The first people of Horry County arrived centuries before the first European set foot on this continent. Their life-styles changed throughout the ages in accordance with the changing climate and resources but their heritage remains an invaluable contribution to our lives today.

There is no doubt that the first people to inhabit the coastal plain of South Carolina were the Paleo hunters who followed the herds of mastadon and other large game onto the marshy coastlands. It may have been as long as 20,000 years ago that these first peoples made their camp fires, sang their songs, nursed the sick and buried their dead next to the beach we now call the Grand Strand.

The Southeastern Woodland cultures dominated the Coastal Plain of South Carolina for 1200 years and it is the remains of this culture that are most prominently found in the form of pottery remains. The pottery of the Woodland people was usually tempered with curshed rock or grit instead of vegetable fibers and was finished with several characteristic surface decorations.