It’s been almost a century since the beginning of Folly Beach’s modern age as a tourist destination. By the time Folly Beach began to be developed in the late 1910s, it already suffered from a serious erosion problem, due to the completion of the Charleston jetties in the 1880s and ‘90s.
This 1920 map of Folly Beach’s original plats shows Atlantic Avenue, a beachfront thoroughfare that ran the developed span of the island. Buildings like the famed Atlantic House, which succumbed to the ocean whose name it bore during Hurricane Hugo in 1989, tested fate from their initial construction, with foundations in the sand and waves lapping at their support beams, just as some Folly homeowners are again experiencing at the far east end of the island.
On the map, note the vast expanses of land on the west side of the island, which ultimately were the last tracts to be developed in the last thirty years.
The aerial pre and post photos of the Atlantic House show its location on the beach, near the terminus of West Arctic Avenue into 2nd Street West.
Images like these are included in Stratton Lawrence’s book, Images of America: Folly Beach. To purchase your own personalized signed copies, delivered to your home on Folly Beach, or to share a photo and story for next month’s Folly Flashback column, email Stratton at strattonlawrence@gmail.com.
