Hilton Head: A Forgotten History

There was no electricity until 1950. And the first integrated school didn’t open until 1974.

Hilton Head Island, S.C., which was home to agrarian humans a thousand years before Ramses ruled Egypt, didn’t officially enter the modern age until after Nixon resigned. Before that, it was a seasonal farming village for Native Americans; then a colonial outpost (Capt. William Hilton took great pride in naming the headland island after himself as he sailed from Barbados into Port Royal Sound); then a series of long-strand cotton plantations; then a base for Union soldiers during the Civil War and American Marines during World Wars I and II.

Now, there are 24 golf courses (40 if you count those in nearby Bluffton, S.C.) and 366 restaurants on the 12-mile-by-four-mile strip of land north of Savannah, Ga., and south of Charleston, S.C. None of them are more than 60 years old.

The candy-cane lighthouse at Harbour Town, the most iconic image on the island, has never worked. It’s always been a tourist attraction with 114 spiraling steps le...