Grand Strand | South Carolina Public Radio

"G" is for Grand Strand. South Carolina’s Grand Strand is an uninterrupted strip of sandy beaches that officially stretches along sixty miles of Horry and Georgetown Counties from the North Carolina border to Winyah Bay. Unofficially the Grand Strand has referred to the greater Myrtle Beach area since the early 1920s. The Grand Strand is an unbroken strip of municipalities and communities strung together along US Highway 17. The first visitors were middle class and blue-color families from the Carolinas, but today's vacationers come from all over. The original tourist season ran from Easter until Labor Day, but by the 1970s, it stretched almost year-round. One of the primary tourist destinations in South Carolina, the Grand Strand hosts more than thirteen million visitors annually and accounts for a large percentage of the state’s tourism revenues.