Edisto Beach takes some getting to, and that is much of its character. You leave US 17 for SC 174 and drive twenty-eight miles down it, over the McKinley Washington Jr. Bridge and along the causeway, until the road ends at the town. Charleston is about fifty miles back the way you came.
What you arrive at is the barrier island end of Edisto Island, facing the Atlantic on one side and St. Helena Sound on the other, with creeks and salt marsh separating the beach from the main body of the island behind it. The town incorporated in 1970.
Most of the shoreline is public. Edisto Beach State Park runs along the oceanfront with camping, cabins and trails, and its Environmental Learning Center explains the ACE Basin, the river system behind the island. The Bache Monument Trail, two tenths of a mile, ends at a surviving marker from the Alexander Bache coastal survey, which went on the National Register in 2007. The Spanish Mount Trail reaches a Native American shell midden, a mound of discarded oyster shell built up over generations, listed in 1974 and Spanish only in name.
The Census counted 1,033 residents in 2020 against 2,098 housing units, and 1,251 of those homes were held for seasonal, recreational or occasional use, three fifths of the town. Only 538 were occupied as somebody’s usual residence, and the Bureau’s population estimate for July 2025 was 1,071. Tourism and the services around it, hospitality, retail, property management and grounds work, are the economic base the town itself describes.
Two pieces of geography are worth getting right. Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve, with its driving tour and its boneyard beach of salt-killed trees, is up in the northeastern part of Edisto Island rather than inside the town. And Edisto Beach town in Colleton County is a separate place from the Edisto Island area in Charleston County and from the Edisto Census-designated place in Orangeburg County, three different places carrying three different sets of numbers. Colleton County School District serves the town.
Sourced: incorporation 1970 and the economic base, the town’s beach management plan hosted by the state. Population and housing units, U.S. Census Bureau 2020 count and Vintage 2025 estimate. Park, trails and distances, South Carolina State Parks. Register listings and dates, National Park Service. Botany Bay location, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Seasonal use, 2020 Census Demographic and Housing Characteristics file, table H5, vacancy status. Occupied housing, the same file, table H3, occupancy status.