40 Fun Facts About Myrtle Beach

Which magazine did Time Inc. editors plan in 1954 at Pine Lakes Country Club, the oldest golf course in Myrtle Beach?

Sports Illustrated was hatched at Pine Lakes by Time Inc. founder Henry Luce, who was no fan of games himself. Local course owners credit the magazine with turning the resort into a golf destination.

Which TV personality, raised in North Myrtle Beach, studied fashion in Atlanta before joining a game show in 1982?

Vanna White became co-host of Wheel of Fortune in December 1982. She competed in the Miss Georgia USA pageant in 1978 while working as a model in Atlanta.

Which country band played for tips six nights a week at The Bowery in Myrtle Beach before finding fame in 1980?

Alabama repaid the club in 2013 with a 40th-anniversary tour named Back to the Bowery. The band left its long-running gig there in July 1980 to promote a single it first took for a fluke.

Which country music star owns Pirates Voyage, the Myrtle Beach dinner show that took over the Dixie Stampede theater?

Dolly Parton closed her Dixie Stampede there after 18 years and rebuilt the arena around a 15-foot-deep pool. The replacement show stars Blackbeard, a pirate with a history on the Carolina coast.

Which team, famous from a 1988 Kevin Costner film, moved and later became the Myrtle Beach Pelicans baseball club?

The Durham Bulls franchise left North Carolina when a Triple-A club took over its name. It spent 1998 as the Danville 97s while a new ballpark went up on the coast.

Which dance, done to beach music and shown in a 1989 film shot in Myrtle Beach, is South Carolina's state dance?

The shag became South Carolina's state dance in 1984, and North Carolina named it the official popular dance in 2005. Its basic step is a six-count, eight-step pattern danced in a slot.

Which Tiger King figure founded Myrtle Beach Safari, a wildlife tour in South Carolina?

Doc Antle founded the Myrtle Beach Safari tour and appeared in the first season of Tiger King in 2020. He had worked on screen for years, training animals for films including Dr. Dolittle.

Theodosia Alston, whose ghost is said to haunt the coast near Myrtle Beach, was the daughter of which vice president?

Aaron Burr's daughter married Joseph Alston, later governor of South Carolina, and was lost at sea. Her ghost is said to roam the shore looking for her father.

Until 2016, the Hard Rock Cafe at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach filled a building of which shape?

A pyramid guarded by sphinxes housed the restaurant from the complex's 1995 opening. It was demolished in 2016 to make way for a Dave & Buster's, and the cafe moved to a new building.

Which 1954 hurricane, a Category 4 at landfall, destroyed the oceanfront boardwalk in Myrtle Beach?

Hazel came ashore near the North Carolina line with winds estimated at 130 mph. All that survived of the boardwalk was a concrete walkway two blocks long.

Which name, coined in local newspaper columns in 1949, describes the 60-mile arc of beaches centered on Myrtle Beach?

Grand Strand dates back to the titles of columns in two local papers, the Sun and the News. The arc runs from Little River south to Winyah Bay, across two counties.

Which boating route has cut Myrtle Beach off from the South Carolina mainland since 1936?

The Intracoastal Waterway runs about 3,000 miles from Massachusetts to Texas. Hemmed in behind it, the resort grew along a narrow strip by the shore while land across the channel stayed rural.

Which president, touring the Southern states while in office, spent a night at Windy Hill in today's North Myrtle Beach?

George Washington was then led across a tidal swash by a local man, Jeremiah Vereen, on the road south to Georgetown. The shore he passed was barren and all but uninhabited.

The Myrtle Beach SkyWheel shares its design with a slightly smaller wheel overlooking which natural landmark?

Niagara Falls has the 175-foot twin, on the Canadian side. At 187 feet, the South Carolina wheel was the tallest in the United States east of the Mississippi when it opened in 2011.

Which South Carolina rock band hosts the Monday After the Masters celebrity pro-am golf event near Myrtle Beach?

Hootie & the Blowfish formed in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1986. The members are keen golfers, and their spring tournament raises money for local charities.

In which HBO comedy does Danny McBride's Kenny Powers pitch for a minor league team called the Myrtle Beach Mermen?

Eastbound & Down filmed the Mermen's games at the real home ballpark of the Myrtle Beach Pelicans. The series follows a former major leaguer reduced to teaching gym at his old school.

Myrtle Beach Bike Week, a spring motorcycle rally first held in 1940, is also known by which bike maker's name?

Harley Bike Week has drawn as many as 200,000 visitors to the resort each May. The city answered with a helmet rule for all riders, which South Carolina's Supreme Court struck down in 2010.

Can-Am Days, held in Myrtle Beach each March since 1951, is timed to the spring break of which Canadian province?

Ontario sends tens of thousands of visitors south for the week of special events. Myrtle Beach is also twinned with Burlington, a city in the same province.

Which attraction at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach occupies a building made to look flipped onto its roof?

WonderWorks tells visitors its laboratory was ripped from the Bermuda Triangle by a man-made tornado and dropped upside down. The science attraction opened in 2011 and has a ropes course outside.

Myrtle Beach lies in which South Carolina county, the state's easternmost and its largest by land area?

Horry is pronounced with a silent H, after Revolutionary War officer Peter Horry. Cut off by rivers and marshland, its early residents nicknamed it the Independent Republic.

