Beaufort is located on Port Royal Island, one of the largest Sea Islands along the southeast Atlantic coast. It is one of the few towns with its entire downtown designated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as a historic district. The town was filled with mansions built by the wealthy plantation owners before the Civil War. It was one of the only Southern towns occupied by Union troops, rather than destroyed during the war.

Beaufort and Port Royal are proud to host three military bases, and more than 17,000 active duty military members and their families live and work in the area. A fascinating Parris Island museum traces area and military history, and guided tours of the base are available. Visitors also may thrill to the color and precision of graduation ceremonies, which are conducted almost every Friday year-round. The Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Beaufort is home to Marine Aircraft Group-31, one of the world's largest aircraft groups.

The 10,000 square-feet facility focuses on the history of Parris Island from prehistoric times to the present. Ground floor exhibits cover archaeology, Native Americans, 16th-century French & Spanish settlements on Parris Island, the American Revolution and the Civil War in the Lowcountry. It also features a large diorama displaying Marine uniforms from 1775 to the present. Second floor exhibits include Marine Corps history from 1909, with an emphasis on both of the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm. A theater, archives, and gift shop complete the facility.

Tucked in the heart of the South Carolina Sea Islands you will find the Penn Center - the site of one of the country's first schools for freed slaves and one of the most significant African American historical and cultural institutions in existence today. Located on St. Helena Island, one of the most beautiful and historically distinct of the South Carolina Sea Islands, Penn Center sits at the heart of Gullah culture, on the 50 acres of the historical campus of Penn School. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974, it is a part of the Penn School Historic District which is comprised of nineteen buildings - Brick Church, Darrah Hall, one of the oldest buildings on St. Helena Island, old burial grounds, Gantt Cottage where Martin Luther King Jr. lodged and acres of pines, native flora and fauna.

You will ride by sites where scenes from the “Forrest Gump” movie were filmed. There are three plantations to ride by -- Bluff, Whitehall and Cherokee. Cherokee is currently a private five star resort for about 80 owners. Its golf course is highly rated and is equated to the Masters course in Augusta. It is believed that the movie directors for “Forrest Gump” were looking for land resembling Viet Nam to shoot those scenes when other sites were also chosen. Bluff Plantation was the location for Forrest’s home. The front of the house was a façade and dirt was brought in to make the lane up to the house where Forrest ran out of his braces.

The Lowcountry’s salt-marsh ecosystem, one of the world’s most productive and unspoiled, is remarkably easy to explore from a Beaufort base. The A.C.E. Basin is the vast wilderness created at the juncture of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto Rivers. Guided boat tours allow visitors to photograph hundreds of species of birds, and guided kayak tours offer a more active role in coastal discovery, while boat rentals let adventurers explore on their own.

The warm Carolina sun filters through giant moss-draped oaks dappling an emerald green. Your 20-foot putt glides among shadows to find the cup for a birdie. At a bend in the fairway, you pause to watch white egrets and blue herons wade. A seamless stretch of waving green grass defines the salt marsh backdrop. On an elevated tee, a sea breeze freshens as you study a fairway that flirts with the blue Atlantic. In Beaufort and the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry, visitors can enjoy golf year-round. Here, architects like Tom Fazio, George Cobb, Arthur Hills, Arnold Palmer and Davis Love III have found a rich natural canvas to paint scenes and challenges golfers will long remember. Old-fashioned Southern hospitality and friendly service make every day on the links special.

The Henry C. Chambers Waterfront Park is one of Beaufort's most popular and relaxing parks. Here you can find swinging benches that allow you to see all the bay splendors and sit while doing so... with trees overhead and a cool river breeze, it is really the way for utmost relaxation. The park has a marina, so you get to see all kinds of boats going by. Often you can see young and old, playing a Frisbee game on the grass. At the sea wall, one can fish or shrimp.

This popular state park, located near historic Beaufort, is a 5,000-acre secluded barrier island of semitropical beauty. As the name implies, the island was once used for hunting deer, raccoon, waterfowl and other small game. As a state park, the island serves as a preserve for its abundant wildlife. With more than four miles of beach, a maritime forest and extensive saltwater marsh, the island is also a retreat for people who love a natural coastal environment. The lighthouse and its complex are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Beaufort's carriage tours of Old Point and parts of the downtown historic district are a charming introduction to the area. The tours are varied in content. Guides touch on area history, telling stories about the grand houses and their owners. Some offer gossipy accounts of celebrity visitors and movie stars.