10/12/2025
Great bicycle riding!
An Open Letter to the Beaufort County Council re - Pine Island Development:
For four generations, my family has lived on Yard Farm (formerly the Fuller Plantation) on St. Helena Island. Like so many others, I am blessed to call St. Helena Island home - to have played on its sandbars, to have eaten its shrimp, to have found solace and peace in its sunsets and birdsong. I consider it a great privilege and responsibility to protect the place that my ancestors worked for so that future generations will have an environmentally sound, culturally alive, and historically rich place to call home.
This is your privilege and responsibility as well.
If loopholes and exclusions are allowed that subject protected land to development, what will come next for unprotected land? If zoning allows for 100-acre RV parks and lines of commercial businesses to clog and congest Highway 21, who benefits, and who pays the cost?
Without intentional effort and strict protections, the foundational values that make the St. Helena Island community unique risk being replaced by the exploitative values of unchecked growth, exclusivity, and profit. Its living history will be reduced to books and museum exhibits while the island itself is altered beyond recognition.
For a sobering example of this, one only needs to drive a few miles up the road to Lady’s Island, which has turned into a tangle of traffic and commerce.
We are at a critical juncture. Your decision will either put us on a slippery slope or will demonstrate that you are willing to stand as guardians against any person who would contribute to making St. Helena Island indistinguishable from Anywhere, USA.
Anyone who cares about this part of South Carolina should be alarmed by the effects being seen from rampant growth. In some parts of the Lowcountry, the character and culture that once gave the region its soul are already gone. If we continue to sell what is meaningful here to those who value it only for profit, all that will remain for future generations are memories.
St. Helena Island is a place of inclusivity. Everyone is welcome to enjoy its creeks, sunsets, and history. But no one is welcome to replace heritage with development that ignores its people, environment, and culture. No one is welcome to profit by threatening it environmentally. No one is welcome to build gates that separate its land and waters from the community that has cared for it for generations.
And this applies both to locals who should know better and outsiders seeking financial gain.
The preservation of St. Helena Island's future is why I support upholding the CPO. I call on the Beaufort County Council to safeguard St. Helena Island now and in the future, protecting it from the ravages of rapid, unchecked over-development occurring elsewhere in the county.
This is not about nostalgia or fear of change. It is about ensuring that future generations can experience a way of life already disappearing elsewhere in the Lowcountry. It is about protecting a heritage that cannot be replaced once lost. It is about doing right by those who came before us, those who live on St. Helena Island now, and those yet to come.
As you make your decision, I ask you to reflect on this Gullah proverb that underscores the importance of understanding one's history and roots as a guide for future direction: "Ef oona ent kno weh oona gwine, oona should kno weh oona cm fum.” (Translated: "If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you come from.")
Respectfully,
Elizabeth Bishop Later
Protect St Helena
Beaufort County Government SC
Henry McMaster
The South Carolina Historical Society
Preservation South Carolina
Open Land Trust
bishopsbest.com
Photo: Yard Farm Road, St. Helena Island, South Carolina, taken by Sonny Bishop.
