The loyalty of parents to the mission of bringing up school-age children was the inspiration that made Hilton Head Island a summertime resort in the early days. Sea Pines founder Charles Fraser not only invented a way of nestling a world-class resort into the surroundings of nature, but also found ways of putting this resort within the grasp of people who really needed the break. Even in the midst of the busiest chapters of their lives – careers, child-rearing, and citizenship – folks found that they still could look forward to a vacation, a vacation they could count on, in the middle of a sub-tropical paradise.

Spicebush at Sea Pines is a lovely example of this original vision.

In the generations since then, summer in Sea Pines has grown far beyond the limits of school vacations. Drawing on the nature of our climate, experienced visitors discovered that summer here is, in fact, twice as long as school vacations.

What the March Winds Bring

When March rolls around, just about the same time school children start to check the calendar on the classroom wall and look forward in tangible, countable ways to the day when “school’s out,” the residents of America’s favorite vacation island are done with what we laughingly call winter.

Then in April, the Heritage Classic PGA tournament marks a kind of official beginning to the six months of summer on Hilton Head Island. We celebrate our good fortune to live here, and we welcome guests and golf fans who are thrilled to start their own summer with us. Even the PGA pros competing in the tournament say that coming from the Masters to the Heritage is like playing in the Super Bowl and then taking the family to Disney World.

More than a Summer Place

It started as inside knowledge, but in recent years, more folks have realized that summer is just the beginning of all the times they can enjoy on Hilton Head Island. We still remember when a Golf Magazine researcher investigated “the ideal golf getaway.” He concluded that it involved four friends (or eight) on Hilton Head Island – in October. Theater lovers find a big-city-like season from fall through spring, and art lovers never run out of artists to appreciate or galleries to browse at any time of year.

One reason that this “inside knowledge” became so well known is that more than 40% of Hilton Head Island vacationers are returning. They’ve been here before, sometimes year after year for a generation or more. But even the folks coming to Hilton Head Island for just their second or third or fourth visit say they feel a certain sense of belonging.

They especially feel something more than welcome when they are here at Spicebush. They feel like part of this place. It’s part of what brings so many back.