Which attack jet, nicknamed the Warthog, was stationed at Myrtle Beach Air Force Base from 1977 until the base closed?

The A-10 Thunderbolt II sealed the base's fate: the Air Force chose to phase the jet out, so the base was shut in 1993. The decision to keep the A-10 flying came only after the closure was settled.

Which Myrtle Beach shopping and residential district was built on the site of the city's closed Air Force base?

The Market Common shares the old base with more than 1,200 homes, a veterans' clinic and the new terminals of the international airport. The base's golf course passed to the city.

Which oceanfront amusement park in Myrtle Beach closed in 2006 after 58 years, despite online petitions to save it?

The Pavilion drew record crowds in its farewell season. Its 1912 carousel, where frogs, ostriches and dragons outnumber the single lead horse, was moved to a small nostalgia park across town.

Which rock band gave its name to the signature roller coaster at Hard Rock Park, a short-lived Myrtle Beach theme park?

Led Zeppelin The Ride was the main draw when the park opened in 2008 with a concert by the Eagles and the Moody Blues. Money troubles shut the gates within months.

Which figure-eight wooden roller coaster at Family Kingdom was declared a historic structure by Myrtle Beach?

Swamp Fox opened in 1966 and runs about 2,400 feet. Coaster enthusiasts gave it a historical marker for its 50th anniversary in 2016.

Which New Deal program built Myrtle Beach State Park, the first state park to open in South Carolina?

The Civilian Conservation Corps developed the park on land donated in 1934, and several of its 1930s buildings are still in use. The park protects a mile of undeveloped shore and a maritime forest.

Which attraction near Myrtle Beach did sculptor Anna Huntington and her husband found on four old rice plantations?

Brookgreen Gardens opened in 1932 to show her work beside that of other American sculptors. It holds the world's largest outdoor collection of American figurative sculpture, plus a small zoo.

Which crime novelist, creator of private eye Mike Hammer, made his home in a fishing village south of Myrtle Beach?

Mickey Spillane died at his waterfront home there in 2006. Hurricane Hugo had wrecked the house so badly in 1989 that it was almost entirely rebuilt.

Which former fishing village south of Myrtle Beach is known for its Marshwalk, a half-mile boardwalk over a salt marsh?

Murrells Inlet has swapped most of its fishing boats for tourists and retirees. It sits about 13 miles down the coast, just across the line in neighboring Georgetown County.

Which tiny South Carolina coastal town, nicknamed 'The Black Pearl', was a haven for Black vacationers under Jim Crow?

Atlantic Beach filled with Black-owned hotels, restaurants and night clubs from the 1930s. Bordered on three sides by North Myrtle Beach, it stayed out of the 1968 merger that created that city.

Coastal Carolina University, near Myrtle Beach, takes which team nickname from a figure in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

Chanticleers replaced Trojans in the 1960s, when the school was a branch of the University of South Carolina and wanted a rooster to match the parent's Gamecock. The baseball team won the 2016 College World Series.

Which golfer, winner of the 2020 Masters, played college golf at Coastal Carolina University near Myrtle Beach?

Dustin Johnson, a native of Columbia, won that Masters at 20 under par, a tournament record at the time. He had already taken the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont.

Four generations of which NASCAR family, from Lee to Adam, raced at the now-closed Myrtle Beach Speedway?

Petty drivers Lee, Richard, Kyle and Adam all took a green flag there, as did three generations of Earnhardts. The half-mile oval opened as a dirt track called Rambi Raceway and held its last race in 2020.

The shrub that gave Myrtle Beach its name bears berries that were traditionally boiled to make what?

Candles made from the skimmed wax are an old-fashioned Christmas tradition. The founder's widow put the shrub's name forward in a contest held around 1900.

Which city, founded as Kingston on a river bluff, is the seat of the county that includes Myrtle Beach?

Conway became known as the Old Town once the beach end of its railroad was nicknamed New Town. One of the oldest towns in South Carolina, it was renamed to honor a local general, Robert Conway.

Which Native American people lived around Long Bay and fished its shore before Europeans settled the Myrtle Beach area?

The Waccamaw left burial and shell mounds on Waties Island, the main barrier island of the bay. A blackwater river about 140 miles long, flowing parallel to the coast, shares the name.

Raymond Hood, who designed the Ocean Forest Hotel in Myrtle Beach, was also an architect of which New York landmark?

Rockefeller Center's architect gave the 1930 hotel a ten-story tower, marble columns and crystal chandeliers. Its backer was ruined by the 1929 crash, and the hotel was imploded in 1974.

What is the name of the Moorish-style winter home the Huntingtons built in today's Huntington Beach State Park?

Atalaya means watchtower in Spanish, and a square tower holding the water tank rises over its courtyard. Archer Huntington insisted on local labor to give Depression-hit neighbors work.

Which hotel, opened in 1901 at the end of a new lumber railroad, was the first to welcome guests in Myrtle Beach?

The Seaside Inn was opened by the sons of Franklin Burroughs, who had pictured a resort to rival Florida's but died in 1897. Its first guests rode in on a line built to haul timber.

Which Clemson receiver from Myrtle Beach's Socastee High caught the winning touchdown in a national title game?

Hunter Renfrow joined Clemson as a walk-on after only smaller programs offered him a scholarship. His father coached the Socastee football team, where he played quarterback.