# Kings Highway & the Lowcountry *US 17, the coast road since 1735* Kings Highway & the Lowcountry is a ~290-mile back-roads route from Wilmington to Savannah on US 17 and US 21, driven in 3–4 days, that stays off I-95 through the Atlantic Coast. - **Drive:** Wilmington → Savannah - **Distance:** ~290 mi - **Days:** 3–4 - **Highways:** US 17, US 21 - **Avoids:** I-95 - **Region:** Atlantic Coast - **Themes:** Eats & Institutions, History & Markers, Small Towns, Civil Rights US 17 follows the colonial Kings Highway through the marsh kingdom: Calabash fried seafood, the Grand Strand's neon, rice-empire ruins, sweetgrass basket stands in unbroken West African lineage, Charleston's complicated grandeur and Savannah's haunted squares. The whole route runs inside the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor — the living culture is the main attraction. Markers: Gullah Geechee Corridor markers and South Carolina's roadside histories line the route end to end. ## The drive, segment by segment ### Cape Fear to the Grand Strand *Wilmington → Pawleys Island · ~95 mi* Film-town Wilmington, Calabash's fried-seafood fleet, Myrtle's gloriously unrepentant kitsch, and the hammocks of 'arrogantly shabby' Pawleys. Stops: - **Wilmington Riverfront** (Wilmington) · Cult Classics & Pop Lore — 'Hollywood East': Dawson's Creek and One Tree Hill pilgrims still walk the riverwalk. The battleship North Carolina broods across the water; Britt's Donuts (1939, glazed only, cash only) fries at Carolina Beach. - **Calabash** (Calabash) · Eats & Institutions — The town that named a cooking style: lightly battered, flash-fried, served in heaps where the fleet ties up. Jimmy Durante's sign-off — 'Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash' — may or may not be about a local café owner; the town has chosen to believe. - **Myrtle Beach, Unrepentant** (Myrtle Beach) · Oddities & Roadside Wonders — The self-styled mini-golf capital of the world (50-ish courses, several with volcanoes) and the Gay Dolphin Gift Cove, a multi-level gift-shop labyrinth since 1946. Surrender to it for exactly one evening. - **Brookgreen Gardens** (Murrells Inlet) · Natural Beauty — Anna Hyatt Huntington's 1931 sculpture garden spread through old rice fields — one of the great collections of American figurative sculpture, with live oaks doing the staging. - **Pawleys Island** (Pawleys Island) · Small Towns — 'Arrogantly shabby' since the 1700s: weathered cottages, rope hammocks (invented here by a riverboat captain), and the Gray Man — the ghost whose appearance before hurricanes is considered actionable local forecasting. ### The Rice Coast *Pawleys Island → Charleston · ~75 mi* Georgetown's rice-empire clock tower, McClellanville's shrimp docks, the sweetgrass stands of Mount Pleasant — then Charleston, where the war began and the table never ended. Stops: - **Georgetown Rice Museum** (Georgetown) · History & Markers — Under the 1842 clock tower: how the Lowcountry's rice empire was built on the engineering knowledge of enslaved West Africans from the Rice Coast — the wealth, and its true authors, in one room. - **McClellanville** (McClellanville) · Small Towns — A shrimping village under cathedral oaks — T.W. Graham's fries the day's catch; Hurricane Hugo's 1989 surge line is still pointed out on porch posts. - **The Sweetgrass Highway** (Mount Pleasant) · History & Markers — Gullah 'basket ladies' sell coiled sweetgrass from roadside stands along 17 — a craft in unbroken lineage from West Africa, now in the Smithsonian. Buy from the maker; the price honors generations. - **Charleston** (Charleston) · Small Towns — Rainbow Row to the Battery, Philip Simmons's wrought-iron gates, Fort Sumter offshore where it all began (April 12, 1861). Eat the whole story: Bowens Island's oyster shack on the creek, Bertha's Kitchen's okra soup — both James Beard classics. ### ACE Basin & the Sea Islands *Charleston → Savannah · ~120 mi* The wild ACE Basin marshes, Old Sheldon's ruined columns, Conroy's Beaufort, Penn Center's living Gullah legacy — and into Savannah's squares. Stops: - **Angel Oak (spur)** (Johns Island) · Natural Beauty — A live oak perhaps 400–500 years old, shading 17,000 square feet — limbs like whales sounding through the earth. Free, and quieter than any cathedral. - **Old Sheldon Church Ruins** (Yemassee) · History & Markers — Brick columns open to the sky — burned by the British in 1779, wrecked again after