PRESERVING PARADISE

With more visitors discovering Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, each year, the Lowcountry gem is focused on both sharing and protecting its unspoiled beaches, mystical marshlands, and rich Gullah culture

- TARA MASSOULEH MCCAY

DAUFUSKIE ISLAND IS THE KIND OF PLACE that sticks with you. The southernmost of South Carolina's barrier islands, it's bridgeless and accessible only by boat. Even though it's just across the way from tourist-laden Hilton Head Island and Savannah, those few miles of the Calibogue Sound may as well be thousands. On Daufuskie, there are no streetlights, grocery stores, or sidewalks. Paved roads and restaurants are few and far between.

"The island is fringed with the green, undulating marshes of the Southern coast," author Pat Conroy wrote in his 1972 memoir, The Water Is Wide, which was inspired by his time living and working on Daufuskie. "Deer cut through her forests in small silent herds. The great Southern oaks stand broodingly on her banks. The island and the waters around her teem with life. There is something eternal and indestructible about the tide eroded shores and the dark, threatening silences of the swamps in the heart of the island."

Conroy spent one transformative year teaching schoolchildren on Daufuskie in 1969. The island and its people forever changed him. After I spent just three days exploring the same dusty paths and deserted shores he fell in love with, it was easy for me to see why.

PRESERVING HISTORY

Just 5 miles long and nearly 3 miles wide, Daufuskie is remarkably small. A golf cart can cover its length in about 30 minutes, but its 500-some residents have all the space they need. At its peak in the early 1900s, the population climbed to almost 3,000. Human activity on Daufuskie dates back 9,000 years to Native Americans, who named it D'awfoskee (sharp or pointed feather) after its shape. Much of its rich history, though, comes from the Gullah community, the direct descendants of enslaved people and other African Americans who created a distinct Lowcountry culture and dialect.