The Grand Strand, it’s called. That would be the wide beach that stretches along the Carolina coast for 60 miles or so, including greater Myrtle Beach. Grand indeed.

Sounds like a name a newspaperman might invent. A news moniker. That is, a newspaperman back when they pounded print on their typewriters, and so it was, in the late 1940s.

The beach as a leisure destination, or at least the seaside, goes back a little further. No doubt the Romans had some equivalent, but modern beachgoing is just another thing bequeathed to us by the Victorians and their railroads.

Myrtle Beach the beach is more of a creature of the early 20th century, I understand – the dream of a turpentine baron of the late 19th century, one Franklin G. Burroughs (d. 1897), whose original fortune came from the sap-rich pines of the area. His real estate vision wasn’t as grand as that of Florida railroad tycoon Henry Flagler, but the idea was similar: build railroads to the coasts and persuade people to take leisure trips using those lines and, at the end of the lines, using tourist infrastructure that you’ve conveniently provided. Burroughs’ sons were up to the task, opening a rail-serviced hotel by the shore in 1901. Ultimately the rest of Myrtle Beach rose out of that placement on the Grand Strand, a stretch that had long been considered wasteland. Reportedly Burroughs’ widow named the town for its common flora.

I got a kick out of learning that the corporate descendant of Burroughs’ company, now known as Burroughs & Chapin, is a real estate developer active even now in the Carolinas and Georgia, largely building retail space.

It was a fairly hot walk from the boardwalk to the beach itself.

A row of fixed blue beach umbrellas waits for users.

And waits. Somebody must use them sometime, but close inspection revealed no one was. Even closer inspection revealed the charge for renting the umbrella and (I believe) two beach chairs with it is $50 a day. Way to price something out of the market, beach umbrella dudes (the city?).

The beach wasn’t particularly busy anyway. It had a lot of sun, which people seem to like, but just a little much in the way of blazing heat. Still, a few people ventured into the smooth waves.

We did too, briefly. Ahh.

Jutting out into the ocean, as piers do, is Pier 14.

It’s been a fishing pier a long time, despite some serious damage during Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and on the landward end it is home to a decent-looking seafood restaurant. The pier might be a Myrtle Beach institution, but ownership doesn’t seem inclined to gouge leisure fisherfolk, charging only $7 to fish from the pier, and $2 for a second pole (limit two poles). A look around the pier is $1, which you get back in the form of a discount on a purchase from the gift shop, which of course also sells fishing gear. A lesser businessman would gouge on the entrance fee (and no discount) for fisherfolk and tourists, and make them less amenable to spending money at the pier’s store.

“Why 14?” I asked the fellow behind the counter, a big-bearded, capped and Myrtle Beach t-shirted man thick in the middle and thick in middle age, who might have been the owner. For a second it looked like he’d never heard such an odd question, but I had noticed only two other piers, one off fairly far off to the north and the other off to the south. Had there been other piers, lost to storms or urban renewal? Not how I’d have phrased the question, but what I was thinking. I’d seen the like, stubs of ruined piers, in New York.

“No, it’s after 14th Street,” he said, maybe thinking about that obvious thing for the first time in years, and then he pointed out that the pier is actually closer to 13th Street, but who would want Pier 13? We’ve all seen buildings conspicuously missing their 13th floor. Or missing that name, since even if you called it the 14th floor, it would be the 13th. Wasn’t that a Twilight Zone plot element? An unlucky 14th floor, that is. Maybe not. Could have been.

We paid our dollars and out on the hot pier we went.

Wheel of Fortune?

New wood, new graffiti.

Nice views from both the pier and the beach. Including occasional aircraft.

That would be Axelrod & Associates. Good thing we didn’t need him or his ilk during our SC visit.