the Civil War. Spanish moss, birdsong, and the South's whole arc in one ruined nave. - **Beaufort (spur)** (Beaufort) · Cult Classics & Pop Lore — Pat Conroy's town and Hollywood's favorite porch: The Big Chill house, Forrest Gump's locations, The Prince of Tides everywhere. Horse carriages under the oaks of The Point; the Conroy Literary Center holds the words. - **Penn Center (spur)** (St. Helena Island) · Civil Rights — One of the first schools for freed slaves (1862), later the only Southern retreat where Dr. King's interracial team could safely meet — his cottage remains. The beating heart of Gullah Geechee culture; the Saturday fish fry is church. - **Savannah & Bonaventure** (Savannah) · Small Towns — Twenty-two squares of haunted urbanism; Bonaventure Cemetery's Midnight in the Garden mystique (the Bird Girl now lives safely in the Telfair); Mrs. Wilkes's communal boardinghouse table (queue early); Leopold's cone for the walk; Pin Point's oyster-shucking Gullah museum just south. ## Tips and best time to go - Local shrimp season runs roughly May–December: look for 'local' on the sign or keep driving. - Mrs. Wilkes (Savannah) queues by 9:30 a.m.; Bowens Island opens at 5 p.m. — plan meals like museum entries. - Hurricane season peaks late August–September; shoulder months are heaven. ## Worth a detour - **South of the Border** — Forty minutes inland at Dillon: Pedro's 97-foot neon sombrero tower, 200 miles of pun billboards, and the Reptile Lagoon — gloriously unhinged since 1949. A required pilgrimage; the atlas pins it off-route. - **Charleston Tea Garden** — Wadmalaw Island: America's only large working tea farm — trolley through the rows, free tastings. - **Hampton Plantation & Hopsewee** — Rice-coast houses with increasingly honest interpretation, hidden up the Santee delta. ## Spurs & side-roads - Beaufort & St. Helena (US 21) - Angel Oak (Johns Island) - Edisto Island ## Frequently asked questions ### How long is Kings Highway & the Lowcountry and how many days does it take? Kings Highway & the Lowcountry is about 290 miles and takes 3–4 days at a back-roads pace. ### Where does Kings Highway & the Lowcountry start and end? It runs from Wilmington to Savannah. ### Which highways does Kings Highway & the Lowcountry follow? It follows US 17 and US 21. ### Which interstate does Kings Highway & the Lowcountry replace? It avoids I-95, using US 17 and US 21 instead. ### How many stops are on Kings Highway & the Lowcountry, and what are the highlights? 14 stops are mapped, including Wilmington Riverfront, Calabash, Myrtle Beach, Unrepentant, Brookgreen Gardens and Pawleys Island. ### Which ready-made itineraries include Kings Highway & the Lowcountry? Lowcountry Long Weekend (3 days), Sounds & Banks (7 days), The Eastern Crescent (15 days), The Whole Hog (28 days), Atlanta to Savannah to Charleston (4 days) and US 17: Outer Banks to Florida (8 days). ### When is the best time to drive Kings Highway & the Lowcountry? The atlas’s seasonal note for this route: “Local shrimp season runs roughly May–December: look for 'local' on the sign or keep driving.” ## Ready-made itineraries using this route - [Lowcountry Long Weekend](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/lowcountry-weekend) — 3 days, ~210 mi - [Sounds & Banks](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/sounds-banks-week) — 7 days, ~560 mi - [The Eastern Crescent](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/eastern-crescent) — 15 days, ~1800 mi - [The Whole Hog](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/whole-hog) — 28 days, ~4300 mi - [Atlanta to Savannah to Charleston](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/atlanta-savannah-charleston) — 4 days, ~420 mi - [US 17: Outer Banks to Florida](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/us17-end-to-end) — 8 days, ~820 mi ## Connects with - [Golden Isles & the First Coast](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/golden-isles) — Savannah → St. Augustine - [Sherman's March to the Sea](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/sherman-march-sea) — Milledgeville → Savannah - [US 341: The Golden Isles Highway](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/us341-golden-isles) — Barnesville → Brunswick --- Canonical URL: https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/us17-lowcountry Publisher: Dixie Media (Dixie Road Trip, https://dixieroadtrip.com/) Last updated: 2026-10-05