Okatie spreads along the SC 170 and US 278 corridor northwest of Bluffton, on the mainland, taking its name and its shape from the Okatie River that runs through it toward the Colleton River, Port Royal Sound and the ocean beyond. It is an unincorporated stretch of Beaufort County, and the name came to it in May 1994, when county council revived a historic one and applied it here. That is the closest thing to a founding date Okatie has.
The county has put a good deal of public water access along the corridor. Camp St. Mary’s covers about ten acres on the Okatie River at 121 Camp St. Mary’s Road. Widgeon Point Preserve at 43 Okatie Highway carries a nature trail, a bird blind and picnic facilities, and its back island fronts the Broad River. Between Bluffton and Beaufort, the Port Royal Sound Foundation Maritime Center explains the sound itself, its ecology, its history and what lives in it.
The Callawassie Sugar Works at 29 Sugar Mill Drive carry the older history. They are the ruins of a sugar mill built around 1815 in tabby, the coastal material of oyster shell, lime burned from oyster shell, sand and water, poured into wooden forms the way concrete is now, and the National Register added them in 2014.
Okatie has also become where the region’s services collect. Beaufort Memorial opened its Okatie Medical Pavilion here in 2020, 70,000 square feet of outpatient facilities including cancer treatment, imaging and rehabilitation. The Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority runs its headquarters and the Chelsea treatment plant from SC 170, and the University of South Carolina Beaufort’s Bluffton campus sits on this corridor as well.
Housing followed the services. What we handle in Okatie is almost all single family and most of it is recent, built through the current wave of development along the corridor. Okatie is also not a Census-designated place, so it has no Census population of its own and any figure you see quoted for it came from a boundary somebody chose. Beaufort County School District serves the Beaufort County side and Jasper County School District the Jasper side, and our Bluffton and Hilton Head office is here, at 103 Okatie Center Boulevard North, Suite 102.
Sourced: tabby and how it was made, National Park Service. the 1994 county naming action, Beaufort County Council. River and watershed, Beaufort County. Parks and preserve details, Beaufort County. Maritime Center, South Carolina state tourism. Sugar works listing, May 27 2014, South Carolina state Register record. Medical pavilion, Beaufort Memorial. Absence of a Census place or CDP, verified directly against the Census Bureau’s 2020 place and CDP tables for South Carolina. Housing character, our own listing and sales records.