Litchfield Beach — No Town Hall, No Boardwalk, a Rice-Plantation Past

What Actually Makes Litchfield Beach Different

The single most important structural fact about Litchfield Beach is one many buyers coming from an incorporated beach town won't expect: it isn't one. Litchfield Beach is an unincorporated census-designated place in Georgetown County, South Carolina, with no town government, no mayor, no town council, no municipal police or fire department, and critically, no separate town-level property tax layer sitting on top of the county bill. That's a genuine structural difference from Pawleys Island, the incorporated town three miles south, which does levy its own municipal tax, and from Myrtle Beach fifteen miles north, whose town government sets its own rates and ordinances. At Litchfield Beach, county government -- Georgetown County -- is essentially the only layer of general-purpose local government a property owner deals with, alongside whatever private homeowners association governs the specific gated community or subdivision a given property sits in. That HOA layer matters more here, not less, precisely because there's no town hall setting community-wide rules.

The name comes directly from Litchfield Plantation, one of the oldest documented rice plantations on the Waccamaw River, its formation traceable to three land grants -- 500 acres in 1710, 420 acres in 1711, and 500 acres in 1712 -- issued by King George III to Thomas Hepworth. The plantation was named by a later owner, Peter Simon, with the earliest documented reference to the name appearing in his will, and the plantation house that still stands today was built in 1740. Under the Tucker family, who came to own and operate it, Litchfield Plantation's rice output grew to roughly one million pounds a year by 1850, at the height of a Georgetown County rice culture that ran from approximately 1750 to 1910 and made antebellum South Carolina the leading rice-producing state in the country. That plantation-era history isn't a footnote here -- it's the literal source of the community's name, and the 1740 plantation house survives today as the centerpiece of Litchfield Plantation, now a private residential community distinct from, but related to, the golf-course community called Litchfield Country Club, which was itself built on former Litchfield Plantation land.

The resort community most buyers recognize today is a mid-20th-century creation layered onto that older plantation landscape. Development traces to the 1950s under the name "Retreat Beach," with the golf-and-resort identity most associated with Litchfield today built out starting in the 1960s: Litchfield Country Club's course opened in 1966 as the first golf course in the immediate area, a 6,692-yard, par-72 layout that today anchors the twelve-course Waccamaw Golf Trail, marketed regionally as the Hammock Coast Golf Trail. The Litchfield Company spent roughly four decades developing a chain of amenitized resort neighborhoods stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Waccamaw River -- golf courses, a marina, and highly amenitized gated communities including Litchfield by the Sea, the area's most recognizable oceanfront resort neighborhood, with its own Beach Club, private waterpark, McConnell Golf Club (an 18-hole Greg Norman design), and Safe Harbour Marina on the Waccamaw River. Litchfield Beach & Golf Resort itself -- the hotel, Litchfield Racquet Club, and three golf courses -- is now owned and operated by Myrtle Beach National Company, a different entity from the original developer, a fairly common outcome for a resort property built up over decades.

Demographically and culturally, Litchfield Beach and the broader Waccamaw Neck skew markedly older, quieter, and more established than Myrtle Beach. Demographic aggregator data (not an official Census release, and treated here as directional rather than authoritative) puts the median age in Litchfield Beach at 64.1, with roughly 40.6% of residents 65 or older -- figures broadly consistent with the wider Waccamaw Neck area's reported median age near 60 and similar 65-and-over share. Georgetown County's own tourism arm has branded this stretch of coast -- Pawleys Island, Litchfield Beach, Murrells Inlet, DeBordieu, southern Garden City, the historic city of Georgetown, and Andrews -- as "the Hammock Coast" since 2010, explicitly marketing it to visitors more interested in history and natural scenery than the T-shirt shops and mini-golf of Myrtle Beach's commercial strip. That branding reflects something real on the ground at Litchfield specifically: a small commercial footprint of its own, a handful of public beach accesses shared mostly among residents and part-time owners rather than day-trip crowds, and a geography -- barrier-island beach on one side, Waccamaw River marsh and creek country on the other -- genuinely different from a straight oceanfront strip town.

Several practical facts that matter to a buyer were not independently confirmed at a level this page is willing to state as settled fact, and it does not invent them. Not confirmed: the exact current combined property tax millage (county plus school plus any fire district) for a specific Litchfield Beach parcel, since this page found Georgetown County's most recent detailed county-operating-millage breakdown (78.0 mills total, dated to the 2024 tax year) but not a current, itemized school-district or fire-district millage layered on top, nor the confirmed length of the county's reassessment cycle; a Litchfield-specific windstorm or flood insurance premium, as opposed to general South Carolina coastal ranges; the specific FEMA flood zone for any individual address; and a separately itemized Hurricane Hugo damage count for Litchfield Beach as distinct from neighboring Pawleys Island or Georgetown. Anyone seriously evaluating a purchase or move here should confirm current numbers directly with the Georgetown County Assessor and Tax Office, a South Carolina-licensed insurance broker familiar with coastal Wind Pool eligibility, and a Litchfield-area buyer's agent rather than assuming a figure found online is current.