Myrtle Beach Hotels and Condos believes that visitors make informed choices when they know the history of an area and how it evolved.

Myrtle Beach Hotels that now line our shore each have unique stories, but also a blended past that can help you see where we have been and where we are now going.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina's history is relatively new, even in New World standards.

While the S.C. coast was valued by Native Americans for thousands of years, new colonists in the 1700's placed much higher values in port cities including Charleston, Georgetown, and Wilmington, N.C.

Port cities brought in goods from England and Europe and until 1790, England was considered home to most South Carolinians. South Carolina was largely a Tory state during the revolutionary war. Tories were pro British and actually opposed the independence movement. Because it has been seen as an unpopular and unpatriotic history, it has largely been left out of many school books.

Patriots, like Archibald Rutledge, Francis Marion, and Peter Horry, however, were South Carolinians who were fiercely loyal to the American cause. Our state was even named the Palmetto State because of a last minute, make shift fort, built near what is today Mount Pleasant, that took the best cannon blows the British could hurl and remained in tact.

As port cities rapidly grew, towns that were up river from port cities began to grow as well. Up river from Georgetown, SC was Conway, SC. River towns were the second tier growth towns in South Carolina.

After the Revolutionary War, our county was named Horry, after Peter Horry (a local officer who fought with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox). The head of Horry County became Conway. As far as Coastal South Carolina went, the State ran up the coast from Charleston to Pawley's Island and then went inland to Conway before heading back to the coastal areas around Southport, N.C.

The area currently known as Myrtle Beach became popular in the middle 1800s for its timber and tar resources. The Burroughs families and Collins families of Conway began a railway to haul timber and tar resources from the area out to the nation at large.

In the early twentieth century, the group teamed up with a Northern Industrialist to form the Burroughs and Chapin company. This partnership was formed as an effort to develop the Oceanfront area as a beach tourism destination.

In the 1920s, America was in the middle of an economic boom. World War I had just ended and Coastal towns in New Jersey and Florida were being developed for tourism with much success. America had served well in the war and Americans were feeling the newness and success of being a world power. South Carolina, however, was still overcoming the effects of the Civil War.

Myrtle Beach, SC's coast was lined with a few Oceanfont beach houses for rent. Beach Homes would rent out in the Summer months. The rent included meals and the family who owned the home was right on property in the same house. These boarding homes rented rooms to several families in the same home all at once.

In the 1920's, however, with America thinking grand, the Arcadia concept was developed. It included the Ocean Forest Hotel, a golf course (Myrtle Beach's first), a residential development, and riding stables. The concept was forward thinking and promising. As the Ocean Forest Hotel was completed and what is now Pine Lakes Golf Course opened, the stock market crashed and America went into the Great Depression.

From 1931 until after 1945 when the second World War ended, the overall growth of Myrtle Beach was incremental.

An air force base, where the Market Commons now stands on Farrow Road, was built and a few, small hotels began to dot the landscape. Myrtle Beach was not a major tourism destination.

In the late 1940's, Burroughs and Chapin developed the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. This area, at first, drew many South Carolinians for day trips or weekends. The Myrtle Beach Pavilion provided a carnival like atmosphere, similar to the same experienced on the Jersey shore.

The Myrtle Beach Pavilion should get much credit for the real genesis of what became today's Myrtle Beach. In the late 1950s, Myrtle Beach Hotels began to be steadily developed. As the war ended and interstate highways were being built, I 95 opened up Myrtle Beach to a more prosperous and affluent America who wanted to hit the Suburbs and the highways. This was really the beginning of what is today, the American vacation concept.

Myrtle Beach hotel development was generally done by single family proprietorships or small partnerships. Most Myrtle Beach Hotels were located near the Myrtle Beach Pavilion area and were archaic compared to today's standards. Names like the Wayward Winds, The Cherokee, and Apache Campgrounds played upon the common western T.V. mood of 1950s adventure in America.

In the mid to late 1970's, the genesis of current Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach Hotels began to take mold. Mr. S.M Johnson began developing Oceanfront Myrtle Beach Condo Hotels. These more spacious Oceanfront Myrtle Beach Hotels were individually sold to different homeowners and then managed by Mr. S.M. for a percentage of the rental income. Because of the way capital was raised, pre-selling each hotel room, before development, Mr. Johnson was able to build many hotels up and down the coast. Today over 60,000 of Myrtle Beach Hotel rooms are individually owned condos managed by a rental management company. Obviously the Hotels and Condos concept caught on.

Myrtle Beach Hotels recently experienced the growth of national chains in our area including upscale hotels like the Ocean Watch Marriott and Sheraton Convention Center, as well as a vast increase in budget chains moving in off the Ocean including Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inns, Holiday Inns, Best Western, Super 8, Comfort Inn, and the Marriott at Barefoot Landing.

As more and more Oceanfront hotels in Myrtle Beach become property managed, the landscape has been forever fixed by structures that will be hard to remove, even as they age. Strong Home Owners associations will be required if Myrtle Beach Hotels are continued to be desired over the next 50 years.

Myrtle Beach Hotels and Condos has seen many of these changes first hand. The coming of Hard Rock Park in Spring 2008 will change the landscape all over again. As the baby boom generation is now retiring in Myrtle Beach, SC, our off the Ocean landscape also is rapidly being developed. Indications are that the Internet Generations of X and Y, expect much more for much less expense. Spoiled by the access of information and free rental sites including Craig's List, these tourists are much more informed than their parents were. These generations are much more connected with social ideas and exchanges and tend to trust one another more than the media at large. Sites like Trip Advisor, Myspace, Facebook, Utube, Myrtle-Beach.com, and Myrtle Beach Hotels and Condos allow these customers to rate properties and experiences and inform other future travelers.

These changes will surely affect Myrtle Beach Hotels more dramatically than any others in the history of Myrtle Beach. As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

As Myrtle Beach changes and grows, we at Myrtle Beach Hotels and Condos are working to see that no one ever gets mislead or fooled. We hope the next 100 years proves to be our best.