, the new Town is currently winning, but the City of Charleston has appealed to the courts. Considering that James Island is home to Fort Johnson where the fledgling confederates conducted their infamous bombardment of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War, we locals certainly don’t overlook the irony.

Sunset over the Wappoo Creek (click to zoom)

Regardless of their political infighting, as major communities go, James Island truly does have it all. It has history dating back to the original Charlestonians in the 1600’s. It was home to Samuel Smalls, the subject of the novel Porgy and Bess. It’s home to many of the most colorful personalities in Charleston. It has authentic oak canopied roadways. It has Folly Beach as its little brother, and also shares a genuine sense of community with West Ashley residents. It has its own dedicated expressway that crosses the harbor directly into the heart of downtown for a dreamy 3 minute drive that lands onto Calhoun Street, the nerve center of the finest complex of hospitals in the Southeast. The to and fro on the expressway is an outrageously scenic short drive… one of the best in America. It has great public and private schools, including the highly regarded James Island Charter High School, which is possibly the most successful charter high school in the state. It’s home to Charleston Country Club and its pristine Golf Course, and it’s also home to the City of Charleston’s municipal golf course. It has a huge county park that boasts the state’s most spectacular Christmas light show. it‘s on the Intracoastal Waterway and enjoys the coolest and most elaborate network of deep water channels and marsh creeks anywhere in Greater Charleston.

Sundown on Harborview Road (click to zoom)

For one of the best adventures anywhere, we suggest you take a jet ski from Charleston Harbor and circumnavigate the island… and make sure to venture out to the ocean for some real wave running. You will never forget it… especially when you find yourself cruising by the world famous Morris Island Lighthouse just offshore. Have we left anything out? Surely we have… but that’s James Island for you.

Click here to see photos of James Island in our Gallery, and be sure to try the slideshow while there!

Click here for encyclopedic information about James Island from Wikipedia.com.

Wadmalaw Island

Greater Charleston — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:21:05 +0000

Wadmalaw Tea Farm (photo courtesy of Mcbrihk via Flicker)

With history dating back to 1666, today the very rural Wadmalaw Island is home to the Charleston Tea Plantatiion, which is the last working Tea Farm in America. The farm produces the American Classic Tea brand that has been the official tea of the White House since 1987. The eastern most point of Wadmalaw Island is less than 20 minutes from downtown Charleston, though most of its population is in its only town, Rockville, located at the western end another 20 minutes away. Rockville is just across the Bohicket Creek from Seabrook Island and is home to the a annual sailing race and boating celebration called the Rockville Regatta. Many locals view Wadmalaw as an extension of the larger Johns Island. If you study the map below, you’ll see that the two islands actually appear to be a single land mass with Bohicket Creek and Church Creek (opposite ends of the same creek) snaking through the center. And despite Wadmalaw Island’s considerable size, it’s only connected to the mainland where Maybank Highway hops the creek. Wadmalaw is also bordred at the northwest by the quite broad Wadmalaw River (which like most Rivers in Greater Charleston is actually a large tidal creek), and to the southwest by the Edisto River.

At the time of the 2000 census Wadmalaw Island has an estimated population of 2611.

Thanks for participating in our “Beta” launch!

Greater Charleston — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:36:02 +0000

Welcome! In the internet, “beta” simply means “sneak-preview,” with advanced opportunities to gain premium exposure as we perfect the system behind the scenes.

You now have the opportunity to be among the first visitors to submit your writing or business profile for featured placement, or to replace an existing profile, or to review existing business profiles to establish their ranking! To post your profile or writing, simply click Submit Here and fill in the blanks once you get there. It’s that easy! To review an existing profile, simply scroll to the bottom of that page and you’ll be able to click up to five stars! While registering as a user is not required for you to make your submission or write reviews, it will give you greater privileges, and it’s absolutely free, so we encourage you to register soon. For security reasons, we cannot give instant publishing or other site priveleges unless we can contact you and verify who you are, so you can trust registration is purely for the integrity and protection of the family-friendly content of GreaterCharleston.com, and nothing more. Registered users also have instant review/rating priveleges that automatically insert your screen name, so it can also make for a more enjoyable business reviewing effort. The Register link is on the right side of every page, or you can click here to register now. Likewise, you’ll want to register at the Gallery and at GreaterCharleston.tv for similar reasons. You can use the same username and password, or create new ones for each registration, but for security reasons we keep the databases separate so you will need to register for each that you intend to use for submissions. Once we know who you are, we give you increasing freedom and power to move around, and will eventually offer you contributing editor status, which is loaded with even more power and privileges… both in the site and around town! If you have any questions, feel free to email us at Submissions@GreaterCharleston.com anytime.

While we have our own team of writers and multi-media production folks who will be publishing articles, stories, and gallery albums in magazine format, we are also a publicly-driven publishing site. You may have heard the terms Wiki, open-source, and Web 2.0… well all of those aptly describe the organic strengths of this site. But few terms better describe GreaterCharleston.com than “totally free,” always and forever, with no limits to your publishing opportunities. Surf the menu again… we’re sure you’ll see categories where you’d like to be found.

Even now, all of your submissions will be searchable on Google, Yahoo, and all the other major search engines, and you’ll be able to start inviting your friends, your fans, and/or your clients to join others who will be commenting and/or reviewing your submissions. We will publish all business profiles, both those submitted by the public and those produced by our own staff, so if you represent a business be sure you submit as soon as possible so that your competition doesn’t gain all the early traffic. Cheers!